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Aesthetic Evangelists - Chloe Stephen

Three Key ideas That resonated with me:

- The writer touches on "The confusion that exists between political representation and symbolic representation [...] evident in community art projects that fail to distinguish between the artist's ability to "exhibit" a given community in a project, performance, or image[...]"When creating community based art projects that touches on challenging topics, taking other individuals experiences and lives as subject of the artwork, all information involved in the project must be true to reality and authentic to each individual represented. The writer takes Alfredo Jaar's exhibit "One or Two Things I Know About Them" as an example in which the artist failed to authentically and fully represent the community he chose to exhibit in his artwork.

- the writer draws a parallel between the "victorian" model of social policy and the world that we live in today, bringing to light certain challenges that a "community artist" must confront when working with "disadvantaged groups" in a forward thinking way. Based on the "Victorian" model of social policy, a great danger that community artists face, is overlooking the root of the problems and situations that "disadvantaged groups" find themselves in. In exploring, through community art projects, ideas surrounding personal growth and development of individuals, it is easy to ignore a very important part of the problem: the role of society and the control that society has on the lives of different individuals and their opportunities for development

- "The Universal (Bourgeois) subject is able to enjoy privileges specific to their class membership, while claiming moral authority to speak on behalf of those who's exploitation makes their own privileges possible." This is something that really resonated with me in terms of a societal issue and something that community must be aware of and able to constantly question when creating work that involves disadvantaged groups.

Three question:

-What is the role of the community artist in the communities with which they choose to engage and how does this differ from the role of the artist in society?

- How does the artist who chooses to engage with a community maintain the interests of the community at heart of the work whilst still creating something that is engaging to the public?

- How does the artist engage with groups of individuals in art projects that represent the individuals needs but does not directly fulfill these needs. In this case how will the artist be received among a community who's needs are greater than what the artist can give?


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