i think about this a lot and i try to implement it in my art (w/ varying degrees of success) but i want to more consciously move away from creating images of suffering

i should add here that im talking about art made on public and collective subjects of suffering and not personal, private ones.

depictions of for eg the crying woman, the abused woman, even those that do so in a metaphoric or indirect way, still crystallize that horror and

force the viewer to look at it. unlike film or text where there's a possibility of resolution or catharsis, paintings/drawings tend to remain fixed in that moment of horror and make the viewer stay there with them.

i understand the intention behind such art. it is made for

awareness raising, or – the more ambitious and elusive – conscience raising. "if only people could see how truly awful the suffering was they would be moved to bring about change"

ive become increasingly convinced that its a noble but misguided goal. art doesn't have the

kind of power to influence change we sometimes naively, idealistically want to believe it does. if it did every millioinaire who saw parasite wouldve donated their wealth. but instead we saw elon musk and chrissy teigen and obama types tweet about how brilliant it was and

then they carried on with their lives. even everyday liberals didnt experience a palpable ideological left-shift despite bong joon ho repeatedly saying that his movie was about capitalism. so many of his movies, blockbuster and critically acclaimed movies, are about capitalism.

how many capitalists were moved to change by them? im not expressing disappointment but stating an observation.

people process the art they consume through the lens they already have. it has the capacity to nudge and tug, maybe poke a small hole through which ideas can slowly

trickle in, but by and large art is not an effective instrument through which to convert. i think parasite even with how brilliant and moving it was, was not made with the intention to convert.

which brings me back to drawings about suffering. they dont do what we hope.

the people who commit horrifying acts of violence and the people who enable them are not moved to change. and instead the viewers who are already sympathetic or the viewers who victims and survivors themselves of the suffering supposedly being rallied against, those people are

further traumatized. what is the purpose of showing them a trauma that they are already all too familiar with? a trauma they want to escape?
images of suffering are *about* them but not *for* them.

i make a lot of low-effort, inconsequential drawings mostly from movie

stills but i also make intentioned and purposeful stuff and this train of thought has been about the latter.
i want to make art that helps in imagining, in healing, that reaffirms the people its about and maybe brings them joy.

this has been a short manifesto of sorts for myself mostly because i read something today that prompted me to think about all this again but also because im really not looking forward to the trauma infused drawings about domestic violence that i might see in the coming days.