HOLYCHILD BRAT POP REVOLUTION
Does explaining this to you take away from the art? Does it defeat the purpose? Does it demean our message?
When I was growing up I watched my dad beat my mom. I was sad when he fled the country and moved to Saudi Arabia but I sympathized with him. He was a product of our culture: a male pressured to behave a certain way, to look a certain way, to make money in a certain way. At the same time I was infuriated watching blatant violence toward my mother. I’ve always been inspired by everything. By my dad and why he felt entitled to act in such an explosive manner. By his secretive facade, and why an allure of perfection was so important for him. By my mom and her value of herself, and how that has been influenced by our culture.
These questions are Brat Pop: social commentary on gender, beauty, money, class, age, fame, youth and self. Our debut album, The Shape of Brat Pop to Come was released in June and it holds all of these questions and naturally our album artwork was made to reflect this struggle.
Throughout the process of making the album, the album art, of being an artist in the public sphere, we have encountered various road blocks, which feel to me like censorship. I am still deciding whether or not this pushes me to create stronger art, or if it hinders my message. Regardless, it has been made clear to me there are people who have decided the general public is not ready or does not want to digest images or sounds that may make them uncomfortable.
Our album artwork is above, my naked body with money covering my vagina. To us this image says everything we wanted. It questions our culture’s value of women and money. It mocks advertisements selling sex while putting our audience in a place where they are inadvertently a consumer of such. It’s exactly the paradox we’re caught in every day: realizing how sad, bizarre, unnecessary, vapid a tradition may be, and still partaking in it.
In February we were told we couldn’t publish this artwork. We were told it was too provocative and the large vendors we needed were uncomfortable selling it. We feel so strongly about the messages we are trying to convey in our music we were happy to make a censored version of the cover (my lips with a dollar bill insider my mouth, also we kept this image pretty unphotoshopped so you can see my imperfections in my skin and teeth). It holds a similar message, and we loved the challenge of creating art within a strict limitation, however in this circumstance we will always be most proud of our original intended artwork which will remain as the physical artwork for the album.
The fact that the original artwork was not endorsed is not only absurd, but further reason why this artwork and conversation should be made public.
Our conversation with vendors revealed they were scared to challenge their consumers. They did not believe their shopper, patrons, “guests,” “clients,” whatever, were mature enough to interpret our album cover as art. When we heard this I cried. Not because our vision wouldn’t come to fruition, but because we believe the public is capable of having more meaningful conversations and it was frustrating to have people in the way of this dialogue.
Not only that, but I originally wrote this piece in June and every outlet we asked to present it had passed. It feels like an uphill battle where people are ok with “edginess” but not substance.
We stand by our art. We stand by our messages, and further we stand by a culture of people who aren’t complacent with racism still existing, with women still clearly oppressed, and with celebrities our current gods.
We’re ready to discuss these issues with our art and our music. It’s 2015, the revolution has already begun.
- Liz Nistico
