Activist art is when art expressions are aimed to raise awareness and bring about change in the world. Explore this visual showcase of activist art from around the world. It includes pages on music, visual art, poetry, performance art, animation, puppets and protest signs.
Visual art can include all sorts of things, from mixed-media to junk. It can be a great way to express yourself and share those expressions with others. You can display it. You can wear it! (see Vivienne Westwood’s fashion activism).
Working with their feelings, after a healthy relationships lesson on FGM (female genital mutilation), Year 5 and 6 students spent a day learning about craftivism and cross-stitch activism.
They created a cross-stitch banner in the shape of a heart. This heART shares their messages for gender and sexuality rights and equalities and hangs in the school hall.
The Ruler Skirt was created by six teenagers from Merthyr. The idea for the ruler skirt sprang from an awareness that some boys use rulers to lift up girls’ skirts. They graffitied over 20 rulers with all the negative things they wanted to stop hearing and some positive things that they wanted to see change. The ruler skirt became a way of making visible the hurtful and often hidden experiences of sexual harassment. The skirt has been worn in school assemblies, at the Senedd and at the 2015 Welsh Women’s Aid conference. Read more about the girls’ creative activism here.
“Art has added energy to advocacy – and it reaches people at deeper emotional levels, conveying what cannot be said with mere facts” Alternate.org
Listen to Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry talk about expressing what matters to you through art and Grayon’s lectures on how anything can be art.
Find out more about the legacy of feminist art and activism through the Museum of Contemporary Art, California exhibition WACK or the Brooklyn Museum, New York exhibition AgitProp!
Explore this visual showcase of activist art from around the world. It includes pages on music, visual art, poetry, performance art, animation, puppets and protest signs.
For how you can get involved in the visual arts and more, see: ArtWorks, Engage Cymru, National Youth Arts, Circuit Tate.
