Активизм және өнер: әлеуметтік өзгерістердің құралы

Protest art is the creative works produced by activists and social movements. It is a traditional means of communication, utilized by a cross section of collectives and the state to inform and persuade citizens. Protest art helps arouse base emotions in their audiences, and in return may increase the climate of tension and create new opportunities to dissent. Since art, unlike other forms of dissent, takes few financial resources, less financially able groups and parties can rely more on performance art and street art as an affordable tactic. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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 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. The idea that “the personal is the political,” that is, the notion that personal revelation through art can be a political tool, 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” and are used to articulate and negotiate issues of self representation, empowerment, and community identity. 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. In the political sphere, the militancy and identity politics of the period fostered the conditions out of which activist art arose.

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.” 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” The Soweto uprising marked the beginning of social change in South Africa. Resistance art grew out of the Black Consciousness Movement, a grass roots anti Apartheid movement that emerged in the 1960s led by the charismatic activist Steve Biko. Much of the art was public, taking the form of murals, banners, posters, t shirts and graffiti with political messages that were confrontational and focused on the realities of life in a segregated South Africa. Willie Bester is one of South Africa's most well known artists who originally began as a resistance artist. Using materials assembled from garbage, Bester builds up surfaces into relief and then paints the surface with oil paint. His works commented on important black South African figures and aspects important to his community. South African resistance artists do not exclusively deal with race nor do they have to be from the townships. Another artist, Jane Alexander, has dealt with the atrocities of apartheid from a white perspective. Her resistance art deals with the unhealthy society that continues in post apartheid South Africa.

"Humanitarian satire art" was a term introduced by author Lexa Brenner. This form of activist art uses seriocomedy, controversial images, and political statements. The works mock society and give the viewers the ability to interpret their works in many different ways. The majority of the works are built around the idea of promoting changes within society over current world issues. Works are usually left in hidden places, which citizens will eventually find. The majority of humanitarian satire artworks show political messages, most often alluding to controversial political messages, revolving around contemporary social issues.

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics archive currently contains more than 85,000 posters and has the largest collection of post World War II social justice posters in the United States and the second largest in the world. Many university libraries have extensive collections including the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at University of Michigan documents the history of social protest movements and marginalized political communities from the 19th century to the present.