Exhibitions as Activism: How Contemporary Art Confronts Social Realities

In summer 2023, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston launched To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood, showcasing childhood as a contested site of power. One standout work, Guadalupe Maravilla’s Disease Thrower #6 (2022), combined sculpture and performance, drawing from his experience as an undocumented Salvadoran child fleeing conflict. The piece featured gongs and healing ritual objects, invoking trauma while facilitating collective healing through sound therapy sessions.

This exhibition reflects a trend where artists and curators engage directly with pressing issues. Museums are evolving from spaces of escapism to sites of confrontation, addressing societal currents like climate change and racial inequality. These topics are now explicit subjects of art.

In 2021, the Brooklyn Museum staged The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time, examining the aftermath of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. The exhibition featured over forty artists, including Simone Leigh's Brick House (2019), a 16-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a Black female figure merging African architecture and vernacular traditions. The curatorial framing emphasized resilience as a communal trait, countering neoliberal narratives.

"Art has always engaged with social issues," says Dr. Sarah Lewis, professor of art history at Harvard University. "What we're witnessing now is a shift in how institutions embrace that engagement—not as an ancillary focus but as central to their missions." Lewis highlights a growing willingness among curators to prioritize advocacy over neutrality.

The climate crisis has spurred exhibitions favoring directness. The Barbican Centre’s Our Time on Earth (2022) aimed to provoke action. Featuring immersive installations by artists like Marshmallow Laser Feast and Es Devlin, the exhibition sought to collapse the gap between viewer and subject. Devlin’s Come Home Again (2022), a scale model of endangered animals projected onto London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, served as a petition for local conservation efforts.

The question of complicity remains unavoidable. Institutions hosting exhibitions on climate change or post-colonial restitution often critique the very structures they embody. The Whitney Museum’s no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria (2022) highlighted works like Sofía Gallisá Muriente’s Lluvia con nieve (2018), a meditation on colonial neglect after natural disasters. Critics noted the Whitney’s ties to extractive industries, raising ethical questions about institutional sponsorship.

Smaller, grassroots spaces often sidestep these contradictions by centering community involvement. Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center’s Ground Floor Biennial consistently foregrounds artists addressing local issues. The 2023 iteration featured works on police violence, gentrification, and environmental justice in the South Side. Artist Amanda Williams, known for her color-intervention projects, presented new works exploring redlining and its ongoing economic effects.

These socially engaged exhibitions reject tidy resolutions. They leave visitors with unresolved questions or actionable provocations. This aligns with a larger movement in contemporary art, rejecting the notion that art’s purpose is to provide answers. As curator Hans Ulrich Obrist noted, "The role of exhibitions today is not to dictate but to facilitate—a space where complexities can breathe."

Still, skepticism persists. Critics argue that art’s focus on activism risks reducing it to didacticism. Others question the limits of impact. Can an exhibition about sea level rise influence policy? Does artwork about migration tangibly assist refugees? These concerns are significant. As artist Tania Bruguera stated, “Art alone cannot change the world, but it can change the people who shape the world.”

Bruguera’s point underscores the stakes of these exhibitions. They are not isolated cultural moments but nodes in a larger network of activism, scholarship, and policy. When framed effectively, they can alter public discourse, amplify marginalized voices, and challenge dominant narratives—however incrementally.

As To Begin Again closed in early October 2023, its final public program—a youth-led panel on education equity—filled the ICA Boston’s auditorium. The exhibition’s success will not be measured by attendance alone but by the ongoing conversations it sparked. In this way, socially engaged exhibitions do not merely reflect the world; they intervene in its making.