“Artists, We Need You”: Artist Identity, Creative Agency, and the Urgency of Action

Abstract

In this article, I examine the interplay of artist identity, creative agency, and the urgency of action through research with a teen arts internship at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans. The central research questions for the study focused on investigation of the contexts, narratives, activities, and consequences of artist identity formation. First, I offer a brief literature review of art education for social justice, activism, and creative agency. Then, I describe the use of social practice theory of identity and agency to interpret activist artist identity development within the research. Next, I delineate the use of portraiture as methodology to construct narrative portraits of the young artists of the study. Finally, I present data and analysis of the findings of the study of the contexts, narratives, activities, and consequences of activist artist identity work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Pseudonyms were utilized for research participants.