Provocative Art Quotes

“Trying to be offensive for the sole purpose of being offensive should always deem one the least offensive of offenders.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“My honors thesis project was my first interactive exhibit, in which two facing chairs were activated by a motion sensor when the viewer walked by. One was a cofortable armchair of plush red velvet, with a dildo sticking out of a hole in the seat. When activated, the dildo moved up and down and a strobe light pulsed. The facing chair was hard and uncomfortable, with spikes protruding from the seat, and when the viewer walked by it a dog would bark. The juxtaposition of the two chairs was meant to represent how forces of repression censor the desire for liberation.

In that same exhibition, I showed a handmade box in the shape of a cross, decorated with a beautiful painting of the Holy Trinity. The viewer was encouraged to open the box, where they would find a dildo wrapped in the American flag and nailed to a cross-- this was meant to symbolize the hypocrisy and repression that is hidden under the attractive facade of organized religion. The dildo was surrounded by pages from the Bible, which were themselves surrounded by images of the sickness and starvation caused by the embargo in Iraq, a comment on the effects of imposing one culture and religion on another.”
― Wafaa Bilal, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun

“The boar held a VCR reote control and cackled maliciously as he watched a video of U.S. politicians grinning with their one-time budy Saddam--Dick Cheney, Gulf War-era Secretary of State James Baker, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, to the tune of "Taking Care of Business." And then the viewers saw themselves in a mirror emblazoned with the words "You are a witness.”
― Wafaa Bilal, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun

“I'll never know what possessed my mother to steal my father's lions that night.”
― Laura Shepard Townsend, The Gypsy's Song

“Art has the ability to change minds. Passion is what changes the world. When both collide, it's as powerful as a bomb. Art isn't pretty and poised fluff. Art is brutal and snarling. Artists growl. This is the roar of change that beats within them. - 8/29/11”
― A.H. Scott

“Provocative art can pierce your nervous system, touching arts of you that rhetoric cannot. A charged, layered object can haunt viewers for days, as their unconscious works to unpack it. Art instigates, nudges the conversation along, and ultimately advances civilization.”
― Kate Kretz, Art from Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice