Lillian Lewis

2.34 Art Sustainability: Resistance and Resilience (Paper)

Lillian Lewis – Virginia Commonwealth University, USA

Abstract:

We live, create, and teach in transitory worlds. Art and artmaking in the 20th century often reflected aspirations for a stable, better world. Making and teaching art in the Western world in the 20th century was a process akin to cultivation, worldbuilding, civilizing. In the 21st century, artmaking and art teaching occur in interdependent geopolitical landscapes. Artists are working in a milieu of human-accelerated climate change, terminal capitalism, and genocide that infrequently privileges singular, sustained ways of creating art. How can we teach and make art in fugitive spaces and times? Where and when do we make and teach art on the run? This presentation will explore these questions through an ecological lens, with an eye toward sustainability.