Exploring the Foundations of Resistance in Our Imaginations
**Radical Art and the Power of Imagination in a Shifting World**
In the creative world, radicality often emerges not through aggression or force, but through the subtle disruption of the familiar. This year, the artworks of visionary artists like Joyce Kozloff, Elizabeth Catlett, and Ai Weiwei remind us that the root of radicalism lies in the capacity to challenge deeply entrenched norms and to reimagine the world anew—layer by layer, line by line, stroke by stroke.
### Art as Reflection and Resistance
Art has long been a vehicle for expressing discontent, resistance, and the desire for change. These desires reverberate even within the origins of the United States. As Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief of *Hyperallergic*, keenly observes, “…radicalism is in the soul of the United States, for better or worse. It is a flailing energy that lashes out periodically to till the soil and plant new seeds.” In artistic spaces or the ballot box, this radical energy often takes the form of symbolic expressions, seeking to reclaim agency.
Artists, in that sense, birth new worlds through their deeply-rooted understandings of social and political structures, challenging an audience to see what they would otherwise overlook. This is especially true when we consider Kozloff’s work at the heart of the discussion.
### Joyce Kozloff: A Spiral of Beliefs
The curious vibrancy of Kozloff’s work oscillates between beauty and chaos. Her earlier piece, *Collateral Damage*, reveals geographies that reflect our fragmented geopolitical reality. Through shape, color, and form, the work evokes a world where borders, often monuments to political ideologies, are vulnerable to external pressures that swirl beyond control.
In *Targets* (2000), now displayed at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Kozloff’s nine-foot-tall sculpture confronts viewers to bear witness to the atrocities of American militarism and violent imperialism. By rendering global bombing sites and other strategic locations within a large spherical sculpture, Kozloff plunges her audience into the spatial and moral quagmire of international interventionism. Upside-down maps and misplaced coordinates disorient visitors, much like the violence they depict. Art, here, reclaims agency, healing viewers while implicating them.
### Home as Radical Sanctuary: Mary Nohl’s Rebel Vision
While galleries validate and institutionalize art, some of the most radical creative acts occur quietly within the home. In Milwaukee, the house of “witch” artist Mary Nohl remains a beacon of personal rebellion. Her story echoes across the walls, where Nohl refused to succumb to a society that either overlooked or dismissed her—as is often the case for women who dare to deviate from societal norms.
Her defiance against mundanity transformed her lakeside home into a vibrant haven of sculptures, paintings, and installations. Every nook and cranny is a testament to her autonomy. It is a severe yet beautiful departure from domestic roles traditionally ascribed to women: a fierce yet subtle reappropriation of everyday space here rendered extraordinary. For visitors, Nohl’s art and home offer a personal invitation to imagine alternate uses of the spaces we inhabit.
### Elizabeth Catlett: Radicality from the Inside Out
Elizabeth Catlett’s seminal work at the Brooklyn Museum breathes through a similar radical lens. In her iconic cedar wood sculpture, *Political Prisoner* (1971), Catlett transforms the human body—specifically, the image of scholar Angela Davis—into a stunning metaphor for defiance. The torso of the restrained figure opens like a vessel of untapped potential, bearing the colors of pan-Africanism and echoing a visceral form of empowerment through suffering.
Catlett’s approach emphasizes interiority, communicating that change must emerge from within, even amidst the external constraints society imposes. Her works are rooted in transhistorical and transnational cultures, especially those of African Americans and Mexicans, showcasing the intertwined struggles and resistances shared across borders.
Although most institutions failed to recognize her worth during her lifetime, Catlett proceeded independently, much like Nohl, creating outside prescribed systems. Today, as her work becomes more widely celebrated, institutions scramble to include her in their historical canons, reflecting how her once marginal “radical” messages have influenced contemporary art discourse.
### Ai Weiwei: Reinterpreting Radicality
Across the globe, another artist familiar with the tension between control and resistance continues to push boundaries in creative and symbolic ways. At his solo exhibition at Faurschou Foundation in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei interrogates structures of power and their vulnerabilities.
In his namesake piece, *What You See Is What You See* (2024), Ai renders one of Frank Stella’s protractor paintings in toy bricks—Lego and Lepin—injecting a playfulness into what feels serious. Ai’s version hints at both the colors of the Palestinian