baby avec cash

my eternal personal bugbear about "authenticity" in specifically artwork is the central irony that a given piece will only be accepted and understood as suuuuper authentic and raw and real if it matches what the audience perceives as the artist's True Self. "authenticity" has a look, it has a style, it has a vocabulary, it has a hierarchy of materials and media, it should be folk craft or handmade over industrial or digital, it should be emotional and warm over detached and bitter, and obviously it should look pre-21st century because as we all know no one has ever existed honestly since the turn of the millennium and all Authentic Culture died to death badly in 1990. I've heard tons of artists in marginalized groups repeatedly get the feedback that they should make their art "more authentic" and more "reflective of their identities" by people who clearly just mean "make it look more like the stereotype I expect from you." it's a framework that relies on the idea that the only real representation of a culture or identity comes when you strip away all its interrelations with other groups, as though cross-cultural exchange and technological innovation aren't constants throughout human history.