Long before Donald J. Trump won the presidential election last November, the Bay Area’s creative community had begun reacting to the nominee’s personality and policies. Over the past year, we’ve seen everything from Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik’s installation of handmade, brick-shaped piñatas assembled to mimic Trump’s proposed border wall to a monthlong series of songs about Trump — ‘30 Days, 30 Songs’ — commissioned by writer, publisher and educator Dave Eggers and music impresario Jordan Kurland.
Now, with the reality of a Trump administration upon us, artist-activists are working all over the region. Our upcoming series, ‘First 100 Days: Art in the Age of Trump,’ serves to highlight the responses of artists and other creatives during the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s administration — 100 days being the timeframe when a president’s power and influence are supposedly at their zenith. From Jan. 20 to Apr. 29, we will publish a consistent stream of related content online as part of this effort.
With artists uniting around issues that the new president has promised to act upon within his first hundred days, such as immigration, the environment, women’s rights and health care, we want to help our audience think more deeply about what’s happening to our world and our democracy, and give the members of our community — artists and non-artists alike — a sense of purpose and hope.
We’re focused, though not limited, to the work of Bay Area creatives. That’s not just because we live here, but also because of our region’s long and proud legacy of arts activism. We’re also more interested in drawing attention to how artists make sense of the issues than in their depictions of Trump himself. And, though it may be rare in the progressive Bay Area, we will not refrain from covering pro-Trump art that might arise.
Our coverage in this series will take a variety of formats, from audio, video, photo and written pieces by our team, to samples of work we’re seeing in the community.
