BY COOPER
Dana Saari is a 17-year-old artist going to Perpich Center for the Arts. She is an activist with ties in the Black Lives Matter and feminist movements. Dana has been involved with visual art since her childhood and with debate since the start of high school.
SSP: How have activism and art influenced each other in your life?
Dana: I think my relationship with art is more about communication than artistic expression, it’s more about expression of ideas. I think activism is a good way to spread out certain ideals and certain messages as well. There are a lot of events that are oriented around certain issues, and art is a great way to talk about them.
SSP: How long have you been an artist and how long have you been an activist?
Dana: I’ve been an artist since first grade. I started taking classes in elementary school. The first time I started to get interested in activism was in 7th grade, when I had a teacher named Florie Summers. She had very radical ideas about a lot of things, like the economy and politics. A lot of that spilled over into debate because she was our debate coach, and she taught us a lot of things about the harms of capitalism, about socialist revolutions, and she taught us a lot about conspiracy theories. That was the first time I was exposed to that sort of thought and those sorts of radical ideas. But the first time I started really acting on those ideas was 9th grade when I started really getting into debate, and I don’t know why but debate has had a really big connection to social justice for me. I think it’s because debate is just a space for high schoolers to talk for an hour about whatever they want, and so people are drawn to talking about certain experiences that have to do with prejudice and oppression. So it makes people really aware of those things that happen, and I don’t think I would have been aware of them if I didn’t spend as much time as I did just listening and talking to individuals about things they’ve experienced in certain structures and programs.
SSP: How do you see debate as a form of artistic expression?
Dana: It’s great for expression, a time where you get to speak and people have to listen to you and they have to write things down. You feel like everything you say has to be heard. Even if you’re making a speech or have a platform where people are supposed to listen to you, or might even want to listen to you, in debate everyone really has to, because it’s part of the game, you feel like everything you say has to be understood. You get in depth, and you have to express yourself in order to win.
SSP: Are there flaws in the debate community?
Dana: Yes, there are. Debate was started for white dudes. It prioritizes a very particular sort of person and way of speaking. It’s very formal and sort of exclusive and this centered specific idea of intellectualism and knowledge around certain articles and pieces of news. It mirrors macro-politics in some ways, most of the debaters are aware of that and that’s why issues in social justice are such common subjects within actual debate rounds.
SSP: Are there any specific concepts or messages that you want to get across in your art, or your debate?
Dana: I definitely think that what I do in art mirrors what I do in debate. I have a certain set of experiences and identity and most everything I do creatively portrays that. In debate I run into a lot of arguments about policing, what it is to means to be a woman, the surveillance of woman and the sort of ever present sexual gaze of men. Women have to make sure that they are pretty, make sure they are cis [feminine]. In my art I see myself using similar subjects. Identity and the restriction of identity are very important parts of my art.
Illustrations by Dana Saari.
