Art in a Year of Unrest with Monyee Chau, Steven Miller and Teddy Phillips

Crosscut Talks

Three Seattle artists discuss disruption, unrest and the pain — and healing — that comes from making art.

All art, whether searingly relevant or seemingly superficial, has a kind of political weight to it. Murals, photography, printmaking and performance can help shape our perception of reality, challenging certain ways of living and thinking, and giving power to others.

In the past year, in particular, it's been hard to view any work of art as divorced from the hugely disruptive events that we've been living through and the politics of inequity that underline each one of them.

Listening to the artists who appear on this week's episode of Crosscut Talks — Monyee Chau, Steven Miller and Teddy Phillips — it's clear that rather than existing in a separate realm, art is intrinsically affected by political and social change, and vice versa.

In this conversation, led by Crosscut arts and culture editor Brangien Davis, three Seattle artists talk about the particular political challenges they address in their work, as well as the impact their artmaking has had on them as individuals: how it has helped them cope and connect, as well as the pressures they've felt and the limits they've hit.

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Links

A Seattle engineer’s inner artist blooms for Black Lives Matter (feat. Teddy Phillips) - Crosscut, August 7, 2020

Seattle artist fights anti-Asian racism in the Chinatown-International District (feat. Monyee Chau) - Crosscut, May 13, 2020

Seattle photographers trade Zoom calls for a zoom lens (feat. Steven Miller) - Crosscut, April 20, 2020

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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph