On “protest art”

Protest art always ends up being trendy precisely because the art necessarily struggles to be accepted by the very people the art should oppose. Ultimately, protest artists are, by definition, more interested in relating to the enemy than relating to the potential insurgents. This is why we have protest artists whose cutting edge work is rejected by neighborhood people

That’s Kalamu ya Salaam in his 1994 essay “I DO NOT PROTEST, I RESIST.”

So true.

Also see this quote from Mira Schor.