What’s Awareness Art?

Time for some visual inspiration.

Awareness art, or protest art, is art that exists primarily to draw attention to an issue, or to object to a situation.

I’m a bit obsessed with this hybrid of cause and art.

Why? Many — no, scratch that, all — exhibition planning and design projects have some form of awareness-building as the main point.

So if you think of an entire exhibition as an artwork unto itself, then in a sense, exhibition planners and designers are … awareness artists.

[Mystical distant gong noise]

Of course, there are countless artists with profound political dimensions to their work and life (e.g., Ai Wei Wei).

But awareness art is first for the purpose of raising awareness. It has to be good to work, but it’s not art for art’s sake.

Take a look at the images in this article. You’ll be gone for a while. Yes, it’s from a blog by a Malaysian computer programmer. But it’s the best single source I can find.

Here’s the thing:
If you are an exhibition or experience planner or designer, and your projects raise awareness about something, you might just be … an awareness artist.

Warmly,
Jonathan