UC San Diego

Artists in Residence explores a number of contemporary socially engaged art projects in cities across the United States, and looks at issues related to race, urban transformation and aesthetic theory. I focus on long-term, site-specific, collaborative projects in which artists have attempted to create social change in economically disadvantaged and racially segregated neighborhoods through a variety of aesthetic forms, including home renovations, participatory design, online mapping, and the organization of cultural spaces for people of color. What these various practices share in common is an interest in working in a specific site over a long period of time to respond to social inequalities, and to instigate changes that will benefit existing members of a community or neighborhood through forms of cultural production or cultural organizing. These practices demonstrate that alongside twentieth century modernism and its emphasis on individual creativity and genius, there has been an alternate current focused on the social production of art. This is not a study of what is typically understood by the term ‘artist residency,’ although residencies are featured in many of the projects in question. Instead, I am interested in the broader implications of what it means to be an artist in residence—why artists choose to reside in particular neighborhoods, how they interact with the communities that exist there, and what they contribute over extended periods of time. Artists who live in low-income neighborhoods have often been portrayed as gentrifiers, and many studies have demonstrated that their arrival in a particular place signifies imminent redevelopment. I draw from that body of research here, and demonstrate how art has contributed to an increasing rate of gentrification and displacement in the past several decades. However, I also look at how artists have attempted to transform neighborhoods in a manner that benefits residents, rather than contributing to displacement, and examine how their work challenges conventional understandings of art, its producers and its audiences. Artists in Residence explores how socially engaged art engages in reparative practices, by breaking with traditions associated with the critical distance and autonomy of the avant-garde, by engaging with existing civic structures and institutions, and by building houses, cultural spaces and social movements.