"Rather than an object for individual contemplation, produced by a distant art specialist for an exclusive art-educated audience equipped to understand its complex visual language, new genre public artists seek to engage (nonart) issues in the hearts and the minds of the "average man on the street" or "real people" outside the art world. 

In doing so, they seek to empower the audience by directly involving them in the making of the art work, either as subjects or, better, as producers themselves.

By extending the hitherto specialized privilege of art-making and art appreciation to a larger number and broader range of people (not restricted to the privileged minority of the dominant class, gender, race, and sexual orientation), new genre public artists hope to make art more familiar and accessible (because it is now not only for the "public" but by the "public").

For the proponents of new gender public art, this ownership of art, or more generally cultural representation, is the basis for the integration of art and everyday life and a powerful force toward social and political change." (Kwon, 2002: 107)