"Freedom to make art is not the same thing as making art about freedom"
We’ve mistaken permission for liberation. The system pats us on the head, hands us our “creative freedom,” and says, Go ahead, make whatever you want. And we do—obediently. We churn out endless variations of “personal expression,” safely tucked within the boundaries of what can be consumed, approved, and hashtagged.
This isn’t freedom. It’s domesticated chaos—anesthetic rebellion in a white cube. The art world loves it because it looks radical while staying perfectly tame. Paint your rebellion, photograph your dissent, just don’t live it. Don’t make anything that tears through the polite skin of culture. Don’t make anything that questions the sacred economy of “artistic freedom” itself.
“Freedom to make art” is a sandbox. You can sculpt anything you want, as long as you stay inside the box. “Making art about freedom,” on the other hand, means smashing the box, questioning why it exists, who built it, and what invisible walls are keeping you inside it.
Most artists think they’re free because no one’s pointing a gun at them. But the gun’s been replaced by applause. You’re rewarded for being legible, for being cute, for making rebellion marketable. The cage doesn’t need bars anymore; it’s built from validation, grants, and residencies. And the bird inside—the so-called “free artist”—sings on command.
The tragedy is that art has become an accessory to its own captivity. The tools of freedom—paint, code, film, AI, sound—have piled up into a monument of potential energy that goes nowhere. We mistake abundance for autonomy. Just because the cage door is open doesn’t mean you’ve flown.
To make art about freedom is to risk something. It means confronting the machinery that defines what “art” even is. It means creating with stakes—spiritual, existential, cosmic stakes. It’s not about being allowed to make art; it’s about why art exists at all, and whether it can still tear a hole through the manufactured reality we’re trapped in.
So no, freedom to make art is not the same thing as making art about freedom. One flatters the system; the other exposes it. One celebrates access; the other demands transcendence.
Most artists have their wings clipped and call it a choice.
YOU ARE FREE TO FLY by Nuwan Shilpa Hennayake
