Artists Who Use Oral Stories in Their Arts Practice

Artist Who Use Oral Stories in Their Arts Practice

Tomie arai  

Tomie arai is Japansese American artist and community activist who works to creates inclusive works that can be reached by not only frequent art lovers but the people in the community. She exhibits in ‘spaces outside of the hierarchical gallery system’... as an advocate for ‘community-based art created through a process of dialog between artist and community members’ (wikipedia,2020). When conducting interviews for her work she has stated that ‘looking for some kind of truth was not the purpose of any of these interviews. And, so, in a sense a lot of narratives which were very close in some respects to fiction. And, that opened up a lot for me in terms of what art could look like or what possibilities could be’ (Desai,2001 citing an interwicing arai). //In addition to talking to her community, she also dialogues with writers, architects, historians and curators ‘to create work that articulates multiple points of view’ (Tomie Arai,2019). 

In 1989, Arai created a series of silkscreen prints called Memory-in-Progress that explores the relationship between art and history and ‘the role that memory plays in retelling a collective past or the mythology of the past’ (wikipedia,2020). Like the afro-futurist ideals stated above, Arai seeks to document and reclaim the untold stories of women in her community (Desai,2001). As material for Memory-in-Progress Arai interveiwed asian  mothers and daughters in hopes to capture feelings navigativing asain culturing in america (Desai,2001). Here, the sharing of personal experiences which rely on memory, come togetehr on in a space where the wider community can view it empower both the story teller and listener/viewer (Desai,2001). 

**find the interviews or an exerp  

Peggy Diggs  

Peggy diggs, an american artist and activist, also creates work for public spaces. Similar to the aforementioned art, her work also straddles the intersection of art and activism, addressing issues from domestic violence and race (Desai,2001). Like Arai, Diggs was inspired by an interview she had with a female prisoner who was serving time for killing her husband out of self-defense. As a domestic violence victim, she told stories of not being allowed to leave the house alone expect to go to the supermarket (Desai,2001).  The story, along with other interviews she had held with ‘rape counselors, police, women's advocates, shelter workers, and others’ led to a project title The Domestic Violence Milk Carton. It consisted of an image printed on a typical american milk carton (Creative time, 2020, Milk Carton, 2018)). For a short time in early 1992, Diggs collaborated with tuscan dariy farms, an american milk brand, selling over 1.5million milk cartons in stores throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania (Creative time, 2020). Diggs was faces with the chalenge of sublte but effective design and an unconventional art loaction to display her work to reach the masses and raise maximum awareness forcing it to be an ‘active intervention into personal space and time which invade the private, innocuous and ordinary activities of everyday life’ (Creative time, 2020, Cunningham, 1996). ‘Wholesome’ objects like milk, toilet tissue or hand soap are all percieved to be nutral, they take on new meanings ‘when their surfaces have been invaded by the discourses of sexual politics’ (Cunningham, 1996).  ***in an interveiw with... diggs explained that ‘So there ought to be work done on breadwrappers or miLk cartons or agarette packs; those are the things that most everyone buys on a regular basis.’ (Cited in Chau et al, 1993, p. 53) (Fig. 13) (Cunningham, 1996***)   There were 4 designs,  constsiteing of a grabbing hand..... each with a helpline number and the question “When you argue at home, does it always get out of hand?” restrospectively (Creative time, 2020, Milk Carton, 2018).