Try to hold on
To this heart alive
Try to hold on
To this love aloud
Try to hold on
And we are still alive
Try to hold on
And we have survived
Try to hold on
– Smashing Pumpkins (Try, Try, Try)
Zak comes from Guinea. He is one of the many refugees who made the perilous journey to Europe by boat. He stays at the center where I do voluntary work—teaching Italian to refugees. Zak is known in the center as “Rasta” because of his Bob Marley-like hair. I want you to call me Zak, he said the first time we met. No one outside his intimate circle is allowed to call him Rasta. I found out through one of the workers who manages the center that Zak loves to draw and paint, so one day I decided to bring a book of Picasso’s paintings to show to him. “Art,” Tolstoy said, “is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings.”
“Zak, I want to show you something,” I said. He stared at me while I unzipped my backpack and pulled out Picasso. He held the book with a mixture of anxiety and curiosity, staring at the colorful cover (a cubist portrait of Marie-Thérèse) above which is printed the ominous name of the artist.
“Pi…cas…so,” he muttered feebly as though trying to figure out the taste of each syllable.
“Have you heard of that name before?” I asked.
“No,” he exclaimed.
“He is Spanish,” I said.
“Ah!” he cracked in genuine surprise as though Picasso’s nationality was a scandalous fact. He opened the book and attempted to read the biographical introduction written in Italian. He read out loud, stumbling here and there, all the while glancing at me for corrections. Zak has a solid, round voice, he speaks with a jazzy intonation reminiscent of the great singer Nat King Cole.
When Zak had had enough of reading he shuffled the pages like a deck of cards and randomly picked a page to examine a picture. The first picture he stumbled upon was the cubist portrait of Dora Maar. He mused at the distorted face and said something not many people have the courage to say of Picasso.
“This poor art,” he said in a deep voice, his face hard and penetrating as an African mask.
I nodded, amazed at his boldness to speak his mind. This was the first time Zak was seeing the works of Picasso. I turned the page to the picture of Guernica, one of my favorite Picasso paintings.
He was silent for a while and let his gaze penetrate the horrifying image of a massacre.
“He using many African symbols here,” he remarked in a serious tone.
I felt he recognized in the picture the agony of his voyage to Europe. The lightning speed with which he discovers an experience in the image is truly admirable.
Zak flipped the pages, stopped at the portrait of Olga Khokhlova, the Russian ballet dancer with whom Picasso fell deeply in love and eventually abandoned.
“This one I like,” he said.
Indeed it was a beautiful painting of Olga in 1917 wearing an elegant black dress; a concealed suffering is stamped on her beautiful unsmiling face.
“Now this is nice,” Zak declared, his face beamed with satisfaction as he mused at the painting Parade which depicts a circus group of acrobats, harlequins, dancers and musicians feasting after a successful performance. Perhaps the characters in the picture reflect his jovial, out-going personality.
He closed the book and handed it over to me with a mysterious and puzzled smile on his lips. I wanted to search deeper into that expression.
“What do you think of Picasso?” I asked, fixing my eye on Zak’s face, intensely paying attention to what he was about to say.
“Picasso tried… he tried,” Zak said, glancing into the distance.
I have never heard of a more appropriate, more honest, and more hopeful criticism or tribute to art and artist than those last two words. An appreciation and identification alike in a most personal and direct way without resorting to any art theories or literary dogmas.
I recall this story because it offers a clue to understanding what art and activism stand for. As art is being pushed into the nihilistic commercial function of entertainment, as activism is being confronted more and more by the violence of power politics, to reclaim the necessity of art in terms of activism and activism by art, how they are inseparably intertwined, is one of the most important tasks of artists and social movements seeking human significance in the present chaos.
To make a vital link between two separate domains let us begin with the verb: try. Behind all (great) works of art lies the act of trying. This act is essentially creative. In a world where destruction is both the consequence and strategy of the dominant political, economic, and cultural system (represented either by Donald Trump or ISIS or multinational corporations or the culture of consumerism all inextricably linked) a work of art or an artist at work and a social movement becomes the very antithesis of this destruction. They are a testament to the human spirit’s refusal to be destroyed. Although they are not immune to setbacks and disappointments they are nevertheless undiminished by them. The constant trying to imagine, to transform, to love, to fight is the human spirit’s sole nourishment.
What art and activism do is they try to save reality which is mercilessly being torn apart by political, economic, and cultural forces. One only has to turn the TV on to FOX news or CNN or any corporate media to see the damage done; or, as in my case, to visit an overcrowded refugee center. Corporate media tends to falsify the reality of life. Art recreates reality thus adding a new meaning to life. Power politics degrades life by establishing a global monoculture based on profit-making at the expense of communities and the natural environment. Activism in the form of grassroots movements reinforces the worthwhileness and diversity of life. Through art and activism, something of human dignity is saved from total destruction.
In her poem entitled, Poem, the courageous American poet Muriel Rukeyser—herself both a poet and an activist—captures the meaning of art today and the intimate enterprise of activism:
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
The separate domains of art and activism collide and interact in a way Rukeyser stressed in her poem. To come to terms with reality in a most imaginative and intimate way is the predominant concern of both art and activism. They offer a ground for enduring, for mustering possibilities to begin with, to not surrender to reality as given. The implicit and explicit collaboration between artists and grassroots movements can only be emphasized in terms of struggle. Artistic activity and social activism are both representative of human imagination, labor, and perseverance. The distortion, inadequacy, and injustices of the present are in a way the point of departure of art and activism. The efforts of an artist and a social movement are connected by the recognition that something must be transformed, something must change. Art doesn’t exist for its own benefit alone; embedded in its core is the aspiration of mankind to freedom, truth, and togetherness. Social movements, on the other hand, are empowered by art; their struggle is given a profound expression that transcends the restrictions of geography, nationality, economics, and politics. In the end, the cardinal aim of art and activism is, in the words of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney, “to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual work into the larger work of the community as a whole.”
We should all longingly wish that what Zak said of Picasso posterity could say the same thing to the present generation of artists, activists, and anyone who works for a more just world: that they, we, tried.
