what does it mean to be an artist?

what does it mean to be an artist? do we value gallery artists, people who are instagram famous from their reels, or 'crypto bros' with haphazardly pulled together digital art that reeks of desperation to profit? are craftspeople artists, or are they simply reduced to being ‘craftspeople’? can we come to a common ground as a culture of what we expect from artists in the digital age? the definition of art is as contested as any political debate, border dispute, or cultural battle. 

to each their own, it is not my task to impose my definition onto others, but i do want to share my take on the matter.

personally, i would consider myself an anti-artist. galleries, consumerism, the art market, and crypto art exhaust me and seem frivolous signals of wealth and power—i believe art has to counter these institutions, without being absorbed by them. these profit- and power-seeking entities do not serve the shamanic or spiritual function of art, therefore they fail to engage me. they do not address cultural issues, and only perpetuate them. when these mediums do address issues, they are subsumed into toxic institutions, and their messaging is hijacked so people in power can appear empathic, sensible, and caring. we live in a society where the people who are teaching us to ’see’, are usually the ones lying to us. 

one of my favorite definitions of the word ‘artist' has been given by alexis l. boylin in her 2020 book, visual culture. she notes that, "the role of the artist, and indeed of all of us, is not to create ‘originals' of anything but to move data.” i like this definition because she is able to disturb the hierarchy and gatekeeping around the term artist, while defining it clearly. she is also able to challenge the sense of proprietary ownership people want to feel around art, and redefines an artist as someone who shares, reworks, and regenerates.

this definition isn’t a new one. in fact, in the 1990’s donna harraway, in her book simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature says, “by disseminating the work online as information, the artist creates neither a replica of the ancient work nor something original. instead she activates the dispersal of information, visual objects, and data that cannot be contained in their distribution or their meanings.” harraway describes the artist as ’trickster’, ‘cyborg’, and ‘hacker’—someone who can attend to the work of subscription, and inscription.

in her 1995 book, rhetorical spaces: essays on gendered locations, lorraine code says the artists work is to “remap the epistemic terrain.” she notes how the work of the artist is “subversive, anarchistic, in challenging and seeking to displace some of the most sacred principles of standard anglo-american epistemologies.” 

kate elchor, in her 2019 book the turn in archival feminism: outrage in order, says the artist’s task is to “recode communication and intelligence so previously unimaginable identities… that resist the prevailing binary code can become visible.” 

gathering these definitions, i would like to define the artist in a similar vein. the artist is not just someone who is a flaneur for vanity or an advocate for ’things that look good’—artists dig beneath the surface, they unsettle, they remap, they reorganize, they decontextualize the narrative.

in conclusion: artists cannot be separated from the anthropological root as shamans and healers. they do not enforce colloquial notions of beauty, but they redefine them—their performance is grotesque to those in power who claim their art is ’the art’. the artist is chaotic, tricky, subversive, and cannot be captured by the institution. the artist carnivalizes and inverts hierarchy, leading to the anarchic unraveling of the institution. the artist cannot be possessed, and undoes the proprietary logics of anglo-american epistemologies. 

do i believe this genre of subversive artist is superior to the artists at galleries, on instagram reels, or on crypto art forums? no. i still believe the work of all self-proclaimed artists is valuable—particularly those who are refining techniques and reworking image to produce something new. do i think that these subversive artists serve a crucial function in our social body that these other self-proclaimed artists fail to serve? definitely. self-proclaimed artists are rarely migratory, they are usually confined to techniques by institutions, and are poor embodiments of artistic freedom—so how could they help us travel into the beyond?

to close i’d like to share a quote from terrance mckenna:

"the artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while rome burns. because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found."