Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become
increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted
against capitalism, political authoritarianism, colonial legacies,
gentrification, but also in opposition to their own exploitation. They
have also absorbed and reflected forms of protest within their art
practice itself. The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art maps,
critiques, celebrates and historicises activist art, exploring its
current urgency alongside the processes which have given rise to
activism by artists, and activist forms of art.
Author Gregory Sholette approaches his subject from the unusual dual
perspective of commentator (as scholar and writer) and insider (as
activist artist). He describes a new wave of activist art taking place
not only within community-based protest groups, as it has for decades,
but also amongst professionally trained, MFA-bearing art practitioners,
many of whom, by choice or by circumstance, refuse to respect the
conventional borders separating painting from protest, or art from
utility. The book explores the subtle distinction between activist forms
of art and protest by artists, and proposes that contemporary activist
art and art activism constitute a broader paradigm shift that reflects
the crisis of contemporary capitalism.