Art is the Weapon
Just as Fela Anikulapo Kuti considered music as a weapon, so do I consider art as a weapon. In fact, my recent solo exhibition at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame, California was titled, Art is the Weapon.
It is interesting that everyone is an “artist” nowadays. Be it hip hop, pop, or any music genre. So if an artist who paints, draws or creates mixed media says generally or casually that they are an artist, the first question is “what kind of music do you do?” So invariably, we need to be specific and say “visual” artist. Many years ago, authors wrote, singers sang, artists painted (or sculpted). An artist was just that, an artist. Now, an artist is a singer, whether in fact creating art or not. My intent here is not to define who is or is not an artist, or compare music of today with that of my time, which would include James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Marley, Fela, Nina Simone and other prolific singers. But also, Public Enemy, KRS One, Eric B & Rakim, Black Thought, Akae Beka (fka Midnite), Burning Spear, and a few others.
Their music and lyrics created shifts in thought, shifts in sociology and psychology. You felt their music as much if not more than you heard it. But others heard it too. The rhythms resonated, the words illuminated the soul. You felt empowered and inspired to do something, be something, change something. Not as criticism, but commentary, I am not sure that much of what I am hearing today is art with the impact I’ve described.
I suppose it is no different than some visual art that conveys no message or provides no information. Now don’t get me wrong, art is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, and can be a mindless but memorable melody or hook, or canvas with one color. If it resonates to you, it is art to you. However, in the words of Fela, “. . . when an artist receives his [or her] gift from a higher power, that artist has an obligation to use that gift for the good of humanity”. That is my endeavor every time I create.
DeWitt Cheng, art curator and art critic, stated this regarding my solo exhibition, Art is the Weapon:
“Kamal Al Mansour creates mixed-media assemblages that examine social and political issues, especially race in America. Al Mansour’s virtuosic skills in drawing, painting, and collage, combine with his brilliant observations on complex issues to illuminate and provoke: to enlarge the viewer’s understanding of the struggles facing the great majority of us irrespective of color or race in these tempestuous, confusing times.”
In this piece, Just-us in America, I intended to visually highlight, if not memorialize, what the Pledge of Allegiance has failed to provide, “. . . liberty and justice for all”. Plain and simple, our justice is different. It is not the justice that is linked to the flag to which America wants me/us to pledge our allegiance. Justice is not handed out to all, but injustice certainly is a Black thang. In 1982, Richard Pryor joked about having to go to court for tax evasion — “They give niggahs time like its lunch down there. You go down there looking for justice and that’s what you’ll find, just us!!!”
Almost 40 years later and all the years before and in between, the joke that was funny and serious then, remains a major topic in a never-ending discourse concerning (in)justice for Black people in America. Kaepernick first knelt on 9/11 in 2016 before a San Francisco 49ers game to protest injustice in America and police brutality against African Americans. And two years later, because of a Nike ad (aired during the season opener) featuring Kaepernick, the topic of kneeling has surfaced again as “protestors” burned their Nike products in “protest” of Kaepernick and Nike. Did these same protestors boycott any company when George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Aubery, Rayshard Brooks, Trayvon, Tamir, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Philando Castille, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Sandra Bland, and countless others were killed.
Oddly enough (but not really), The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 notes that during the first half of the 20th century at least 200 attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation failed to gain support from the Senate despite urging from seven sitting presidents. Is this not a protest (if not a mandate) against seeking justice? Why is it so hard for those at the helm of institutional racism and imperialism, to accept the fact that there is a very long history of injustice for Black people in America. Is it because it is, just-us?
Another piece I have weaponized is, American Profile #1: Curbside Justice. In the first piece of this series I explore the origin of “Black Profiling” as a uniquely American phenomenon which began with the slave patrols, during the more than 340 years Black people were enslaved in America, then later with FBI surveillance of the Freedom and Black Power movements. But the last 10 to 20 years have seen a military-equipped, undertrained, over-policing of Black communities throughout America. Too often for too many years, the only justice we received was that imposed by state-sanctioned white vigilantes, at any time, for any reason. Now, notwithstanding limited production under the U.S. Constitution given qualified immunity to the police state, the justice we receive in many documented, but mostly undocumented cases is carried out before ever entering a police station or court of law. The police are judge, jury and executioner with no oversight, reprimand or penalty.
American Profile #1: Curbside Justice, like my other art work, confronts viewers, but immediately engages them in a visual discourse. It also documents what we as Black people in the U.S. deal with too frequently.
Art is a passion for the artist, but can also be purposeful and powerful. Art can be artistic, beautiful and painterly, but also change minds and hearts. Art can also be advocacy, inform and inspire. Art is limitless . . .
