An other example of setting  priorities for one’s art projects.

Yesterday I met with Abriel at the studio, for the first time since I left for France, 5 weeks ago. We agreed that her work was developing in the direction  she wanted and that she is comfortable trying new techniques and materials on her own. We predicted that this would be a successful piece! Yet, in my experience, I told her, it is always the next piece which is the real test. She will know so much more for having gone through the process, that she may start asking herself questions for which the answers will come only as she advances. This is one of the quandaries of any creative process, including art making. Here, I was warning her about her ‘loss of innocence’ and the appreciation she should cultivate for incertitude.

This morning, I know what I will tell her next time: keep asking yourself, at each moment of choice and hesitation: what does this do for my people ? You had a strong motivation when you started this piece: to expose the social injustice that the Gadsden Green exemplifies. You stayed with it. It is successful and you have learned to look past your own expression and satisfaction. Keep it going this way.

Should I go back to Simone Weil now and again?

When WW II started, the Weil family left Paris, went with the flow of refugees and ended up in Marseilles, the place to be if you intended to leave the country. There she met with a number of her old friends and former students. All supported her in her efforts to either ask government officials for paperwork or to have her writings published. Her aim was to get a new teaching job, this time in Algeria, to study first hand the impact of colonialism on Algerian populations  and, ultimately, to  reach England and to be an actor in the war effort against Germany. As I tried to explain earlier, Simone Weil had determined that to combat an enemy successfully, one had to have a clear conscience, as clear as the enemy’s own, in the ways, means and reasons for engaging in a war. At that time, the issue of conscience she saw as most relevant for pushing back against Germany was how France treated its colonial populations. An issue of social justice equal in importance to the way Germany was treating its own racialized populations.

Wouldn’t, applying this mode of equivalency to one’s own daily work, force one to never forget one’s purpose and, as far as art is concerned, shift the focus of art-making from self-expression to social justice?