Artnauts Collective: A Brief History and Exhibition Record
By Beth Krensky, Ph.D., University of Utah
selection of works from Artnuat members
Mission
The Artnauts is an artist collective that uses the visual arts as a tool for addressing global issues while connecting with artists from around the world. The name derives from combining the words “art” and “astronaut” as a way to describe the process of exploring uncharted territory in the world at large. The name also denotes an art practice that is “not” art as usual and goes beyond the confines of the traditional or conventional art world, blurring the boundaries between art, activism, and social practice. For example, one of our exhibitions traveled down the Amazon River for three years to over twenty-two remote sites. The Artnauts have worked at the intersection of critical consciousness and contemporary artistic practice to influence change for two plus decades with over two-hundred forty exhibitions, and counting, on five continents.
The Artnauts are well named. They take off for outer spaces (a.k.a the margins) where angels are in short supply, filling gaps that shouldn't be there, speaking out where few can or will.
What an incredible record… Congratulations.
Lucy Lippard
History
In 1996, Dr. George Rivera, Professor of Art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado Boulder founded the Artnauts with the help of Dennis Dalton (professor University of Colorado Pueblo, Beth Krensky (professor University of Utah) Garrison Roots, and Luis Valdovino (professors University of Colorado Boulder). The group has captured the attention of thousands of artists, community members, and art critics both nationally and internationally.
The work of the collective is rooted in an engaged practice that draws from Joseph Beuys’ construct of “social sculpture,” Paulo Freire’s “conscientization” or critical consciousness and Nina Felshin’s definition of “activist art.” Art as a form of social commentary has existed since Greek civilization. Since that time, the arts have been employed as tools for shedding light on social injustice and the human condition. Historically, this type of art has existed in both museum and gallery settings, as well as in the public domain. However, before the 1960s in the United States, much of the social and political commentary artwork was almost exclusively in museums and galleries. The conceptual and earth art movements of the 1960s moved art out of museums and into the streets and land. The act of moving art from high art world venues into the “real” world impacted the political art movement of the 1970s and laid the foundation for the ecological art movement. The feminist art movement from this period turned “the personal is political” into visual images that broke the silence around issues facing women and fueled the fires of political art in general. The 1980s ushered in the ecological and activist art movements.
These movements represented a major paradigm shift from the Modernist social disconnection and alienation of the artist to a connection between the artist and community (Gablik, 1991). They offered a new possibility for art and the artist—a supportive and collaborative effort between artist and society which was thought to ultimately lead to social change (Becker, 1994). The ecological art movement inextricably links art to the context within which it is created—the community and environment. The ecological aesthetic redirects the focus onto issues of context and social responsibility, as does the aesthetic of the activist art movement.
Activist art has three guiding characteristics. It must have political content, it must be created or displayed in public, and it must create some interchange or interaction with the public (Felshin, 1995). In this case, the role of art is based on interaction, is context-dependent, and is anti-hegemonic in that it allows for a broader definition of who may be an artist and what constitutes art.
The Artnauts collective has employed elements of each of the aforementioned paradigms. The group has projected images on the sides of buildings to draw attention to global warming and created collaborative exchanges between artists across national divides. The collective has exhibited works in museum and gallery spaces ranging from the National Museum of Chile to the XYZ Gallery in Beijing and, recently, at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (2018), which was the first time Americans have shown work there. These are just a few examples of a collective working within the “art as action” paradigm.
This contemporary art collective has been informed by a long tradition of thought, material practice and action about art and social/political/ecological change. To date, the collective has exhibited in venues throughout the world and within the United States. Please see the attached chronology of exhibitions for a complete list and go to our website for additional information. (www.artnauts.org)
Bibliography:
Becker, C. (1994). The subversive imagination: Artists, society, & social responsibility.
New York: Routledge.
Felshin, N. (Ed.) (1995). But is it art?: The spirit of art as activism. Seattle: Bay Press.
Freire, P. (1970, 1993). Pedagogoy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Gablik, S. (1991). The reenchantment of art. New York: Thames and Hudson.