Scrolling onto whitehouse.gov, you are immediately confronted with a portrait of Donald Trump striking a dictatorial pose. In the tradition of Uncle Sam, Trump points his finger militantly towards an invisible “you.” It doesn’t take much looking past the blaring red, white, and blue of the US-American nationalism painting the screen to guess just who “you” might be “AMERICA IS BACK,” the webpage reads. “This will truly be the golden age of America.”

I flip through the president’s onslaught of actions and executive orders and I am reminded of headlines I’ve read only in dystopian fiction novels by the likes of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Octavia Butler’s prescient Parables series which began with Parable of the Sower (1993). From the removal of “Discriminatory Equity Ideology” aka diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and the termination of “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” to student deportations and an attempt to demolish the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Trump is threatening the production and preservation of knowledge across all communities in the US.

These orders also compromise artistic freedom. In February the president issued an edict directed to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) declaring that arts organizations are forbidden to use federal funds to promote DEI or “gender ideology” in their programs. NEA grant applicants must pledge to adhere to an executive order that discriminates against trans communities, as only “male” and “female” will now by recognized under US policy.

For Black artists on the ground here in New York, these funding issues are but a few more additions to the avalanche of hindrances they face as cultural workers at the whims of the endowed. “The way this country has historically worked is such that those who occupy the hiring rooms and hand out grants at arts organizations have always been white, cisgendered, and male,” performance artist Lambkin tells me. “Now, it’s systematically being placed in people’s minds that DEI translates to underqualified.”

In the wake of these orders, Black artists contemplate the repercussions of these initiatives on the future of Black art as they question the parts of their practices that will be most appealing to collectors, benefactors, and exhibitors. From Thelma Golden’s controversial coining of the term “post-Black,” which distinguished a generation of artists she believed should not be defined by their race in the 1990s, to the renaissance of Black figuration we have seen since the inception of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, “representation” has undergone many iterations of meaning in the art world and remains a tricky balancing act for Black artists.

“Of course I’m nervous about funding,” says sculptor and designer Nifemi Ogunro. “As someone already fighting to exist in the space of Black abstraction, [I believe] these institutions deal the cards and we just play the game. I’m worried about the types of stories people will be allowed to tell. And I’m curious if through all of these initiatives, abstraction will become a more attractive space because it’s less legible and therefore more fugitive.”

Presenting institutions and granting organizations that receive federal funding have already begun to sanitize their programs in accordance with the Trump administration’s directives. State funding has been withdrawn from exhibitions thematically rooted in the experiences of people of color, like Before the Americas, which was supposed to showcase works by Afro-Latino, Caribbean, and African American artists at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C.

Grant programs designed to help narrow the gap between the resources afforded to white artists and artists of color are also being eliminated. As musician and performer Embaci pointed out to me, in March “the San Francisco Symphony had to pause its Emerging Black Composers Project due to new directives labeling such initiatives as discriminatory.” She continues: “It’s unsettling to see how much has already changed. It makes me question what the future holds.”

Across universities, as critical race theory curricula come under fire, professors rewrite their syllabi and bury pedagogical histories in courses with nondescript titles in efforts to circumvent new policies. On these presumptuous preventative measures in academia, moving-image artist and educator Amina Ross says that across academic institutions they repeatedly witness “compulsory compliance” — the practice of self-directed censoring before the censorship even begins.

“At some point being a good educator and a decent person requires getting in trouble. It’s this continual capitulation to authority that’s really frustrating,” Ross says. “First, we can’t say ‘Zionist’. Next, we can’t depict trans people. And now we can’t talk about slavery. It’s all clearly connected: most academic institutions are a direct arm of the state and are deeply aligned with maintaining the status quo.”

Despite this federal fearmongering, Black artists and cultural workers continue to forge alternative pathways for disseminating resources, presenting work, and producing knowledge. Being based in New York, I look to the work of DIY collectives here fostering creative expression and political education that fall outside of institutional realms. BlackMass Publishing for example, is an independent press for zines and books by Black artists that also organizes workshops grounded in collective and improvisational approaches to Black world-building.

Mutual aid initiatives like Oluwakemi Oritsejafor’s Sola Market provide immeasurable support to artists struggling to access the tools they need for their projects, offering materials and equipment to artists at affordable rates. For programming I have found home in curatorial projects like Malcolm-x Betts and Arien Wilkerson’s Black Aesthetics, an experimental dance series that brings emerging Black movement artists to Judson Church on Wednesdays, and at screenings organized by Melissa Lyde, whose roving Alfreda’s Cinema celebrates Black stories on screen at theaters such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, while aiming to create a brick-and-mortar micro-cinema in the historically Black neighborhood of Brownsville.

It’s such ambitious and self-led ventures that provide a glimmer of relief amid these haunted circumstances. History has shown us that arts, culture, and education tend to come under siege as right-winged leaders assert ideological control over the state. We need not look past the burning of books and the seizing of artworks across fascist regimes to know that extremism is predicated on a psycho-social submission to authority within all aspects of human life. So as times continue to darken and the state further encroaches on the systems we have lovingly built to get us closer to the worlds we want to inhabit, I hold even more closely my friends and peers who are still dreaming, building, and inhabiting planet other.

Daniella Brito is a Dominican-American writer and curator from New York City. Trained in art history, Brito draws from visual cultural studies, queer theory, and decolonial aesthetics within their writing to document queer performance histories. Their writing has appeared in publications like The Brooklyn Rail, The Kitchen Magazine, Hyperallergic, e_flux, and elsewhere. They have written exhibition catalogues for institutions like The Studio Museum in Harlem, Rutgers University, Deli Gallery, among others. Brito is currently a Curatorial Specialist at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a Curatorial Fellow with RADA Collaborative.