'The Connection Between Art and Politics' – LaRose Digital Theatre, TONIGHT

Molly Crabapple speaks on the direct ways that making art contributes to political movements—by adding the visceral and immediate power of images to the words and ideas that drive political engagement. In tonight’s lecture, she will describe her experiences with the Occupy movement, recent Greek protests, Syrian unrest and upholding truth in the face of recent lies and misinformation. By combining politics with art, she argues that the place for art isn’t standing to one side of political movements.

Based in New York, but a frequent world-traveller, Molly Crabapple was shortlisted for a 2013 Frontline Print Journalism Award for her internationally acclaimed reportage on Guantanamo Bay. She is a contributing editor at VICE, and has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, CNN, and The Guardian. She has done illustrated journalism in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, The United Arab Emirates, Spain and Greece. Her published books include Discordia (with Laurie Penny), on the Greek economic crisis, and the art books Devil in the Details and Week in Hell. Her newest book is the illustrated memoir Drawing Blood, which has received rave reviews in The New York Times, The Economist, Die Welt, and in many other publications. In 2017, Random House’s One World imprint will release Brothers of the Gun: Marwan Hisham’s account of life under ISIS in Syria, co-written and illustrated by Crabapple.

Crabapple has been called “equal parts Hieronymus Bosch, William S. Burroughs and Cirque du Soleil,” by The Guardian, and one of TIME Magazine’s 2016 New Generation Leaders. She spent four years as the staff artist of The Box, one of the world’s most lavish (and notorious) nightclubs. Crabapple has taken her sketchbook from burlesque halls to refugee camps, always with a skeptical eye for power.