10: Cara Marie Young on the Kwanzaa Kinara and the Endurance of Creativity

I find this question (what is the role of art in making a better world possible?) interesting since art making has always played a huge role in documenting the world as we know it to be—a vivid multimedia response to our social conditions. It’s a new year and a new chance to capture this experience each day. On the Kwanzaa Kinara, Creativity or Kuumba is a red candle. It’s a recollection of the blood, sweat, and tears that fuel the creative endeavors that helped Black communities survive and continue to create new things in the midst of every political climate. It’s a reminder that creative organizing has power and that what we make has potential to shift perspectives and break oppressive systems that seek to silence the voices our ancestors gave us—voices that will forever speak louder on the conditions of their existence. It’s also a reminder for peace, and to create a space for one another to exist. As an educator, linguist, and interdisciplinary artist, I see the work that I create as an echo of my brief existence in the analogy between the world that I live in and the world that we creatively seek to build. I think it’s important to remember that the art we create will always live beyond us.

Vita brevis, ars longa / Life is short, Art is long – Hippocrates

– Cara, January 2026

Cara Marie Young is an artist from Atlanta, Georgia based in Detroit, Michigan. Her current interdisciplinary painting practice is an evolving response to the human experience, concerned with issues of race in the American landscape and the reality of life in her own skin. The artist seeks to engage with the community around her, recently exhibiting work at the 101st Michigan House of Representatives in 2022 and 2023, at Olayami Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum and at The Feminist Art Museum in 2020. She was an exhibiting artist and speaker in the Race Forward Facing Race Conference in Fall 2016 at the Hilton Atlanta and a Dean’s Diversity Fellow at Wayne State University from 2019-21. The artist recently exhibited artwork at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American history from July-December of 2023 and at the Wright’s 2025 60th anniversary gala. The artist continually seeks to engage with new opportunities in the future. You can find her work on her website.