Radical Empathy

EJ Hill, *Regalia (line drawing)*, 2020. Brass ball chain, brass furniture pin, brass tubing on draped velvet, 48.5 x 33 inches

Art in our political present can be read as a call to arms, gesturing to what the late curator Okwui Enwezor considered “a change agenda.” Compound proposes that a cultural space for the community is a place in which “to act,” educate, and illuminate artistic ideas and ideals particularly at such a critical cultural moment.

Glenn Kaino, Spontaneous Combustion, 2017, cotton flags, tarring solution, time
41 x 68 inches

Artists featured at Compound are invested in both poetics and politics. They attend to the intersection of aesthetics and politics and often identify as both artists and activists. They use their artistic endeavors and languages to promote cultural change.

Leslie Hewitt, Untitled (The Sun Rose and The World Became Radiant), 2019, digital chromogenic print on custom elm frame, 52 ⅜ x 62 3/16 inches

Mildred Howard, You Are Welcome Here, 2020, found glass bottle, wood, glue, 17.5 x 28.5 x 18 ⅞ inches

Some extend their work to the belief in art’s capacity to heal, to transform our mode of thinking, our base of knowledge and to bear the potential to transform the world through the lens of beauty or radicality. The work featured stems from a humanist desire that acceptance and understanding can lead to an empathetic approach to equality.

Potent, expressive and motivating, this work promotes kinship and hope. Artists instigate and inspire communication, community, and change. This body of work visualizes aspects of our political reality and our desire for a salient future.

Rodney McMillian, Nebula; violet into green, 2017, latex, ink, acrylic on bedsheet, 92 x 89 inches

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