Editing Protest art (section)

==Activist art==
Activist art represents and includes aesthetic, sociopolitical, and technological developments that have attempted to challenge and complicate the traditional boundaries and hierarchies of culture as represented by those in power. The aim of activist artists is to create art that is a form of political or social currency, actively addressing cultural power structures rather than representing them or simply describing them.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Tate|title=Activist art – Art Term|url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/activist-art|access-date=2022-01-08|website=Tate|language=en-GB}}</ref> Like protest art, activist art practice emerged partly out of a call for art to be connected to a wider audience, and to open up spaces where the marginalized and disenfranchised can be seen and heard. It is important to note that Activist artists are not always your typical “artist.” Their works are individually created, and many of these individuals might not even consider themselves artists, but rather activists.<ref name="Sommer Klöckner 2021 p60-75">{{cite journal |last1=Sommer |first1=Laura Kim |last2=Klöckner |first2=Christian Andreas |title=Does activist art have the capacity to raise awareness in audiences?—A study on climate change art at the ArtCOP21 event in Paris. |journal=Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts |date=February 2021 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=60–75 |doi=10.1037/aca0000247 |hdl=11250/3032758 |s2cid=198764810 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> An example of activist artwork by someone who doesn't consider themselves to be an artist is a “Protester with Damien Hirst sign during the first week of [[Occupy Wall Street]], September 2011.” This is someone who is using someone else's artwork but then adding a message in text over the work to address a political or social issue. An example of activist art where someone considers themself an artist is the work “Art Workers’ Coalition, circa 1971 (photo Mehdi Khonsari)” where Mehdi's message is that artwork's being connected to capitalism, and how artists are influenced and catering to the financial elites of the world.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sholette |first1=Gregory |title=Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism |date=2017 |publisher=Pluto Press |doi=10.2307/j.ctt1n7qkm9 |isbn=978-0-7453-3688-6 |jstor=j.ctt1n7qkm9 |s2cid=150202317 }}{{page needed|date=March 2023}}</ref>

Activist art incorporates the use of public space to address socio-political issues and to encourage community and public participation as a means of bringing about social change.  It aims to affect social change by engaging in active processes of representation that work to foster participation in dialogue, raise consciousness, and empower individuals and communities.  The need to ensure the continued impact of a work by sustaining the public participation process it initiated is also a challenge for many activist artists.  It often requires the artist to establish relationships within the communities where projects take place. Many active artists have been addressing the issue of climate change in their works, but this is just an example of one of many political artworks being created through activist art.<ref name="Sommer Klöckner 2021 p60-75"/>

If social movements are understood as “repeated public displays” of alternative political and cultural values,<ref>Reed, T.V., The art of protest : culture and activism from the civil rights movement to the streets of Seattle.  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) xiv.</ref> then activist art is significant in articulating such alternative views.  Activist art is also important to the dimension of culture and an understanding of its importance alongside political, economical, and social forces in movements and acts of social change.  One should be wary of conflating activist art with political art, as doing so obscures critical differences in methodology, strategy, and activist goals.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

===Historical basis in art and politics===
Activist art cites its origins from a particular artistic and political climate.  In the art world, performance art of the late 1960s to the 70s worked to broaden aesthetic boundaries within [[visual arts]] and traditional [[theatre]], blurring the rigidly construed distinction between the two.  Protest art involves creative works grounded in the act of addressing political or social issues. Protest art is a medium that is accessible to all socioeconomic classes and represents an innovative tool to expand opportunity structures. The transient, interdisciplinary, and hybrid nature of performance art allowed for audience engagement.  The openness and immediacy of the medium invited public participation, and the nature of the artistic medium was a hub for media attention.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

