When she was around ten years old, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama began  experiencing intense hallucinations.

She described her vivid visions  as “dense fields of dots”. To deal with them, she started drawing  repetitive patterns as a kind of therapy.

She said that the artistic repetition helped  her “obliterate” the noises in her head. Today, Kusama is one of the world’s  most successful living artists. She still creates works of repeating patterns,  but now she invites the whole world in.

One of her most popular installations  is called “Obliteration Room.” Visitors are given polka-dot stickers that  they are invited to press to the walls,   floor, and ceiling of a white room. Over the course of several  weeks, thousands of people   work together to cover the room in dots —  collectively obliterating the stark white. Kusama’s work shows us how artists can turn   private struggles into moments  of connection and community.

Which points to something bigger about art. Although it’s often stereotyped  as a brooding solo activity,   art and community have been linked all along. Hi!

I'm Sarah Urist Green, and  this is Crash Course Art History. Art has been a big group project  ever since the first humans left   ghostly impressions of their hands on cave walls. Interactive installations like Kusama’s are really just a contemporary take on an age-old theme.

And cultures around the world create art together in ways that strengthen their sense of belonging. Consider the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, the largest mud-built structure on Earth. Constructed and maintained by master masons, the mosque is a work of sacred architecture.

It’s both an artwork in itself and a  functional place of worship for Muslims. The first mosque on this site was likely built in the 13th century, and though there have been   a few versions since then, the current one has been standing for more than a hundred years. That's longer than Alaska has been a state.

Every year, the entire city of Djenné comes together to re-plaster the mosque’s exterior walls,   to protect and rebuild it from the  harsh conditions of the rainy season. The community event is known as the Crepissage de   la Grand Mosquée—French for the  Plastering of the Great Mosque. On the day of the event, residents of  Djenné divide sections of the mosque by   neighborhood and compete to see which team  can cover their section in mud the fastest.

But the new layers of mud added by each resident   aren’t just protecting the  mosque for another season. They’re contributing to a generations-long act of community creation. There’s art not only in the architecture of the mosque — in its geometry and design — but   also in the actual craft of mixing  and plastering mud to maintain it.

While the basic style has remained the same,   its precise layout, size, and  design have adapted over time. This is pretty different from  traditional Euro-American views of art,   which tend to present art as something  fixed: permanent and unchanging. Someone painting over a Frida  Kahlo would…not go well.

But the constant “re-creation” of the  mosque shows us how an artwork can evolve. It doesn’t have to be static in order  to be impactful, or in order to be   art—and that’s something we’re starting  to see in new, innovative installations. Festivals and ceremonies, performances and events,   can provide opportunities for people to  celebrate who they are as a community.

And often, these events help preserve not  only a work of art, but a way of life. Take the Gelede, a community festival held by  some groups of Yoruba people in West Africa. The festival features one-of-a-kind  masks and headdresses that celebrate   the creator goddess Iyà Nlà and the  contributions women have made to Yoruba society.

They’re worn during a series of dances and   chants that recreate tales of  Yoruba history and mythology. Regardless of how male-dominated its  surrounding power structures may be,   Gelede regalia remains a tribute to  the women of the Yoruba community. In this way, participants in the Gelede keep  alive values that are important to them.

The Gelede is also an example of how art helps  us see, experience, and understand who we are. Not just as individuals, but as  members of wider communities. Art very often presents unifying  symbols of our collective identities,   like how this mask reflects the  calm power of Yoruba female elders.

It's worth thinking about what  artworks reflect your identities,   whether you’re Yoruba, or a Disney  Adult, cosplayer, or Swiftie. Another unifying symbol of collective identity is  the Chief Johnson pole in the town of Ketchikan,   Alaska, a totem pole originally carved in 1902,   and replicated in 1989 by  native artist Israel Shotridge. Totem poles are large, vertical  sculptures typically carved from   cedar trees by indigenous people  along the Pacific Northwest Coast.

