Opportunities in Public Art
(From the American Art Therapy Association Newsletter)
Today, the two fields that are the basis of our practice, art and psychology, are changing. If we attend to new ideas and methods in only Art Therapy and psychology, we will miss vital opportunities and perspectives being offered by current art practice. Art is becoming socially engaged, political, and interactive and that should be of great interest to us as artist healers.
Many in psychology are waking to the reality that "healing" requires not only curing the individuals who display the symptoms but also addressing the world that has become ill. In fact, by subduing and containing "the mentally ill", psychology may be part of the problem rather than part of the solution as it facilitates the continuation of this state of disease. James Hillman in his book, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World Is Getting Worse, says, "We're working on our relationships constantly, and our feelings and reflections, but look what's left out of that….What's left out is a deteriorating world."
How can we expand the possibilities for art therapists to addresses the larger systems linked to our clients suffering? New Genre Public artists work with and represent many of the same populations we do: the mentally ill, homeless, AIDS patients, prisoners, elderly and youth at risk. They work in collaboration with the disenfranchised and disadvantaged in projects inviting change on a social, political and environmental scale. They build structures that share the power inherent in making culture with under-represented individuals and communities. The forms they are inventing have much to offer us in our practice of Art Therapy. This work not only serves individuals but also aims its interventions into the culture at large through careful participation in spectacle, performance, exhibition, and media. You have no doubt heard of some of the more visible works of this art such as the AIDS Quilt (the Names Project), perhaps without exploring directly how these tactics could offer new possibilities for our work as Art Therapists.
Developments in art and culture are contagious. Current community-based public art is often collaborative, which means you can participate in it and keep your job, since it is a shared rather than an individual effort. As a professional organization and as educators preparing art therapists, we have much to gain by becoming informed about this mainstream movement in art and the discourse that surrounds it. These new territories are fraught with difficulties. Public artists and theorists are in a continual process of critique debating the effects of this work and where it lands in relation to their intentions.
Community based public art came about because artists were not willing to be confined to a narrow elite market and instead sought a meaningful practice that interacted with society. As we join in new models of art that address both the suffering of individuals and the dis-ease of our society, let us be inspired to move beyond imagined confines to a practice that reflects what we value. As Gandhi said in equally difficult times, "We must be the change we wish to see and not the darkness that we wish to leave behind."
Joan Hanley MFA in Fine Art, MA in Expressive Therapy. A practicing Artist and Art Therapist, her previous teaching includes The Open Center (NYC), Schumacher College (England), and The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston). She will be teaching at Kripalu in July on Art and Spiritual Practice, at the One World Conference in September on New Methods in Community Art and at the next AATA conference in November on Broadening Art Therapy through Art and Social Action.