Emerging forms of feminism and [[feminist art]] of the time was particularly influential to activist art. The Feminist Art movement emerged in the early 60s during the [[Second-wave feminism|second wave of feminism]]. Feminist artists worldwide set out to re-establish the founding pillars and reception of contemporary art. The movement inspired change, reshaped cultural attitudes and transformed gender stereotypes in the arts.<ref>{{Cite web|title=A Guide to the Feminist Art Movement|url=https://www.riseart.com/guide/2418/guide-to-the-feminist-art-movement|access-date=2022-01-08|website=Rise Art|language=en}}</ref> The idea that “[[The personal is political|the personal is the political]],” that is, the notion that personal revelation through art can be a political tool,<ref>Suzanne Lacy, ed.  Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art.  (Seattle: Bay Press Inc., 1995) 27</ref> guided much activist art in its study of the public dimensions to private experience.  The strategies deployed by feminist artists parallel those by artists working in activist art.  Such strategies often involved “collaboration, dialogue, a constant questioning of aesthetic and social assumptions, and a new respect for audience”<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lippard |first=Lucy R. |url=http://archive.org/details/pinkglassswansel0000lipp |title=The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art |publisher=[[New Press]] |year=1995 |isbn=978-1-56584-213-7 |pages=174 |language=en |url-access=registration}}</ref> and are used to articulate and negotiate issues of self-representation, empowerment, and community identity.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

[[Conceptual Art]] sought to expand aesthetic boundaries in its critique of notions of the art object and the commodity system within which it is circulated as currency.  Conceptual artists experimented with unconventional materials and processes of art production.  Grounded by strategies rooted in the real world, projects in conceptual art demanded viewer participation and were exhibited outside of the traditional and exclusive space of the art gallery, thus making the work accessible to the public.  Similarly, collaborative methods of execution and expertise drawn from outside the art world are often employed in activist art so as to attain its goals for community and public participation.  Parallel to the emphasis on ideas that conceptual art endorsed, activist art is process-oriented, seeking to expose embedded power relationships through its process of creation.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

In the political sphere, the militancy and identity politics of the period fostered the conditions out of which activist art arose.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

===Strategy and practice===
In practice, activist art may often take the form of temporal interventions, such as performance, media events, exhibitions, and installations.  It is also common to employ mainstream media techniques (through the use of billboards, posters, advertising, newspaper inserts…etc.).  By making use of these commercial distributive channels of commerce, this technique is particularly effective in conveying messages that reveal and subvert its usual intentions.

The use of public participation as a strategy of activating individuals and communities to become a “catalyst for change” is important to activist art.  In this context, participation becomes an act of self-expression or self-representation by the entire community.  Creative expression empowers individuals by creating a space in which their voices can be heard and in which they can engage in a dialogue with one another, and with the issues in which they have a personal stake.

The Artist and Homeless Collaborative is an example of a project that works with strategies of public participation as a means of individual and community empowerment.  It is an affiliation of artists, arts professionals and women, children and teenagers living in NYC shelters, the A & HC believe that their work in a collaborative project of art-making offers the residents a “positive experience of self-motivation and helps them regain what the shelter system and circumstances of lives destroy: a sense of individual identity and confidence in human interaction.”<ref name=Wolper1995>{{cite book |last1=Wolper |first1=Andrea |chapter=Making Art, Reclaiming Live: The Artist and Homeless Collaborative |pages=251–282 |editor1-last=Felshin |editor1-first=Nina |title=But is it Art?: The Spirit of Art as Activism |date=1995 |publisher=Bay Press |isbn=978-0-941920-29-2 |oclc=1148006167 |url=https://archive.org/details/butisitartspirit0000unse }}</ref> The process of engaging the community in a dialogue with dominant and public discourses about the issue of homelessness is described in a statement by its founder, Hope Sandrow: “The relevancy of art to a community is exhibited in artworks where the homeless speak directly to the public and in discussion that consider the relationship art has to their lives.  The practice of creating art stimulates those living in shelters from a state of malaise to active participation in the artistic process”<ref name=Wolper1995/>

The A & HC came into being at a time when a critique of the makers, sellers, and consumers of art that addressed social concerns became increasingly pronounced.  Critics argued that the very works of art whose purpose was to provoke political, social and cultural conversation were confined within the exclusive and privileged space of galleries museums, and private collections.  By contrast, the A & HC was an attempt to bridge the gap between art production and social action, thus allowing for the work subjects that were previously excluded and silenced to be heard.