- Where storytelling in art can flourish to underscore the diversity and complexity of the API community.
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That uphold art’s intrinsic values so that it can be more effective in creating rightful representations of the API community and distinguish itself from simple commodities.
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That ensures longevity, impact, and accessibility of the API community’s presence and voices.
Civil Art’s focus is on 1) API artists, scholars, and creatives, 2) young and emerging art professionals, 3) patrons, and 4) charitable organizations. Unlike many arts organizations that target only artists, Civil Art seeks to influence all of the major stakeholders in the sector to help bring about effective institutional change. Civil Art leads by example to present a healthier model of the art industry where culturally appropriate representations of the API community can impact society through the arts. Each of Civil Art’s programs:
- Provide curated spaces where art can become accessible in context.
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Educate and communicate to create a bridge to artists’ cultural histories, experiences, and other narratives, which may not be readily available on view.
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Help inspiring stories of API artists become reachable to a wider demographic.
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Create sustainable and accessible infrastructure that fosters longevity and opportunities for the API community.
For those in the API community, Civil Art becomes a place of empathy and home. For individuals outside of the API community, Civil Art becomes an entry point into the rich and diverse world of API for those who are yet unfamiliar. The problem that Civil Art is addressing is a two-fold problem. The API community is marginalized, and the market-focussed art industry undervalues the cultural value of artworks, where API artists need the most opportunity to create genuine representations of API. Therefore, as Civil Art is a microcosmic ecosystem of the art industry, the organization’s commitment and display of diversity, integrity, and accessibility will demonstrate the possible future that the contemporary art world can embody. Without Civil Art, artworks will continue to be simplified as simple commodities. Such quantification without quality endangers the API community because:
- Patrons seek API art for their financial value and therefore do not seek API art for their qualitative value. Although cultural narratives will be present in art, they are hidden as they are seen as a secondary value and limit art’s potential for storytelling.
- Artists are motivated to create while heavily affected by trends and what is sellable. Reliance on market trends is dangerous because trends are monolithic, which has the negative potential of rendering the API community’s diversity homogenous.
- An API art that solely relies on market trends creates a market bubble. A market bubble suggests expiration, and upon the expiration date, a lack of representation of the API community will resurge. The cultural goal of API art is to inistigate the API community’s voices to become a major stakeholder in the global social economy, and the community’s cultural input has to be an ongoing circulation.
- Dehumanizes the humanity in API art, which by transitive property, dehumanizes the API community.
Civil Art does its work abiding by a set of Leadership & Integrity Principles.
Civil Art is also developing a set of qualitative and quantitative metrics to assess its impact to ensure the best possible use of its resources.
Civil Art recognizes the value of collaboration and is committed to sharing its resources with others and developing and implementing its activities by working with partners. Civil Art is led by its co-founder, Ho Jae Kim, and has a Board of Directors of leaders from across the art sector and beyond.