Paper Cuts, Politics & Permission: My Conversation with Detroit Artist Bec Young by Alifa Chowdhury (SiD27 Alum)
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- Paper Cuts, Politics & Permission: My Conversation with Detroit Artist Bec Young by Alifa Chowdhury (SiD27 Alum)
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Text in Bec Young's piece.
"A revolution must be made upon a declaration of aspirations and not upon bitterness." (Top)
Two fiery activists, organizers, movement founders, and writers who began, throughout the gritty reality of post-industrializing Detroit, envisioning and creating a better world. They've worked to bring humanity together to create solutions through a sense of belonging, with the notion of common good, and from the ground up. (middle projected on road).
When I sat down to talk with Detroit-based visual artist Bec Young, I didn’t expect to begin the interview with an apology. But like many first attempts at something new, mine came with mistakes. I had created a piece of art for Semester in Detroit, and in doing so, I had unknowingly used one of Bec’s works without reaching out for permission. It wasn’t out of malice, just inexperience. I had found the image online and thought of it as a kind of open inspiration, without fully understanding what that meant in the visual art space.
Bec responded with kindness and clarity. She explained how different visual art is from something like musical sampling, how asking, crediting, and respecting artistic ownership are essential, even if the work is non-commercial. What stayed with me most was the way she navigated that moment with grace, not in a way that excused what I did, but in a way that made room for learning. “I understand you weren’t making money off it,” she said. “But I was surprised. That was my piece.”
We moved forward, not brushing it aside, but allowing it to shape the conversation that followed with more honesty, care, and mutual respect.
Detroit as Root and Rhythm
Bec isn’t originally from Detroit— she grew up in Ann Arbor — but her heart, her art, and her politics all grew from Detroit soil. She first moved to the city at 22, pulled into the orbit of Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs, and their radical experiment in living otherwise. She joined Detroit Summer, an intergenerational community program started by the Boggses geared towards empowering youth to organize within their neighborhoods. Through them, she became part of community bike programs like Back Alley Bikes, and began learning how art could be more than something framed: It could be part of the landscape of resistance.
Even when Bec moved to Pittsburgh for almost a decade, her prints still carried Detroit with them. “It felt like a part of my soul,” she told me. She made work inspired by the Boggses, contributed to Justseeds’ Celebrate People’s History posters, and once got to show Grace a cut-layer piece she made of her and Jimmy. Bec remembered that Grace looked at the print and said, “It’s missing something green.” Bec then revealed the second paper cut layer, filled with plants and garden imagery. Grace smiled and said, “‘I love it.’ It gave me goosebumps.” To have your art affirmed by someone like Grace Lee Boggs isn’t just validation. It's a form of passing the torch.
Art as Tension, Not Decoration
Bec’s relationship to art is deeply tied to questions of ethics, community, and power. One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was when she recalled a thought exercise from an early art class. The instructor asked: Would you accept $5,000 to make a piece exactly as directed? Many said yes until he added, “The client is a Nazi.”
That prompt stayed with Bec. It forced her, as a young artist, to confront the reality that art doesn’t just live in a vacuum. It’s always in relation to money, to systems, to who gets to tell the story.
This tension between sustaining yourself and staying true to your politics runs through Bec’s journey. “Art is not my full-time job,” she told me. “I realized that even at the top, people are compromising constantly. I didn’t want that.” So she chose a path that gave her more control over how her art entered the world, even if it meant less time for it.
Still, she’s part of Justseeds, a collective of 40 artists across North America using printmaking, illustration, and public installations to support movements for social and environmental justice. Unlike the alienation of mainstream art institutions, Justseeds is about decentralization, cooperation, and shared values. “We all do our own thing, but we come together for projects, for communities,” she said.
But artistic collaboration doesn't erase the complexities of power.
So, I asked Bec what felt like an essential — and uncomfortable — question: How does she, as a white artist in a predominantly Black city, navigate making art about Black and Indigenous people without falling into extraction or saviorism?
Her answer was honest and thoughtful. “There’s so much negative imagery of Black people in the media,” she said. “I want to put out positive images. It would feel disingenuous to leave Black people out of my art when that’s the community I live in.” She doesn’t claim neutrality. She doesn’t claim expertise. She makes it collaborative, often working with organizations led by people of color to co-create or seek blessing before sharing work. “I’m open to better ways,” she said. That humility is how representation can be handled with care rather than co-optation.
Art as Provocation, Not Comfort
Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Bec what kind of art she thinks she should be making right now. She flipped the question: “What should I be making?”
I told her: Art that people don’t want to see.
We’re in a moment where fascism is not creeping in — it’s stomping. Where genocide is livestreamed. Where discomfort is framed as violence, and violence is softened as defense. And so art must agitate. It must disturb the comfortable, provoke the complacent, and rupture the sanitized narratives of empire and settler innocence. I believe in the kind of art that holds tension because tension births change.
And Bec agreed. She got it.
The Politics of Collaboration
We closed our conversation with a few more reflections on collectivity. I invited her to our next Tahrir Coalition art build. “Most of us aren’t great,” I said. “But we try.”
What I learned from Bec, besides the importance of getting permission before using someone’s work, is that art is less about mastery and more about movement. It’s less about polish, more about presence. It’s about holding complexity without apology. And most of all, it’s about showing up, for community, for justice, for yourself.
Even if it’s with scissors and glue.
Even if you’re still learning the rules.
Alifa Chowdhury is a Semester in Detroit alumnus (SiD27). She interviewed Bec Young shortly before graduating in 2025. Read more about Bec Young at becyoung.com, plus check out her work on JustSeeds, where you can purchase her original Grace Lee & Jimmy Boggs offset print poster.