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Document Type
Text
Exact Creation Date
2023
Language
English
Location
Cumberland County
Abstract
This paper examines public art and the role of contemporary artists in context of their relational experience in communities effected by environmental injustice. As a Michigan resident or as an out-of-state guest invited into an urban neighborhood, each of the twelve artists in this study participates within community through a unique cultural lens. Informed by historical and sociopolitical complexities, the public art bears witness for artists that care about the effects of a city’s water crisis, harm resulting from breached oil pipelines, generational loss of Indigenous traditions, and the inability to breathe unconditionally within certain neighborhood Zip Codes. Engaging in public art in the emerging role of ‘caretaker,’ the artist addresses evolving social narratives in such a way that the aesthetic form through its visual dialogue, becomes a catalyst for change. Current discourse on public art and environmental injustice regards a broad range of social contexts whereby the art performs a certain aesthetic or practical function relevant to location, however, the figure of the artist is rarely discussed. This paper focuses on the figure of the artist. In posing the question, How does public art bear witness for the artist in the role of caretaker?, I argue that the artwork reveals the role of caretaker through the artist’s 1) aesthetic practice, 2) gentleness in form, and 3) particular elucidation that personifies ‘caretaker’ as assessed through aspects of Witness, Testimony, Shelter, and Call, whereby the four categories become markers within the art for attributing the artist’s relational experience within community. The public art fosters consideration for the viewer to gain new insight through aesthetic form that bears witness for the artist as caretaker and to reflect on one’s own role in an environmentally just community.
Disciplines
Art Practice | Environmental Sciences | Ethics and Political Philosophy | Philosophy | Sculpture
Publisher
Institute for Doctoral Studies in The Visual Arts
City
Portland ME
Recommended Citation
Reiff, Kim M., "The Caretaker: Bearing Witness in Public Art an Examination of the Role of Contemporary Artists Addressing the Effects of Environmental Injustice within Michigan Communities" (2023). Academic Research and Dissertations. 46.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/46
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