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Aesthetic Evangelist: Kazmiera Tarshis

Kazmiera Tarshis
The first thing that really spoke to me was that community based art is drawing upon the idea of empowerment. I am always looking for ways to empower myself and those around me and I love the concept of bringing empowerment to communities of people through art practice. I would definitely want to incorporate this into my core beliefs when creating community based art. Another concept that stood out to me was this idea that the poor are to blame for their own poorness. This cultural shaming of people who are not well off, saying that they are in this situation because they were too lazy to get themselves out of it. The fact that the upper class really holds this idea to truth is not surprising but certainly affects the way in which I would go about creating community based art. I would want to address this idea in some way, which links back to empowerment. The third thing I felt affected by was the words of “New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's influential report "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," (1964) in which Moynihan suggested that the "cause" of persistent black poverty was not racism or economic and political disenfranchisement, but rather a "tangle of pathology" with a fatally flawed, womancentered family structure at its core. Moynihan's recommendations included mandatory military service for young black men to ensure their exposure to "an utterly masculine world. . . away from women, a world run by strong men of unquestioned authority." This direct statement of misogyny and racism is what catches my eye. It’s an absolutely ludicrous opinion to post in a report. The truth is that this is not an outdated idea in society today, there are still plenty of people who feel this way. I know we were supposed to choose things that exemplified what we wanted to accomplish with our own art, but for me it was these infuriating ideas that really sparked something in me. It shows me the barriers that people have to face everyday and how it’s important that community based art isn’t something to show pity for communities, nor is there a need for the upper class shaming, it is really to let people have their own voice and feel empowered by it.


  1. What is the definition of the word Pedagogy and why did they specifically use that word in the text?
  2. How can community based art be used to really affect change on a larger level, not just within small communities?
  3. How can we put community based art in the forefront of America’s mind and bring more funding to art?

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