The Role of an Artist in Society
Toym believes that creating art is a gift.
You need to cultivate that gift and in order to cultivate it you also have to take something from your environment and your society in order to make that imagery relevant to what is happening around you.
Artists cannot be that detached and they somehow have to react. What is the point of creating imagery if you won’t have an audience to appreciate it? What is the point of creating an object that doesn’t have a place in that particular era?
Toym is very much into human rights advocacy. One night, upon hearing that a young man was killed by the police over mistaken identity during the drug war:
I reflected that night and I was just questioning how, as an artist, I can position myself. I always believed that there is a siege in press freedom right now with all the fake news, and that the journalists are being discredited. I firmly believe that whenever the truth is under siege and the press is kicked down, art is our second line of defence.
So I wrote this which encapsulates my belief of who the artist is in society:
Artists are generally solitary creatures
who prefer the comfort
of their studios and desks,
quietly toiling on their works.
But once you disturb
the peace of their environment
- the source of their nourishment,
threaten the lives of their loved ones
- the source of their inspiration,
they will move and
make the streets as their canvas.
They will sing songs
from the mouth of the voiceless,
dance with the rage
and passion of resistance,
scratch words of truth and defiance
onto the walls that divide the nation.
Once angered, pained and wounded,
they will bleed masterpieces more powerful than the monuments of tyrants
and they will not stop
until they have painted
their final stroke of dissent,
have that last note of solidarity,
choreographed their climactic movement with the people,
and have penned the last line of
their ode of deliverance and justice.
Please press the arrow in the middle of the screen to view the video.
12