“What do you believe in?” artist Vanessa German asks the audience. The packed lecture room on the second floor of the Wellin Art Museum is silent, contemplating. Someone then raises their hand and says, “truth,” next we hear “knowledge” and lastly, “listening.” German pauses, then replies with, “I believe in the power of art, and I believe in the power of love.”

Vanessa German is a proudly self-taught artist currently living in the neighborhood of Homewood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. German is an activist, photographer, poet and performance artist whose art has been displayed across the U.S. and whose sculpture is currently on display in Innovative Approaches Honored Traditions at the Wellin Museum. Her work focuses on the acts of loving and healing, both for herself and her community. German spoke at the Wellin Museum on Saturday, Sept. 9. She opened her presentation with a spoken word poem about the power of love over the horror of war, depicting a world where, instead of fighting with weapons, people fought with dance. At times humorous and satirical and at others tragic and pessimistic, the poem provided insight into how she views the world and served as a perfect opening statement for the rest of her presentation.

German identifies as female, African American and queer, and has experienced the hardships that come along with these labels. She uses sculpture as a way to finally do anything she wants, with no limitations inhibiting her. Through this form of expression, she realized that she was “making [her] own medicine” in a way that truly saved her life. Her first sculpture, titled “Power Figure to Keep Me Alive,” was her first experience in being completely limitless. The figure is made entirely of items she found in her house or on the ground outside, and as she talked, German stressed how important every piece of the figure was. Every piece of “Power Figure to Keep Me Alive,” as well as her other power figures, was placed strategically. Nothing is there by chance.

Her work soon escalated from small power figures to larger scale projects and projects across multiple mediums. She began experimenting with photography, specifically with the people in her neighborhood. A consistent theme in both her photography and painting is the image of the Black Madonna: a sculpture or painting of the Virgin Mary with dark skin, the earliest depiction of such dating back to medieval Poland. She dresses Homewood locals in robes, decorative headpieces and face paint to represent this image. The Black Madonna is a concept that German works with in multiple mediums. During her presentation, she told the audience a story about the time she took art catalogs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, appropriated them with images of the Black Madonna and then returned them to their place in the catalog racks for people to take.

As well as her art, her most direct link with her community is through her activism. Homewood has a statistically high level of crime, but she uses her art and its connection to love and healing to give the community a similar outlet to the one she uses for herself. Her newest community-based project is the ARThouse, located in Homewood. The ARThouse is a house that she bought and renovated as a specific place for both children and adults to create and express. German believes that it is important to teach “self-direction in art” as a way to understand that there is no right or wrong in art, just expression and love.

She concluded her presentation by bringing the topic back to the themes of love over war, stating that she “know[s] what human beings can do to each other and still believe[s] in the power of love,” and that, “if war worked to make peace, it would have worked already.” She shared more experiences about her experiences in activism and protesting both physically and through art, showing the audience how art can give anyone a voice because there are no limits to art. To Vanessa German, everything is art, and art is love.