(chill electronic music) - For me, art has been a tool for saving myself in a sense.

Hi, my name is Arjae Thompson.

I also go by Sensei, but I am a North Nashville based artist, educator, SO activists.

Art means a couple of things to me.

I think, one, it's one of the most top tier versions of communication.

When words and language can like fail you sometimes or connotation, you can put it in image or you can do a movement and then automatically it ambulates the person's spine or their spirit.

Art just means liberation in every sense of the word.

We can be trapped in bodies or we can be trapped in certain situations, but that spark of expression and stuff like that, I think that's very much innate and it doesn't have to be pretty or cute or whatever, it just has to be.

I like it as a liberatory tool and a communication tool.

So one of the murals that I really like the story and just the process of creating is the Adanedi mural that's at the farmer's market.

So if you look at one aspect of the mural, you'll see that there's themes that echo in the the second part and you can like kind of go back and forth.

There's seasons, there's crests and troughs and trying to maintain that balance and in doing that, I think the impact that I want my art to have is at least be cathartic in some regard but also maybe it's like a call to action.

Maybe it's like a inspiring thing.

I know that for me art has been a tool for saving myself in a sense.

Whenever I create, whether it's a cartoon or a graphic design or something like that, a painting, that's what I'm trying to push, how are we more free?

- [Narrator] This NPT Arts Break is made possible by the generous support of the Martha Rivers Ingram Advised Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.