It was an inspiring evening to hear Marisa Morán Jahn, Betty Yu, Avram Finkelstein and Shaun Leornardo share highlights of their art activist practice at the book launch for Activism as Art: A Decentered Anthology edited by Dipti Desai and Stephen Duncombe!
Dipti and Steve kicked off the event at the The Francis Kite Club in the East Village, NYC on April 10, 2025 by introducing the book and why they decided to work on it and then introduced the artists who were asked to not only share their work but also their thoughts on what it means to practice art activism in these authoritarian times.
The panel began with Avram Finkelstein an artist, writer, and a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives. He shared his long time art activist projects around the AIDs epidemic, which is captured in his book After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images. He Focused his comments on the Silence=Death iconic poster and then shared his current work on the disabled body that is based on his own experience of a changing body.
Marisa Morán Jahn an artist of Ecuadorian/Chinese descent whose work highlights the possibilities of art as social practice then shared her work across different mediums and scales that engages new immigrant families and low-wage workers. She discussed her work on the politics of care and care-givers and alluded to what it means in this current political climate where caring for people and the environment are critical for survival.
The third artist, Shaun Leonardo spoke about his multidisciplinary work that negotiates societal expectations of manhood, most often definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. He focused on his embodied participatory performative practice with young people involved in the criminal legal system in NYC. In doing so he localized what is happening in city politics today and the ways this is connected to the larger shocks to our system that we are all experiencing.
Betty Yu ended the presentations sharing her work as a filmmaker, socially engaged multimedia artist, photographer and activist born and raised in NYC. Her work integrates documentary film, photography, installation, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice, focusing on labor, immigration, gentrification, abolition, racism, militarism, transgender equality among other issues. She also shared her work as a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective that uses art to advance anti-displacement fights in NYC and Chinatown in particular.
