Tackling social and political issues through the gallery environment is unarguably the most hypocritical of all art practices. The very notion of deciding to make a political artwork is inherently insincere and disingenuous, immediately calling into question your intent and aims. If you are so concerned, as you should be, with the social or political issue you are tackling and if you are passionate and therefore want to provoke as change as possible, targeting such an audience as a gallery attracts, predominantly a white middle-class elite, is the epitome of pretentious. Why target such a narrow audience? The bigger the audience, the more people you can inspire and the more likely change is to occur.
Your audience
What change do you expect this gallery audience to create? This is an audience who is more concerned about the wine and nibbles on the table than the work in the gallery, more occupied with reading meaning into the most subtle of detail than to even contemplate doing something about what you’re saying. How does blowing pig's blood through a straw with a subtle reference to the human rights abuses being carried out in Chechnya really affect the people of Chechnya? It doesn't.
Your paradox
There is a paradox. You are making artwork about an issue. You have no authority on the issue unless you are passionate about it. You aren't passionate about it if you care so little as to let fifteen middle-aged intellectuals pat each other on the back because of their superior morality after watching you splatter your pig's blood up the pristine white walls of this suffocating little box. You are their slave. You clear their consciouses. You are the ruiner of the world.
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