mario_gooden_thisishowwework is an Instagram project that began following a conversation between @lornasimpson, @robincostelewis, @therealmitchmcewen, #imaniday, and myself in December 2016 on the heels of the presidential election. @robincostelewis reminded us of Toni Morrison’s essay “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear” in which she states “In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent… This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
The project is simultaneously a contemporary cultural survey, a contemporary art survey, and an ongoing set of encounters intended to ignite discussion and action. Although initially a reaction to the current political climate, the encounters now reveal the latent fact of the global conservative backlash in democratic societies from the United Kingdom, to the United States, to Italy, to Brazil… but also: that work by people of color and of differing sexual identities, by women and the economically oppressed, is more than just a temporary artistic renaissance. We are the culture.
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