Chicago-based artist and journalist Makeda Easter explores the financial challenges facing artists across disciplines in her immersive exhibition, Making it: $napshots from The Artist Pay Project, currently displayed at the University of Michigan Ross Impact Studio. She was a 2022-2023 Visiting Fellow with the Ford School of Public Policy’s Center for Racial Justice and Knight-Wallace Fellow at the Wallace House Center for Journalists.
Easter described Making it as “an artistic approach to journalism,” and a new approach that allows her to combine her passions. “This installation feels like a manifestation of showing up more authentically,” she said.
As a visiting fellow, Easter surveyed and interviewed 30+ artists from the Midwest, East Coast, and South, uncovering their financial struggles and survival strategies. “Talking with these artists has made me very angry that we live in a country that doesn't really support them,” she said. “It’s [an issue of] economic justice.”
Easter envisions a future where the installation travels, evolves through collaborations with other artists, and continues to challenge outdated perceptions about art and labor.
“I’m hoping that I can spark people to have a deeper recognition that [creating] art is real work and it deserves to be paid as such,” she said. “Artists deserve to have a living wage for their work and should be empowered to ask for more.”
She draws inspiration from programs such as Springboard for the Arts in Minnesota, which provides guaranteed income to artists, and Creatives Rebuild New York, a program that distributes monthly stipends to New York-based artists. She hopes her work will inspire public policy.
“I started a fair pay guide to the arts where I compiled different initiatives on pay equity in the arts,” she explained. “I hope that my work supports policies like this that have a larger impact on artists across the country.”
She also intends to focus specifically on the inequities faced by artists of color. “Artists of color are paid less than white artists—it’s very apparent,” she noted. “I’d love to do a callout for artists of color to dig deeper into the racial disparities when it comes to pay and the arts.”
Making it: $napshots from Artist Pay Project runs through December 12, 2024 at the U-M Ross Impact Studio and is sponsored by the University of Michigan Arts Initiative and Ross Impact Studio.
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