ARTivism: A Call to the Fire
When creativity becomes the fiercest form of resistance.
I was speaking with my friend the other day. Bone Weaver I call her now. She’s an artist... bold, unapologetic... whose work had neighbors complaining, cops circling, government officials threatening her to tear it down before October 1st. Why? Because Christmas lights have to go up.
I reflected with her on wounds of rejection, on the cost of standing in truth, on the fire that rises when the world says “No” to your soul’s “Yes.” And then a word bubbled up from my own bones:
ARTivist.
Yes. She is an ARTivist... rattling fears, shaking cages, pulling humanity into awareness of what we’d rather not see.
And here’s my truth about it: we need ARTivists now more than ever.
Nothing limits art but the edges of our imagination. Art cannot be silenced. Art will slip past the gates of power, seep under locked doors, spray itself across walls, tattoo itself onto bodies, scream through silence. Art starves, fasts, dances, wails. Art bleeds truth and stitches wounds all at once.
Think about it: there have been artists who have starved themselves as an exhibit. Artists who remained silent for weeks as a piece of living art. Artists like Banksy, like Marina Abramović, like Rebecca White... each in their own way demanding we see ourselves, our systems, our shadows.
Here’s the thing, ARTivism doesn’t belong only to the galleries or the famous. It belongs to us. To me. To you.
Some of us are called through song.
Some through dance.
Through paint. Through words. Through the raw choreography of a body that refuses to be caged.
Pick your artistry... and bring it forth.
Because I believe this with every cell of me: love and art are the only things that can save us from ourselves.
To wield creativity as activism is to take a stand for peace, for justice, for unity. To pick up a pen and spill a story so true it cracks hearts open in an instant. To step onto a stage, a street corner, a subway, and shake the air with beauty and defiance.
This is where our power lies: in the alchemy of turning life force into creation, into truth spells, into something so alive it refuses to be ignored.
The world does not need another algorithm that frays our nervous systems or another invention that numbs our imagination.
The world needs art.
On the streets. On the walls. In the classrooms. In the prisons. In the temples and museums and living rooms.
Humanity must speak. Humanity must make.
Because the paintbrush and the clay, the pen and the song... these have more power to keep us alive than guns and grenades ever will.
So, for the life of you...
for that fire that burns in the dead center of your chest...
Create.
Make art.
Sing your song.
Speak your poetry.
Start your movement.
Wield your hands, your voice, your body as the raw canvas of activism.
Create the world you ache to live in. And trust... stroke by stroke, note by note, breath by breath... we will weave a new earth together.
Into the Bones,
Marianna
Artivista forever!!! 🌊