Art Under Siege

INSTALLATION LOG // >
Exhibit Entry ____ Distortion Dialogue

The world feels particularly cruel right now. You can feel it in your teeth. It’s not just the headlines—though those are brutal enough—it’s the way people carry themselves. The static in the air. I’ve spent most of my life trying to find beauty in the wreckage, trying to pull something human out of the chaos. But lately, even that feels like a stretch. There’s this collective exhale that never quite finishes. Like we’re all waiting for the punchline, but the joke just keeps getting darker.

Art has always been a compass for me. A mirror, a touchstone, a flare in the dark. It’s how I know what’s really going on beneath the spin. And right now? Art is vibrating. Raw, trembling, urgent. It’s equal parts beautiful and horrifying—like a lullaby played on broken glass. I’m watching creators I’ve followed for years—people who usually speak with clarity and purpose—start to crack around the edges. Pearlmania on TikTok is wearing clown makeup and whispering. If you know, you know. That’s scarier than the shouting ever was.

But I get it. I really do. Because when the world’s on fire and everyone’s pretending it’s just a heatwave, what else is there to do but put on your warpaint and whisper through the smoke?

That’s where folk music comes in. Not the sanitized, Spotify-friendly stuff—though some of that’s good too—but the raw bones of it. The unpolished, heart-wrenched songs rising out of living rooms and backyards. There’s a reason folk music always shows up in times like this. It’s made for it. For grief. For rage. For protest. For memory. It carries a lineage of survival in its chords. It doesn’t pretend to be fine. It howls. It aches. It remembers.

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We’re seeing music right now like we haven’t seen since the sixties, or rather the revolutionary songs that artists are creating are actually reaching people. Maybe even deeper. Maybe more cracked open. There’s something ancient in the air again—something low and humming. Music isn’t just responding to the moment; it’s documenting it, stitching the grief and resistance and laughter into melody before it all collapses under the weight of the news cycle.

Take Mon Rovîa. A quiet Appalachian folk musician who didn’t chase virality, didn’t bother with trends or hashtags. Just posted his songs into the void, trusting they’d find the right ears. And they did. Because when you sing with that kind of quiet conviction, people hear you. Not just sonically, but spiritually. It feels like his voice grew out of the soil.

Then there’s Nathan Evans Fox, writing new spirituals that sound like they were always there—tucked somewhere between “I’ll Fly Away” and a ghost hum from the back pew. I’m not religious. I don’t think the Lord is coming back for us. But God, I love a good spiritual. That ache, that lift. That willingness to believe in something even if your brain doesn’t buy it. Faith as muscle memory. Hope as an inherited hallucination.

And maybe the most on-the-nose part of all this is that we’re even getting new drinking songs. Like the world’s burning down and we’re on the front porch, passing the bottle, hollering harmonies into the wind. It’s funny. It’s tragic. It’s perfect. Because when everything feels like it’s coming apart—economically, environmentally, politically—sometimes the only honest response is to sing a little too loud and a little off-key with your friends, just to remind yourself you’re still alive.

@willowbrookofficial

my message to anyone who still supports Trump more like kiss my rump amiright <3 #irishfolk #pubsongs #america #canadian #queer #protecttranslives #puckoff

♬ The Revolution Drinking Song by Willowbrook – Willowbrook🇨🇦

This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s not a throwback. It’s a revival. Not orchestrated. Not curated. Organic. Messy. True. Folk music is doing what it’s always done—becoming the archive of the people. Of this precise moment in history. The ache, the fight, the absurdity of surviving. It’s glorious.

And terrifying.

Because if the music is this good, this necessary… things must really be bad.

And right now, it’s astonishing. There’s something happening—online, underground, and everywhere in between. People are picking up guitars and fiddles and dulcimers and telling the truth. About Gaza. About poverty. About queer joy and queer grief. About the world cracking apart and how we’re still singing anyway. Maybe especially because of that.

Art doesn’t save us. Not exactly. But it reminds us who we are. And it tells us we’re not alone.

FAce-lIft

Feed the Paws…