— by Pamela Vasquez Torres

Pamela Vazquez Torres is a Mexican art historian living in the Twin Cities since 2017. She is driven by the potential of art for political action and social change.

Most of the store fronts that were boarded up during the Minneapolis uprising are still up and continue to appear in all sorts of manifestations, pairing up with the number of murals that have been produced since. On June 18th, I attended the “Black Art in the Era of Protest: A Virtual Conversation” between Twin Cities Black artists that discussed the history of black protest art and its reawakening sparked by the George Floyd protests.

The panelists: moderated by Public Art Consultant Robyn Robinson, were, Chioma Uwagwu, and Todd Lawrence (Urban Art Mapping Project), Precious Wallace (King P. Studio), Reggie LeFlore, Roger Cummings (Juxtaposition Arts),  and Seitu Jones, and Ta-Coumba Aiken. 

It was an ominous conversation because the question asking if real change can take place is being contested yet again, as other rebellions in history like the 1968 protests worldwide have proved to no avail. It was nonetheless a hopeful conversation too; it is inevitable to hold hope for social justice but it might just be that the activism of young generations armed with the visibility and the hyper connectivity of the world today is what we all needed to make it happen. Protest art is a way for Black creatives to take reins on important aspects of the movement, such as rejecting the opportunistic commodification of their work, defining the direction the conversation should be heading towards and procuring a thorough register of all the work.

The COVID lockdown might have changed permanently the way we relate with our urban setting and the protest art should be a reminder of why the ire was overdue. Our actions can be seeds for change.