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Holly Ballard Martz, Trophy for tyranny (tarnished reputation), 2019, NY Times, brass stencils, brass, aluminum rivets 10 x 21 x 5 inches
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Michael D'Antuono, DomiNation, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
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Victoria Sybrandi, D is for Donald, 2017 (updated with surgical mask 2020), Mixed media on linen, 23.6 x 15.75 inches
Artist-curator Karen Gutfreund calls the 350 pieces of art included in Not Normal: Art in the Age of Trump a “visual protest.”
“Since Trump took office, the country has been sliding like an avalanche in the wrong direction,” she tells The Progressive. “It’s not normal to have a President who doesn’t read or listen to experts. And it’s not normal for a President to spend all his time watching Fox News, tweeting, and inciting violence and hatred.”
“Artists understand that it is important to document what’s going on. As the lies escalate, people feel like they’re on a fault line waiting for a crack to appear.”
The idea for the book, Gutfreund explains, began to germinate immediately after Trump entered the Oval Office. A curator for the past twelve years, she says she initially focused her curatorial efforts on the work of women artists, since art by women is all-too-often ignored by museums and galleries.
More recently, however, Gutfreund has expanded her focus beyond feminism. As she writes in the opening essay in Not Normal, after the election of Donald Trump, “I realized that I could not stand on the sidelines and passively watch what was happening. I want to make a difference and a difference through art is the best way I know how.”
She calls it “art as activism.”
The pieces included in the book range from cartoons to collage, from drawings to embroidery, installations, oil paintings, and sculptures. Some utilize Trump’s words, while others illustrate the impact of his policies on the constituencies he’s targeted.
Gutfreund describes the process of assembling the works as both daunting and exciting and reports that her outreach required a deep dive into hundreds of online exhibition catalogs to ensure that the selections included artists from different geographic regions, and with diverse racial, religious, and gender identities; 147 artists were ultimately chosen for inclusion.
But Gutfreund also wanted to ensure that all of Trump’s egregious policies were addressed. Toward that end, she divided the art into twelve categories, creating separate chapters that tackle the administration’s mishandling of immigration, racial injustice, COVID-19, and the environmental crisis. Other sections zero in on Trump’s overt sexism, as well as his pandering to dictators. His blustery narcissism, self-promotion, and incessant lying and misrepresentation of facts also come in for intense scrutiny and derision.
“Pictures are remembered better than words,” Gutfreund says. “This sort of activist art is very important in galvanizing people into action. Once you see something, you can’t unsee it. People remember the photo of Kim Phuc, the ‘napalm girl’ in Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1972 photo” of a screaming nine-year-old girl running from her community, her body burned. “Art is a way of bringing to life, to visibility, issues that both marginalized communities and the general public are facing.”
The goal of the book, she continues, is to promote dialogue and kickstart conversations about what people can do to promote positive social change and make the country more humane and equitable.
“Artists can motivate people to oppose Trump and his ideas, to fight back against the atrocities he’s created,” Gutfreund says. “The works in the book are a catalog of issues that demand attention. Art can help us reflect on what is happening and can also provoke us to ask ourselves how we can better promote the changes we want to see in the world.”
Although art as activism is neither new nor unique to the Trump era, Gutfreund notes that the amount of visual outrage that has swept the country since January 2017 is unprecedented. “Artists understand that it is important to document what’s going on,” she says. “As the lies escalate, people feel like they’re on a fault line waiting for a crack to appear.”
These cracks, and the uncertainty and fear that many progressive activists are feeling, form the foundation underlying most of the art included in Not Normal. Overall, it’s an unsettling, albeit hopeful expression of collective rage and fury. The book’s numerous essays—written by Sherri Cornett, partner in Gutfreund Cornett Art; collage artist and blogger Sally Edelstein; and Brenda Oelbaum, creator of The Trump Shit Show, among others—are inspiring and serve as a powerful antidote to the Trump Administration’s gaslighting of critics and relentless attacks on women, immigrants, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community.
Montana-based artist-curator Sherri Cornett’s essay, The Owl of Minerva, for example, focuses on the recent spate of police murders that have happened alongside street protests organized by blatantly misogynist and racist groups like the Proud Boys. ”As we navigate the necessarily messy and emotional public reckoning with the events and realizations that our President and police forces’ actions have aroused, we will make mistakes, but it is our own morality, our strength in community, that will assist us,” she writes.
Indeed, a public reckoning is long overdue—and if creative expression can steer us in a more progressive direction, perhaps Not Normal can serve as a roadmap toward decency, sanity, and justice.
All proceeds from the sale of the book Not Normal will benefit the Soze Foundation Artist + Activist Relief Fund, which provides small grants to individuals who have been adversely impacted by COVID-19.