We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law

by Yxta Maya Murray

We Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on woman-of-color and queer-of-color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct action "artivism" draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the Civil Rights and feminist movements, and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change. Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of five contemporary artivists (Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiñiga, Imani Jacqueline Brown, and the Drawn Together collective), combining new oral histories with sharp analyses of how their diverse and expansive artistic practices bear important aesthetic and politicolegal meanings that address a wide range of injustices.

246 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 2024

About the author

Yxta Maya Murray is a professor at Loyola Law School.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first glance, the three disciplines referenced in the title seem like vastly different concepts. But the reader with an interest in any one of them will get the connection within a few pages: Art, activism, and law have full potential to inform each other deeply, and do—particularly in the work of woman of color and queer of color artist/activists, or artivists, as Murray terms them. Murray, a Latinx art critic and law professor, tells the story of these artivists and their work with insight, affection, and an eye for interconnections and influence. There is something here for anyone with an interest in art, power, change, and hope, and much to be learned. As Murray writes, “artivism ‘works’ as an agent of legal change in the same way that social movements have always done: by pushing at the law, disagreeing with it, challenging it, breaking it, and thus transforming it.”

I interviewed Murray about the book for Bloom, here: https://bloomsite.wordpress.com/2024/.... If this sounds like your kind of thing, then it probably is—smart stuff, with a strong sense of how art connects to the world if you pay attention.