The often-contradictory statements regarding what culture is and how we relate to it reveal a fundamental struggle with visuality. When we deem culture, especially heritage, as precious and sacred, we sanctify it, making it uncriticizable. Yet, our deeply ingrained social stereotypes, roles, and assumptions are largely inherited from the very arts and narratives our ancestors leveraged for social cohesion and political power. This is the crux of the problem. If we cannot critically question this inheritance — our visuality that regulates our reality—how can we build empathy for the other? The solution is not to retroactively censor the past, but to engage in visual literacy to become aware of the power-driven origins of the stories we say and reiterate among us. Only by demystifying the ‘sacred’ narratives can we liberate ourselves and make culture a strategic tool for global solidarity.
