Art is a tool many artists use to convey political messages. Nina Chanel Abney uses this in her artwork. Abney does not plan out her pieces. Instead, she starts out with a single element. In one of her works it was a car. Afterwards, she begins to build up from there, layering stencils over each other. Abney will also add a few painterly elements. Abney’s work is made up of strong blocks of color and feature people of different races. Many of the figures are often ambiguous. She mixes both races and genders. In one of her paintings there is a woman with a mustache. There are recurring characters as well, such as symbols, birds, plants and more. Another artist who uses art to convey a political message is Thomas Hirschhorn. Hirschhorn creates collages out of images of fashion models from magazines and dead bodies. The fashion models are pixelated. He then covers the collages with a cellophane cover. He does this in order to prevent borders from covering his work. This also gives his pieces a reflective quality. He will also enlarge a couple of his pixel-collage works.
Nina Chanel Abney uses her work to raise her voice against police police brutality, to support the black lives matter movement, and to raise awareness about the state of our environment. Because the figures in her work are ambiguous, this allows the viewer to relate better and it becomes more political. Her pieces are minimal and very abstract, but fully representative. Thomas Hirschhorn uses a method called reverse censorship. Pixels are meant to hide. We are told that pixels protect us, but instead, they cover up the truth. Hirschhorn utilizes images that already exist. The models are from fashion magazines and he uses them as an aesthetic device. The dead bodies are googled images and many are from an unknown source. The locations of the dead bodies are a mystery to the viewer. His use of reverse censorship questions authority and authenticity. His aim is to de-pixelate the world in order to uncover truths. Unlike Nina Chanel Abney, Thomas Hirschhorn does not represent specific groups of people.
