Poverty and Practice

This roundtable dialogue seeks to engage a group of artists and art historians who can illuminate how structural and circumstantial poverty has delimited, and continues to delimit, the way that artists make a life in art in the United States, its territories and sacred lands. The terms under which artists meet this reality while retaining creative agency--a sometimes delicate, sometimes brutal negotiation--is something we might call practice. Understanding how (artistic) practices have been responsive to poverty’s deprivations is critical in at least two ways: first, to support those who seek to make their way in art by offering some insight into how practice might be shaped in response to poverty’s terms, and second to articulate what could be gained when we, as artists, researchers, and educators integrate more holistic understandings of poverty.

While there are cognizable strains of art history that value Marxist methodologies, this panel especially welcomes contributors whose work, research, or writing suggests other frames. These may include, but of course are not limited to: the poor people-led skolarship of Lisa (Tiny) Gray-Garcia; a capabilities-based approach, developed by economist/philosophers Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum; or fictional/speculative worldings, such as those offered by Ursula K. Le Guin or R. F. Kuang, among others.

Panelists should plan to prepare a 10-minute presentation considering a singular project or artwork, a methodological intervention, or an aspect of practice, to be circulated to co-panelists in the weeks prior to CAA. Presentations will be given in the course of a longer, semi-structured dialogue.