“For me the work is about asking questions about the complexity of the world that we all share,” the Canadian artist David Hartt told me, while discussing work that he is showing at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. “The way that I inhabit a political position is through an oblique set of questions that I attempt to open up in the same ways a prism does, to break a really complex situation into its component parts so that we can better understand how it’s operating.”
Hartt was sharing his perspective on the notion of “protest art”, which is a theme of sorts at Art Basel this year. Perhaps more than in other years, artists are showing works that speak to politics, causes and longstanding issues around human rights. While much of the art this year is informed by such notions, artists had varying reactions to construing their work as an act of protest, often voicing unease with seeing their art as a political gesture.
