How Art Shapes Our Politics: Creating What is Possible

In my experience, art has always been one of the most supportive responses to conflict, fear, and overwhelm.

Whether it’s doodling during a terrible work meeting, listening to music as a way of regulating my system ​up or down​, reading a piece of beautiful poetry, or sketching a vision of something I don’t quite have a grasp on, art has always had a tendency to open me up and give me words or imagery for what might be.

And this isn’t only a personal experience – art has this effect on our collective politics and imagination as well.

In his 2024 book The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

“Politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics.”

Art creates the possible of politics.

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On an individual level, take a moment and think about the ways in which art has shaped your politics and worldview. Consider the songs or pieces of visual art that have opened you up and made new ideas recognizable in your life.

(For me, I think of musicians like Dead Prez and Jamila Woods and artist-activist Sarah Corbett of the ​Craftivist Collective​. Each of these people create art in a way that has expanded how I think and participate in my communities.)

And on a societal level, we have plenty of examples as well:

Emory Douglas’s Black Panther imagery mirrored and emboldened a sense of strength and determination in the 60s-70s. Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ gave visual language for the horrors of war and violence. And the music of movements – from ‘We Shall Overcome’ and the sounds of Pete Seeger and Billie Holliday to Public Enemy, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ – has giving voice to the demands of protesters, organizers, and entire communities.

Art creates the possible of politics because it gives words, imagery, and music to what might be – inviting us to think, act, and feel in new ways.

And so this week, I invite you to do two things:

1. To pay attention to the art in your life: how is it shaping you? How is it coloring your experience of the world?

2. Engage art in your activism in a way that feels true to you and your current capacity. Here are some ideas:

• If you feel stuck in inaction or disconnected: Play a song that reminds you why you care or invokes bravery in you; share it with just one person and tell them what it means to you.

• If you feel ready to create: Make something! Draw, sketch, paint, crochet, or knit a political message you stand behind and share it publicly.

• If you want to focus local: Support an artist in your community. Buy their work, share it, tell people why it matters.

• If you’re ready to withdraw support from corporations propping up the Trump Administration: Join the boycotts against Spotify and Target, companies that profit from artists while funding policies that harm the communities those artists come from and fight for.

Notice how engaging more with the art in your life supports the ways in which you’re navigating this moment.