We Make Each Other Beautiful
Art, Activism, and the Law
Published on 15. June 2024
Book
Hardback
246 pages
978-1-5017-7558-1 (ISBN)
Description
We Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on woman of color and queer of color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct-action "artivism" draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the civil rights and feminist movements and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change.
Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of four contemporary artivists -Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiniga, and Imani Jacqueline Brown-and the artivist collective Drawn Together, combining new oral histories with sharp analyses of how their diverse and expansive artistic practices bear important aesthetic and politicolegal meanings that address a wide range of injustices.
Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of four contemporary artivists -Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiniga, and Imani Jacqueline Brown-and the artivist collective Drawn Together, combining new oral histories with sharp analyses of how their diverse and expansive artistic practices bear important aesthetic and politicolegal meanings that address a wide range of injustices.
Reviews / Votes
We Make Each Other Beautiful swan dives into the activist projects of US-based and diasporic artists as wide-ranging as Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiniga, and Imani Jacqueline Brown that trace the emergence and cultural trajectories of these artivists' networks of radical affinities and models of care.(Hyperallergic) An important bridge between the academic and artistic worlds she inhabits, We Make Each Other Beautiful elucidates not only the role that artists play in society with syntactical brio but also how the most rigorous critiques of the law often emerge from artistic practice.
(Hyperallergic)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
2 b&w halftones, 26 color halftones, 3 illustrations - 3 Illustrations, unspecified - 2 Halftones, black and white - 26 Halftones, color
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
907 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-7558-1 (9781501775581)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
06/2024
Cornell University Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Yxta Maya Murray is David P. Leonard Professor of Law at Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University. She is the author of eight novels, including Art Is Everything and God Went Like That. Her art criticism and journalism have appeared in Artforum and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications.
Content
Introduction
1. Artivism Avant La Lettre
2. From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried: Carrie MaeWeems' Challenge to Copyright and Property Law
3. "I just didn't feel safe, but I don't feel safe a lot of times in alot of different places:": Young Joon Kwak's Mutant Salon andthe queer need for safer and thriving spaces
4. "How did we get here?": Tanya Aguiniga's art about theborder and disability law
5. "There are so many stories like that, too, of the governmentand private companies relinquishing their responsibility to thepeople of New Orleans, who had lost everything":: Imani Jacqueline Brown, Blights Out, and Live Action Painting(2015
6. "We wanted to open up and surpass those usualunderstandings:": Drawn Together and fair artists' contracts
Conclusion: An art dedicated to survival: Art, law, hope, and the wayahead
1. Artivism Avant La Lettre
2. From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried: Carrie MaeWeems' Challenge to Copyright and Property Law
3. "I just didn't feel safe, but I don't feel safe a lot of times in alot of different places:": Young Joon Kwak's Mutant Salon andthe queer need for safer and thriving spaces
4. "How did we get here?": Tanya Aguiniga's art about theborder and disability law
5. "There are so many stories like that, too, of the governmentand private companies relinquishing their responsibility to thepeople of New Orleans, who had lost everything":: Imani Jacqueline Brown, Blights Out, and Live Action Painting(2015
6. "We wanted to open up and surpass those usualunderstandings:": Drawn Together and fair artists' contracts
Conclusion: An art dedicated to survival: Art, law, hope, and the wayahead