Bernstein Symposium Considers Art’s Power to Assert — and Challenge — Authority

The 2024 Bernstein Symposium, Art as Authority / Art as Activism, highlighted the perspectives of artist-advocates on the complex relationship between art and international human rights. 

The event, which took place April 11 and 12, featured a keynote lecture and four panels that considered questions about the position of art as a tool for both authority and dissent. What role can art play in bringing about social change, particularly achieving greater respect for human rights? How can we assess the “efficacy” of art? What ethical considerations affect the artistic representation of violence, suffering and loss and the publication and distribution of such representations? How do artists themselves understand the relationship between aesthetic goals and social goals? 

Nadya Tolokonnikova, Russian artist and founder of activist band Pussy Riot, opened the symposium with a keynote lecture in which she discussed her use of performance and studio art to stoke public dissent against Vladimir Putin’s dictatorial regime. As its name suggests, Pussy Riot eschews convention. The group is principally known for staging political performance art in public spaces, usually featuring groups of women in striking masks and costumes. The group’s visuals, music, and daring performances achieve a unique form of aesthetically and politically disruptive dissent. 

Tolokonnikova recounted the birth of Pussy Riot in 2011 as a feminist art collective challenging Russia's political establishment and advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and the decentralization of political authority. She shared that since she began organizing public demonstrations, she has been arrested over 50 times and, for a 40-second performance in Moscow, spent two years in jail. Despite facing constant threats and being labeled a terrorist for her art, Tolokonnikova remains undeterred, driven by a vision of a democratic Russia. 

“History is not on Putin’s side,” Tolokonnikova said. “Young Russian people will eventually choose their leader in a free, democratic Russia. They wouldn’t want to be cannon fodder in imperialist wars, wouldn’t want to invade other people’s homes and kill them. History and time are not on Putin’s side, but it’s taking too long.”

Tolokonnikova also emphasized the power of collective action and the need for solidarity across genders and identities in the fight for democracy. She highlighted the importance of public art as a tool for societal change. Her call to action urged global support for democracy in Russia, aggressive sanctions against Putin's regime, and unwavering humanitarian and military support for Ukraine. 

At the center of the art is the attempt to uncover what is hidden.” 

— Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, poet and musician

Following the keynote speech, Professor Kymberly Pynder, Dean of Yale School of Art, and Clinical Professor of Law Claudia Flores of Yale Law School asked Tolokonnikova about the marginalization of certain artists in the mainstream art world, risk-taking in activist art, and the nature of public art. Tolokonnikova explained that for much of her career, she felt like an outsider in the art world, yet entered into mainstream spaces as a means of gaining recognition and inspiring other artists. She also described her sense of responsibility to engage in risker, public expressions of her beliefs to reach beyond her “bubble” and address those in power head-on. She concluded that while the state of censorship and punitive measures taken against activists in Russia made some of her public performances no longer possible, she is confident in her ability to adapt and draw on her community for motivation and support. 

Tolokonnikova’s upcoming project, “Dark Matter,” discusses how physical repression in the form of beatings, murders, and imprisonment leads to spiritual repression, targeting one’s soul and creating collective depression. The project will explore, through art, how to maintain one’s resolve under such conditions. 

In the first panel following the keynote, playwright Toto Kisaku, poet-musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, and Yale School of Art Professor Marta Kuzma discussed the topic of art as truth. Kwiatkowski, who is from Poland, discussed how he uses music to reflect on the atrocities of the Holocaust. Kwiatkowski noted that, to him, music can be a communal method of absorbing and relating the stories of the dead and preserving historical truth through art. He highlighted the song “Never Forget” by his band, Trupa Trupa. The song is about the Holocaust and the movements that attempt to deny it. 

“At the center of the art is the attempt to uncover what is hidden,” he said. 

Kwiatkowski emphasized that music and poetry are the apparatus for exposing suppressed and uncomfortable truths. Kisaku has been a tireless advocate for children who are wrongfully accused of witchcraft and forced out of their communities in his home country of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kisaku used theater to dispel misinformation and protect children from the accusations of pastors who work with the government to scapegoat children for the poverty befalling disenfranchised communities. His work is used to educate parents and prevent pastors from endangering children. He tells the story of his activist art and his narrow escape from the Congolese secret police in his one-man play, “Requiem for an Electric Chair.” 

In the second panel, “Art as Questioning,” conceptual artist Minerva Cuevas filmmaker and playwright Andrei Kureichik, and painter and Yale School of Art Professor Meleko Mokgosi discussed art as a means of interpreting and challenging the world around the artist. Kureichik discussed the important distinctions between activist art in democratic contexts and in authoritarian states like Russia and Belarus. 

Cuevas gave an overview of her work, which uses art to challenge human rights violations by corporations. Her project “Mejor Vida Corp.” responded to the economic crisis of the late 1990s in Mexico City. The work challenged how corporations deeply affected and, often, according to Cuevas, exploited the public. 

Mokgosi argued that artistic critiques are more than observations; they constitute active disobedience. 

The third panel, “Art as Activism,” featured artist and activist Avram Finkelstein and organizer and curator Jasmine Rivera. Finkelstein discussed his work raising public consciousness around AIDS in the 1980s. He reflected on his use of posters to advocate for AIDS patients and combat the queer-phobic societal stigma around the disease. Rivera, Interim Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Immigrant and Citizenship Coalition, described the fundamentally community-based nature of her work and emphasized the importance of person-to-person communication and care when creating advocacy networks. She talked about the multimedia exhibit she curated, Queremos Justicia. The exhibit tells the story of the success of the Shut Down Berks Coalition in closing a Pennsylvania prison where families and adult women were incarcerated and subjected to physical and sexual violence. Rivera noted that as human beings, we are drawn deeply to images and can use art to have large networks of people understand their impact and take collective action. 

The final panel of the symposium was “Art as Solidarity.” Writer, artist, and cultural organizer Ali Murat Gali ’22 discussed abolition as a process and art as a methodology towards that end. Gali noted the interconnected roles of urban farmers, artist collectives, transformative justice practitioners, cooperatives/community land trusts, and healing collectives in the pursuit of a more interconnected, communal way of life. Poet, translator, and editor Tenzin Dickie discussed her experiences as a Tibetan refugee in India and how books and storytelling were a crucial means of nurturing hope for her. 

“Writing is my attempt to live my life as though I’m already a free citizen of Tibet,” she said. “Writing is a liberatory practice for me.” 

Artist, muralist, and co-founder of the Right of Return Fellowship Russel Craig discussed the role visual art had in his life since his early childhood. He described how, as a foster child, art was his creative escape. While imprisoned, Craig taught himself to paint, eventually landing a job with Mural Arts Philadelphia. Now a well-known artist and activist, Craig discussed how the commercial art world can undermine the ideological foundation of artists, and he described his personal efforts to keep his mission centered in his art. 

Award-winning poet Threa Almontaser noted that solidarity in art looks like artists who have community concerns and other artists in mind. She emphasized the importance of cycles of inspiration in which one artist’s work gives rise to another’s. She noted that, particularly given her experiences as a hijabi, her poetry is often a form of witness to injustice and is deeply political. She strongly opposed the notion that art and politics should be kept separate, and she said that when people are faced with a sense of political powerlessness, poetry has a unique ability to stir us to action and reenergize us. 

The Bernstein Symposium is part of the Robert L. Bernstein Human Rights Fellowship program, which began in 1997 in honor of Robert Bernstein, the founding chair of Human Rights Watch.