Creating art today is more accessible than ever. The tools are closer than before, no longer behind a wall of expertise and class difference. Our ability to market it and distribute it has become easier than it has ever been; and all of it is waiting to be picked up and used. 

As Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, creators of the school of Third Cinema, a revolutionary art movement that emphasizes the destruction of oppressive, neocolonial images, wrote, art is not just “within the reach of ‘artists,’ ‘geniuses’ and ‘the privileged,’” but rather the masses, the everyman. 

These past few years, moments where these truths were spotlighted have passed us by, stopping society from reevaluating what it needs to leave behind or move forward with. I continue to see a rehash of tired political sentiments, feelings of discontent and hatred, and scapegoating. 

With this in mind, the question remains: What does it take, in this moment of unprecedented creative access, to make the next great piece of political art — art so striking it starts a revolution? 

At 11 years old, I experienced an art piece so viscerally truthful, it changed the course of my life, opening my eyes to the oppressive systems that kept my community in the margins of society. To this day, I herald Kendrick Lamar’s album “good kid, m.A.A.d city” as a revolutionary piece of art, providing the foundation to understand my life in the United States. 

Years later, I encountered films like “Güeros” (2014) by Alonso Ruizpalacios, “Moonlight” (2016) by Barry Jenkins and “City of God” (2002) by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. Just like “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” they all lived within what Getino and Solanas call “forbidden truth[s].” 

These forbidden truths are the lives of those who continue to be marginalized and oppressed by neocolonialist societies like the United States. Within the art that has shaped me lives the reality of every artist who has, for a moment, broken free from the labels and images placed upon them. 

The images created of marginalized communities continue to be stuck in the past, and as bell hooks, author and cultural critic, stated in her book “Reel to Real,” “Changing how we see images is clearly one way to change the world.”

Taking agency and providing truthful representations of stories never seen before is the key to making revolutionary art. Marginalized people are not just consumers but producers of culture, aware of the history and impact they create, but are too often silenced. 

To make political art today means reclaiming authorship — and it cannot wait for an executive to greenlight it nor for someone to edit it down to make it digestible — change requires an unprecedented rawness and truthfulness. 

By creating art that is so personal, real and beautiful, we can reach audiences that we could have never imagined, art that is so revelatory it shifts the status quo.

This is even more notable considering the culture we live in today. A culture that, with the advent of social media, has made interacting with one another easier than ever. Art then, as bell hooks noted in “Reel to Real,” allows for the “quintessential experience of border crossing for everyone who wants to take a look at difference and the different without having to experientially engage ‘the other.’”

Even if we may not like this truth, the effectiveness of seeing and engaging “the other” through art cannot be understated and should be used as an advantage toward making new, revolutionary art. Now more than ever, music, film and traditional forms of art are being used around the world as educational tools for understanding one another. 

Because of this, we have to understand the role of artists as culture makers, with the ability to uphold oppressive systems or destroy them completely. Creating art requires the artist to have a strong perspective and to be unapologetically truthful — it is not enough to simply be a member of a marginalized group making art. 

Although it may be daunting, it’s time to begin your artistic journey. For me, it looks like writing and filmmaking, where I attempt to not aestheticize my grievances or place my people in a box. For you, it may be photography, music or painting; the possibilities are endless, as long as they are done with truth and authenticity at the forefront of it all.  

Our social climate remains as polarizing as ever, creating a time ripe for cultural remodeling. With all the possibilities in front of us, it is our responsibility to take hold of them and create a culture that is built for us and made by us.