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A New Exhibition Explores the Politics of Social Justice Art

The Brooklyn Museum’s 'Agitprop' blurs the lines between propaganda and art.
Dread Scott (American, born 1965). On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, performance still, 2014. Pigment print, 22 x 30 in. (55.9 x 76.2 cm). Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. (Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott)

In the early 20th century, following the communist revolution in Russia, the Soviet state used agitprop—a portmanteau of the words 'agitation' and 'propaganda'—to disseminate their messages through art. Following the party’s lead, artists over the last century have blurred the lines between activism and art by making politically charged works that question things like discrimination, inequality, and the dominance of the State. The Brooklyn Museum’s latest exhibition, Agitprop, through an array of media, explores the impact of artists taking their messages from the museums to the streets.

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Valentina Kulagina (Russian, 1902–1987). International Working Women's Day Is the Fighting Day of the Proletariat, 1931. Lithograph on paper, 38 x 28 in. (96.5 x 71.1 cm). Merrill C. Berman Collection. © 2015 Estate of Valentina Kulagina / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo: Joelle Jensen)

Agitprop is really three shows in one. The works selected by the organizing curators from the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art represent the first of three cycles of exhibiting artists. Agitprop, in fact, is in part curated by artists. The current group of artists will select the second cycle of exhibiting artists who will, in turn, select the final set of artists to join the exhibition. The first wave of over 20 Agitprop artists explores the beginning of the category of art with posters made after the October Revolution of 1917. An untitled poster exhibited by Russian artist Ignaty Nivinsky depicts a woman working in the fields as a positive image of communism. Valentina Kulagina’s "International Women’s Workers Day is the Fight of the Proletariat" postcard, made to highlight women’s rights in communist Russia, is also on display.

Gran Fury (active 1988–94): Richard Elovich, Avram Finkelstein, Tom Kalin, John Lindell, Loring McAlpin, Marlene McCarty, Donald Moffett, Michael Nesline, Mark Simpson, Robert Vazquez. Women Don’t Get AIDS, They Just Die from It, 1991. Bus shelter sign, ink on acetate, 70 x 47 in (1.8 x 1.2 m). Public Art Fund, New York and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

The first installation of Agitprop also surveys how artists over the last hundred years have been engaged in the politics of their times. Yoko Ono’s video Bed Peace shows how the artist made work that responded to the 1960s Peace Movement. Adejoke Tugbiyele’s Gele Pride Flag calls attention to LGBT rights in Nigeria. Gran Fury’s 1991 Women Don’t Get AIDS, They Just Die From It poster brings visibility to one group's fight against HIV/AIDS during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The artist collective Guerrilla Girls’ Racism and Sexism flyer questions the fetishization of minority artists, while Dread Scott’s performance, On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, highlights how artists continue to fight enduring inequality.

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Jenny Holzer (American, born 1950). Poster from Inflammatory Essays, (1979–82, 1983). Offset lithograph, 17 x 17 in. (43.2 x 43.2 cm). Installation: New York, 1983. © 2015 Jenny Holzer/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Agitprop examines the potential of what art can do. The works presented in the galleries of the Brooklyn Museum were once held as signs during small town protest, handed out as flyers on city streets, and posted on walls across nations. The show is a case study in how the exhibiting artists have taken their practices beyond museum gallery walls to change minds and incite governments to act.

Flag, announcing lynching, flown from the window of the NAACP headquarters on 69 Fifth Ave., New York City, 1936. Photograph, 13 7/16 x 10 7/16 in. (34.1 x 26.5 cm). Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, LC-DIG-ppmsca-39304. Courtesy of The Crisis Publishing Co., Inc., the publisher of the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for material first published in The Crisis

Agitprop is on display through August 7, 2016, at the Brooklyn Museum. The second installation of the exhibition opens February 17. For more information, click here.

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