There’s this song I remember from when I was younger—“Justify my love…”—it’s a Madonna song that came out when I was about ten years old, likely something I shouldn’t have known about… but nonetheless, the hook started playing in my head the other day in the context of something artists often feel we have to do: justify our work.
We’re trained to do this – to filter our art through the lenses of theory, history, or curatorial validation. Especially those of us who went through art school, earned MFAs, and learned how to speak to the “art world” in it’s dominant academic language of high-browed pretentiousness.
But there’s a danger in this disconnect, especially when it enters the studio.
At some point, I started asking:
What if the work just is? What if our job as artists is to just let it be?
What if we stopped explaining or seeking to prove it through someone else’s voice?
No artist makes their work because of a theory. The theory on the other hand emerges from the artwork that was created. Art is far more advanced that what any theory could contain or attempt to explain.
We Know the Lineage — It’s in Our Bones
There’s a pressure, especially in the art world, to cite and reference—to wrap everything in theory. As if your work isn’t “serious” or “important” unless you tie it to a white European male philosopher or quote from a famous artist who died a few decades ago. You’re not disconnected from knowledge if you don’t frame your work in Eurocentric terms.
We read the books. We know the theory and the history. We are the evidence, the theory, and the counter-theory in creative form. The words cannot contain us and what we create.
You don’t need to cite anyone or any theory to validate your artistic practice.
You don’t need to cite anyone or any theory to validate your artistic practice.
Nsenga Knight
As artists, we are already engaging with a deeper knowledge system.
As artists, we are already engaging with a deeper knowledge system.
We already carry theory, history, and lineage in our bones. It’s in the bloodline of what we do, whether or not we name it in the expected academic language. That doesn’t mean we ignore context—it means we trust that we are enough. That our work has value even if it doesn’t tick someone else’s box.
If someone needs context or justification, let the curators and historians do their job. That’s what they’re trained to do.
Our job is to make the work—and to honor the spark that wants to come into the world through us.
The Work Has Its Own Voice
So many of us are highly educated artists. We’ve got our MFAs, we studied under major figures, we read all the texts. We know the theory. We know how to frame our work in a way that makes it legible to critics, curators, and funders. But what happens when that knowledge, that learned behavior, begins to constrain the actual making?
what I really wanted was to make more space for myself in the work: to go forward in it, without anyone questioning the steps I was taking or the path I was on.
Nsenga Knight
When I was in grad school, I remember craving the moment I’d be done so I could get my mind back. My voice. My authorship. I was so overloaded with feedback, opinions, critiques—people constantly offering input that I feared that I might not be hearing the work with clarity anymore. Yes, I made pieces during that time that I’m proud of. But after graduating, what I really wanted was to make more space for myself in the work: to go forward in it, without anyone questioning the steps I was taking or the path I was on.
My role as the artist is to allow it to come into the world so that it can be heard.
Do What Is Yours to Do
You don’t have to make “the most radical project of the century” for your work to matter. In all of life, not just art, you just need to do what is yours to do. Whether that’s a boycott of Israeli products to stop the genocidal state or brushstroke. A poem or a pass on purchasing some gold from Dubai to support the people of Sudan. One action is a contribution to the collective. Just make your mark.
Moses didn’t destroy Pharaoh’s army himself. He struck the water. The inspiration and power came from Allah. He handled the rest.
Can we be the hand that Allah strikes with?
Our work is powerful not because we control the outcome —
but because we show up with sincerity, courage, and faith to allow power and inspiration to come through us.
Artists: Make What You’re Called to Make
So if a drawing wants to be made, make it.
If a sculpture is asking to be born, give it life.
If a piece resists explanation but won’t let you sleep, trust it will show its meaning to you in the making.
You don’t need to wait until the footnotes are deep enough.
You don’t need a perfect artist statement to begin.
The artwork can come first.
And in the act of making, you may discover that the work doesn’t need to be justified at all.
It just needed to be witnessed.
You don’t need to justify your love—for your culture, for your ancestors, for your materials, for your process, your people, for Truth.
You just need to honor it.
Share this blog post with an artist who needs permission to trust their own voice.
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Further Reading
[3]: A Philosophical Perspective on Intuition as a Method within Artistic Process.
[4]: Centrality of the creative process: Intuition, autotelic flow, and childhood adversity.
[5]: Decolonizing Art History. Catherine Grant and Dorothy Price.
[6]: The Nomadic Implications of an Arts-Based Methodology of Intuition.
[7]: The Invention of Art: A Cultural History by Larry Shiner
[8]: Intuition and Art, by Louis Arnaud Reid