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Response Essay on Adong Judith’s “How I use art to bridge misunderstanding.”
“The purpose of art is to bring people into presence,” said Jim Carrey once, and the same statement stands true with Adong Judith, who through art brings people to a presence that invokes them to listen to the voice that calls them to make peace and drop misunderstandings. Art remains a mystery, and many of its creators have many purposes of attaching the art they create. Some will do it for laughter, others to justify what they believe, while others resolve to stay in mystery, and let the consumer decide what to do with the art, yet it does not lose its touch. Adong Judith uses her art as a voice that speaks to society about pertinent issues, not like an activist’s voice, but the small silent voice that speaks to stifled conscience, calling it forth to attend to relevant life issues.
In her talk, Adong Judith, writer, and director, tells of how she utilizes art through the story to compel individuals to end the misunderstandings they have between them. She believes that by using social change stories, she can change how people think by making them more humane and empathetic about specific issues they usually do not pay attention to. However, she does not intend the way she does things to be a sort of activism as she believes activism is one-sided and blocks the people from seeing the other side of the situation. Adong instead desires that people are given a chance to share their truth, and without being judged so that either side of a conflict or misunderstanding gives the other a fair chance to experience the issues in a different light. She believes by doing so. People can stop sticking to the principle of “Stay Your Truth” as this is biased, and open up to more knowledge of the same situation that will challenge them to think and, as a result, change. She believes that doing so will provide people with the necessary understanding of each other’s view of the world. If appropriately embraced, it would define the situation in a new light, bring people to a middle ground where they agree out of better understanding to deal with issues in a whole new way. She warns that nobody should fear bringing up their truth on the table. In doing so, one makes other people richer in understanding by speaking to that part of them that may have overlooked things, like in her example of lasagna. Other than thinking they are ignorant, you enrich them and call forth their power to deal with the situation entirely, thus changing the world. That is what she does with art.
Judith’s view that art can be an avenue to bridge misunderstanding is acceptable. From the perspective of many, art is only on canvas, but life provides different forms of canvas and tools through which specific drawings can be drawn. Adong’s way is through acted social stories on stage to relevant audiences. In that way, she brings to life the wonderful painting by presenting people with the other version of the story they never heard or, in this case, “seen.” It is true that most people “Stay their truth as she says and remain blind to what others think or know about a similar situation. People often want to believe that what they know is better or more acceptable than what others know. However, not many stops to consider what the other person thinks or knows, yet that might change their whole way of reasoning. Most come to realize that other people have a richer and different path of thought than theirs, which, if embraced, makes the world a different but better place.
It is also true that many taboo issues continue to trouble society because the best place they have been kept is in silence. Mostly, that is out of fear leading to self-censorship, as Judith says. However, I agree that using her type of art allows people to ponder the different issues related to such subjects. It offsets the silence by having conscience speak out loud from within. In this way, people are challenged to speak and address such issues. It agrees with the words of Ralph Emerson, that “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.” A light is shone on the silent judgmental individuals’ people have been, and the beliefs they have been holding to. The desire to change from who they are is so great than the need to cling to what they speak as of their truth. The knowledge gained invokes these, and these people reach out to the other side they have ignored for long and engage them in a new way.
Besides, other than being the force of conviction that stirs one to act, I also agree that art is a tool that can be used to bring out the unique value of every human person. It not only drives people to take action and stop being that selfish person they have been for long; it also facilitates looking at others from the perspective they are unique individuals experiencing life in their unique way. Seldom do many people in society realize that each person in this world has their own unique experience. Most people work from generalizations, which place people into one bucket without consideration that these individuals have different stories even if they share similar beliefs about one subject. Judith’s way of expressing individuals’ uniqueness through art truly gets the message across. It dares people to take in the finer details of another person’s story and see through their eyes what life means to them or how a particular situation impacted their life. For instance, the war story that helped the government, leaders, and other affiliated organizations see the depth of suffering of war victims. Something they could not have appreciated had it not been represented artistically.
Art does bring people to a presence they have long ignored and makes their conscience respond to life differently after being called forth to see things from a different perspective. Adong Judith does a great job creating social stories as her form of art to help people pay attention to the finer details and beauty of the unspoken truth in others’ lives. Such art forms can be applied to bridge misunderstanding and communicate specific values to communities where using other methods would prove difficult. For instance, showing such stories to places where gender inequality is on the rise could bring the doers to understand the importance of gender parity.