How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time | ARTnews

How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time | ARTnews



"Certainly, the notion of participatory art is not new. The Surrealists were staging hands-on events in Paris almost a century ago. In the 1950s and ’60s, figures like Allan Kaprow and members of Fluxus were turning collective actions into art. The ’70s provided all manner of boundary-blurring social projects: from Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago’s Womanhouse in Los Angeles—which was part art installation, part educational facility, part performance space—to Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s pieces involving workers at the New York City Department of Sanitation. (She remains an artist in residence there to this day.) All of these traditions, and many others, have made their way into social practice, a stream of participatory art that tends to display a strong sociological and political bent, often in an effort to draw attention to social ills and conditions. Sometimes, these projects are meant to incite empowerment or change in a community."