It's at this time of the year that everyone wants to be a better person. Christmas, whether you celebrate it or not, is commercially and religiously viewed as the holiday of selflessness, and in the days and weeks surrounding it we focus our attention on random acts of kindness, generosity and just being nice. Following Christmas is the seven day crawl to New Years Eve; the final scramble to exorcise our demons in preparation for a new rotation. We make promises and resolutions that we hope will make us happier, lighter souls. Maybe it's just about losing weight but essentially the Holiday Season drives us to be (or want to be) better human beings.
Around this time last year, I was in London and was lucky enough to visit the Refugee Council's headquarters in Brixton, a place that assists and often houses refugees and asylum seekers during the difficult process of filing for asylum in the UK. The grand majority of these individuals come from the war-torn countries of Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, and often reach the UK by treacherously traveling on foot. In the children's ward, I came across the picture of a yellow flower a child drew hanging on the wall. No one else seemed to notice it, but I moved forward for a closer look. Below the flower he or she wrote: "I am drawing this flower because I am not happy living right now." The beauty and despair of those words shattered me like a stone hitting a pane of glass. Even now as I recount the story, I begin to cry. I can't explain the exact emotion I felt when I read that, perhaps it was shock--shock at the equally devestating and uplifting fact that a very simple expression of beauty and hope through the crude drawing of a flower could counter the deep despair this child felt. No other moment in my life proved to me the true importance of art and the ability to create. However, later that night as I wrote to an email to my partner and tears rolled down my face, I repeated over again that it had to matter that I saw the picture. The ability to create was one thing, but somehow in whatever mystical way the universe works light had to have gained a victory against darkness by me seeing that image and reading those words. It had to matter that the cycle was completed by me being there to receive the message this child so desperately needed to communicate.
Artists always say that they create for themselves and that their works are expressions, but whether it's a song, photo, film, poem, or drawing of a flower, these creations need to be received for the process to be completed. Art is not creative expression, it is creative communication, and while I can't tell you what it means to stand in front of a Picasso, I know that my heart was pulled into the fight for light against darkness that day in Brixton, a struggle that's been celebrated during this season long before fat men in red suits or babies in mangers stole the show. I thought of this story after reading an article on Electronic Intifada about the silencing of Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour by Lacoste. The French clothing company dismissed Sansour from their sponsored art contest because her multimedia project "Nation Estate" was "too Palestinian". A similar act occurred earlier this year in California, when the Musuem of Children's Art in Oakland canceled the planned exhibit of artwork by Palestinian children from Gaza after facing pressure from pro-Israel groups. These instances perpetuate the silencing of marginalized artwork (art that needs to be received), and sadly this time it was done by institutions that are suppose to serve as mediums for such rare communication processes. To lift the silence, even on a very minor level, images from both exhibits appear here.
It's easy, but for a moment let's not get swayed into politics. The purpose of this post is this: the holiday season comes every year, but it cannot go by without comment. There's an effort to not be cliche, but at the same time a fear of being so witty and contemporary it's superficial. So what message can we at Profound Aesthetic, a company that cherishes art, creativity and inspiration offer to our readers during this transitional season? The same one we tell you all year long: grow, learn, explore, share.
Do not be content with everything you've learned so far, find more! Do not settle only for the cannon, the classics, the traditional, and the easy to see.
Put yourself in the fight against darkness with your eyes and your heart; with your ears and your hands; with your mouth and your spirit. Not all art exists in museums or on the radio or in movie theaters. You have the internet as your most powerful tool, use it. There are stories that need to be told and expressions that need to be communicated; find them and share, share always. Bend and stretch yourself into different modes of receiving. Find it, whether it's the graffiti behind the dumpster or the T-shirt you're wearing, or the Spanish poem you would have never read if you didn't take that AP course, or that obscure article swimming between the front page and D7, or the story you would have never heard if you didn't have the patience to listen to your grandmother or baby nephew. Too many go silent in this world. Too many flowers are drawn in hope but never seen. Too many battles in that incessant universal war are lost in all the quiet. Too many messages are not received.
If you're looking for a way to be a better person in the new year, or maybe some last acts of goodwill to do before December runs out, find those messages, even just one, and share. Continue the cycle and keep art alive. Happy holidays and thank you for listening.
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