While visually stunning, totem poles  themselves are only part of the tradition. To truly understand them, you also  need to know the community’s oral   history — its stories and traditions  passed down through generations. The base of the Chief Johnson pole  shows characters from a Tlingit myth:   the trickster Raven and his wife, Fog Woman.

The large empty space is meant to emphasize the  significance of the golden eagle at the top,   representing a particular  clan of the Tlingit tribe. And the story it references reminds viewers to be   respectful of their spouses,  family members, and land. The design is symmetrical, evoking  a sense of harmony and balance,   values held dear by the Native  peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

And it’s only together–the pole along  with the stories that go with it,   that we can truly come to appreciate  the art in its fullest sense. Now, identity is not a static thing,  whether it’s yours or a community’s. It changes over time — and so do the  symbols we create to represent it.

Let’s go to the drawing board… This is the Gay Pride flag. These days you can find it hanging in sports  bars and restaurants, on stickers and t-shirts. It's pretty popular, but the flag itself  is relatively new, as far as flags go.

It was created by artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. It was commissioned by a San Francisco  politician named Harvey Milk, who was   the first openly gay elected  official in the United States. Milk asked Baker to design a symbol   to replace the pink triangle that the Nazis had  used to identify LGBTQ people during World War II.

Though the pink triangle had been reclaimed by  queer folks, Milk and Baker wanted something new. So Baker created the rainbow flag as a  symbol of pride, inclusion, and acceptance. He gave each of the colors its own meaning.

But then, years later, in 2018,   the non-binary American artist Daniel  Quasar designed a new pride flag. It combines Baker’s original  design with five additional colors:   black and brown to represent people  of color, as well as pink, light blue,   and white to represent transgender  and gender non-conforming people. The new colors form a triangle that points  forward, representing social progress.

For the modern LGBTQ community, Quasar’s  redesigned pride flag represents the importance   of intersectionality, or the ways that race,  class, and gender are connected to identity. And the flag continues to evolve. The different versions of the pride flag have  become symbols of resistance and resilience,   just as much as they’re symbols of identity.

And Baker’s original flag? You can now find it in the collection  of the Museum of Modern Art. Shared symbols can help artists build  communities–introducing new ideas,   creating mutual understanding, and building  agreements around actions to make change.

The internet, and social media in particular,   have made this kind of collaborative  meaning-making more shareable than ever. Artists and activists have  used social media to spread   messages to corners of the world they  could have never reached without it. Let’s look at the 2014 Hong  Kong protests as an example.

Known as the umbrella revolution, this was  a series of demonstrations against police   brutality that occurred during a peaceful  protest against China’s national government. When artist Kacey Wong saw protesters using  umbrellas to defend themselves against police,   he was inspired to issue a call for art that  made use of umbrellas — turning a simple,   everyday object into an icon of resistance. Wong’s call was amplified  by social media, and soon,   umbrella-themed artwork was popping up not  just in Hong Kong but all over the world.

In the streets and on phone screens,   umbrella art communicated and  expressed support for the protesters. The art of the umbrella revolution inspired  solidarity among people who longed for social   and political change, and introduced others  to the ideas at the heart of the protests. We’ll learn way more about the connections  between art and activism in a future episode.

For now, I’ll leave you with these images of people dressed like Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo’s work still creates community today. In 2017, over a thousand people,  dressed as the famous artist,   gathered together decades after her death to celebrate what would have been her 110th birthday.

Like Kusama’s Obliteration Room, Kahlo’s art made her inner struggles public – difficulties that her audience could connect to and find solidarity in. Art is a remarkable tool for building  communities, preserving traditions,   and promoting change for generations. When we look past the myth of the suffering solo  artist, we can see how humanity has used art to   address and combat loneliness since we first  set our hands on those ancient cave walls.

In our next episode, we’ll explore  representations of the body in art. I’ll see you there. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash  Course Art History which was filmed at the   Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was  made with the help of all these lovely people.

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