Art and politics may have few similarities on the surface, but ASU graduate art student Karen Fiorito is hoping to change all that.
Fiorito's exhibition, "Agiprop and Culture Jams," opened Monday at the Harry Wood Gallery on the first floor of the Art Building and will be on display until Friday.
"There is the assumption that art shouldn't have anything to do with politics, that if you mix them, it somehow devalues the art, makes it propaganda," Fiorito, 32, said.
"I think people can't afford to be apathetic in this day and age about politics, so hopefully my work can make it fun and entertaining as well as raise serious issues and make people think," she said.
The name of the exhibition itself, "Agiprop and Culture Jams," is a conglomeration of an old Soviet term for propaganda meant to agitate, and a postmodern movement of artists and activists who try to "jam" the media machine by producing graffiti art, Fiorito said.
"My work is heavily influenced by pop culture and poster art," she said. "It's not just art that is made to be looked at in a gallery, it's art that is accessible to everyone -- on billboards, posters on buildings, electrical boxes, she said.
Fiorito said she considers herself an independent when it comes to political party affiliation.
"I find fault with both Democrats and Republicans," she said. "I was always politically minded, but since 9/11, it's become more important to me what's going on in the world and really spurred my work in a new direction."
Fiorito said she also gains inspiration from questioning the French writer Pierre Bourdieu, whose "The Field of Cultural Production" explores minimalism and abstraction in art.
"Basically, he felt that art should be abstract and be a 'rejection of meaning,' which isn't what my work is -- it has meaning and context and layers to it," she said.
ASU art professor Kathryn Maxwell has been Fiorito's teacher for her entire time at ASU.
"As an artist, she's extremely passionate about her beliefs and also quite talented technically," Maxwell said. "Most students aren't as overtly political as her, so she'll have to take a different path when she graduates. She'll likely have to work outside the gallery system, but many artists do that anyway successfully."
Reach the reporter at annemarie.moody@asu.edu.