The day after the United States presidential election results were announced in November, a cloud of gloom fell over the art building. A painting class that day held a routine discussion over what their end-of-year art show would be named. Disturbed by the 2024 election results and remembering the 2020 election voter intimidation and U.S. Capitol insurrection, studio art senior Scott Cobb suggested “The Last Art Show Before Fascism.”
Though his idea received second place, Cobb decided to continue with it independently. Originally meant to occur before President Donald Trump took office, the show will open in the UT Art Building on Friday. It will address topics such as the Trump administration’s immigration policies, gender violence and Palestinian rights. The protests on UT’s campus last spring inspired many of the pieces.
“We’ve already been hurt,” Cobb said. “People have been hurt. It’s a movement, this is our way of trying to fight back.”
A photograph by Cobb centers a vase filled with urine, empty bullet cartridges and a UT tower figure, which he said symbolizes the use of state authority against protesting students last April and how it “defiled the university’s values.” A drawing by a fourth-year student who goes by the name “Circle of Return” depicts Sisyphus pushing his rock, drawn as a World War II ration token, which the artist said indicated the threat of a possible recession today. Another painting by the artist shows an event sequence two weeks before and after Trump was elected.
“That lived experience of going to the protests … bolstered what I’ve already known,” Circle of Return said. “The things that we’re seeing happening in our country and the world now aren’t new. It might be a new experience for some of us, because we’re young people, so maybe this is the first time we’re feeling it tangibly. But nothing that’s happening is new.”
While many pieces in the show prove foreboding, a colorful medieval-manuscript-inspired LGBTQ+ love story created by Elena Ahsan, a humanities senior, stood out.
“It’s important to advocate for the arts in a time where the arts and education in general is under attack,” Ahsan said. “We’re here. We’re going to keep making art, no matter what happens, what the government wants.”
Cobb said he hopes people who don’t agree with the show’s content can at least walk away with an understanding of what is going on in the U.S.
“If they do not take action, our democracy currently is teetering,” Cobb said. “It could fall off the cliff into the abyss.”
