Community engaged art: no longer a form of resistance?

Unrestricted During the 1960s and 1970s, African American artists created site-specific community engaged projects that were narrations of the social-cultural context of their communities. Within this milieu, the art works became powerful communicative tools, as was the case in John Outterbridge's collaborative project Oh, Speak Speak and Noah Purifoy's 66 Signs of Neon. However, in recent years, a proliferation of community engaged site-specific arts have emerged in various forms. These projects are appearing in the discourse of mainstream texts, discussions, museum exhibitions and commissioned public art works in the urban environment. Once looked upon with little regard by the art world, community engaged art is now canonized in the academy and elite art circles by a professional class of critics, curators, art historians and urban planners. This co-optation and assimilation of the aesthetic has weakened the criticality of the practice creating a disembodied commodification and a form of social work.