Providing a lively snapshot of the state of art and social justice today on a global level, Entry Points accompanies the inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, launched at The New School on the occasion of the center’s twentieth anniversary. This book captures some of the most significant worldwide examples of art and social justice and introduces an interested audience of artists, policy makers, scholars, and writers to new ways of thinking about how justice is defined, advanced, and practiced through the arts. In so doing, it assembles some of the latest scholarship in this field while refining our vocabulary for speaking about social justice, social engagement, community enhancement, empowerment, and even art itself.

The book’s first half contains three essays by Thomas Keenan, João Ribas, and Sharon Sliwinski that map the field of art and social justice. These essays are accompanied by more than twenty profiles of recent artist projects that consist of brief essays and artist pages. This curated and carefully considered map of artists and projects identifies key moments in art and social justice.

The book’s second half consists of an in-depth analysis of Theaster Gates’s The Dorchester Projects, which won the inaugural Vera List Prize for Art and Politics. Produced to complement the project’s exhibition at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design in September 2013, this analysis illuminates Gates’s rich, complex, and exemplary work. This section includes an interview between Gates and Vera List Center director Carin Kuoni; essays by Horace D. Ballard Jr., Romi N. Crawford, Shannon Jackson, and Mabel O. Wilson; and a number of responses to The Dorchester Projects by faculty in departments across The New School.

“These projects are without fear, full of courage, and ethical commitment. Different from traditional activist practices, they are acts of civic engagement. Rather than occupying space they are about producing contexts that enable assembly, where the artists re-insert themselves, often without resources or infrastructures. But they have a democratic element to them that other people can draw from. This work aspires to create an analytical context. It is not about bringing a solution. We are doing the work together. The book in particular is a teaching project tying the values of education and social justice. Connecting those pedagogical values and ideas with the production of artists is invaluable.”
— Okwui Enwezor

Part 1: The Field
Ai Weiwei
Shahidul Alam
Karen Andreassian
Negar Azimi
Amy Balkin
Omar Berrada
Bibliothèques Sans Frontières
CAMP (Shaina Anand & Ashok Sukumaran)
Giuseppe Campuzano
DABATEATR
Chto Delat
T.J. Demos
Galit Eilat
Etcétera
Jenifer Evans
Gugulective
Susanna Gyulamiryan
Hans Haacke
Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti
Interference Archive
Sanja Iveković
Shannon Jackson
Amar Kanwar
Thomas Keenan
Koyo Kouoh
Faustin Linyekula
Ana Longoni
H.G. Masters
Mosireen
Marina Naprushkina
João Ribas
Tenzing Rigdol
Issa Samb
Christoph Schäfer
Gregory Sholette
Bisi Silva
Sharon Sliwinski
Kathryn A. Smith
Pooja Sood
Take to the Sea
Chen Tamir
What, How & for Whom/WHW

Part 2: Dorchester Projects
Horace D. Ballard, Jr.
Katayoun Chamany
Romi N. Crawford
Jocelyn Edens
Julia Foulkes
Theaster Gates
Andrea Geyer
Richard Harper
Shannon Jackson
Mark Larrimore
Lydia Matthews
Kevin McQueen
Jasmine Rault
Radhika Subramaniam
Mabel O. Wilson

About the Editors

Carin Kuoni is Director and Curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the editor of several books, most recently Speculation, Now.

Chelsea Haines is an art historian, curator, and writer based in New York.

Available in bookstores, at online retailers, and directly through Duke University Press