Current conceptualizations of youth impact the ways in which youth are understood and shape and limit the questions and policy solutions that educational theorists, practitioners and researchers can envision. This article asserts that critical arts pedagogies can create more expansive possibilities for research and practices aiming to support youth and allows for a focus on young people's knowledge production, systemic analysis and ways to support their transformative agency. Examining concepts from critical youth studies (CYS) scholarship and a framework for social justice arts education, this article applies these concepts to a research vignette of a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project that incorporates social justice art-making practices to present an example of a new way to counter dominant ways of thinking about youth. This article presents a multidimensional critical arts education framework that contextualizes conceptions of youth and youth practices in relationship to wider institutions, structures, and systems.