When I say “freedom,” I don’t mean it the way it’s often used in America: I can buy whatever I want, drive wherever I want, get people to do things for me.

 

That’s not freedom, that’s power.

 

Freedom is not merely different from power, it often contradicts it.

Freedom means I can think and create for myself. My mind and choices are my own. I can question how things are seen, and see them differently. I can imagine possible futures and build toward them.

 

True freedom scares most people, with good reason. To be untethered can feel like falling. It demands a comfort with uncertainty, with not knowing.

 

Artists practice uncertainty, often so instinctively and for so long that we take it for granted, forgetting how rare and vital it is.

 

And we model it for others. Artists offer those around us living proof that you can move toward freedom, you can seek what is essential rather than what is safe or convenient.

A dear artist friend who lived through authoritarian rule in her home country told me this recently:

 

 

I think of artist studios as spaces of freedom: The consensus agreements and rules are suspended, and other agreements can be proposed, explored, remembered.

Art making is not decorative. It is not a luxury.

 

There are things your artistic practice reveals that won't be brought to life any other way. There are ways artistic practice alchemizes and digests the world that are particular and, I believe, essential in moments of conflict and crisis.

 

Culture is how people have always made sense of the world, how we quite literally survive.

 

In the clash between the opportunistic, frantic purveyors of hate and those who practice freedom, I stand with—and more importantly I have faith in—practitioners working slowly, working at the root.

 

This is what I am thinking of today. Rather than setting aside artistic practice because other urgencies are at the forefront, I wonder how we might bring artistic practice to those urgencies, and vice versa.

 

I wonder if our next steps might go through our practices of freedom, rather than away from them.