"The scholar with a camera!": Wasteland and the Transformative Powers of Art

Monday, February 3, 2014

Wasteland and the Transformative Powers of Art

One of the joys of attending the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is you have the privilege of sitting in class with great professors and great artists. I am dwarfed by the skills of my colleagues and teachers but yet I sit with them. To sit with them is literally inspiring. To sit with them and share our creations and reflect on what it is we were created to do is moving. Today we watched the documentary Wasteland. I had watched this documentary two times by myself. It was something special to watch it with my colleagues and to be pushed by our professor to ask searching questions in relationship to the documentary and our work.

What motivates us to do what we do? How will our work connect with our passion to make the world a more just place? In Wasteland Vik Muniz, the artist returns to his roots to make a difference. A man raised in poverty, who has become a successful artist abroad returns home to make a difference.

Suelem

As artist we don’t have a right to impose what we want for others on them but rather we have a responsibility to ask what they want and how we might partner with them in the work of liberation and justice. The art did the work in the case of Wasteland. The art transformed the artists, he was able to reconnect with his roots! The art, gave hope to the leaders of the movement. Art can make a difference.

To sit in a classroom at SCAD and watch this documentary with my colleagues and professor was so moving. I wasn’t sitting in my study, isolated, crying by myself but rather I was moved to be in a room of artist who are committed to doing work that makes a difference. Our professor is helping us look inside and find what it is in us that makes us look through the lens and compose that shot, take the picture and tell the story. We can make a difference and make this world a more just place if we will just follow that still small voice that calls us, to do us not for personal gain and wealth but for justice and liberation (I am not suggesting these are mutually exclusive). What is that thing you are moved to do? Who are those people you are called to partner with to stand for justice? What is that small part of the world that you and can make a difference in? Will we take the chance? Will we start today?