Injection versus Extraction

Socially Engaged Art (SEA) is a conventional yet emerging phenomenon at the broadest level. On one hand, art practices stimulated by and generated from social issues have taken a vital role along the development of modern and contemporary art, as we can now hardly indicate a single artwork that stands by its pure aesthetics; such situation only intensifies in the era of globalization, urbanization and information-explosion. On the other hand, while clusters of art practices appropriating and rebinding the social reality, a much longer list of analogous terminologies including public art, community art, participatory art, and activism art, are still enriching and complicating the concept SEA in the realm of interdisciplinary scholarship.