Art can be a powerful tool for protest, activism, and resistance.
The following is a selection of books published within the past 15 years from the Library’s collection on themes of activism and protest in art. A very small selection of artist monographs are included, though there are countless others that explore social issues, political injustices, and use their art as a form of resistance.
Activism (Documents of Contemporary Art)
Activism is a critical point of contention for institutions and genealogies of contemporary art around the world. Yet artists have consistently engaged in activist discourse, lending their skills to social movements, and regularly participating in civil and social rights campaigns while also boycotting cultural institutions and exerting significant pressure on them. This timely volume, edited by Tom Snow and Afonso Ramos, addresses an extraordinary moment in debates over the institutional frameworks and networks of art including large-scale direct actions, as well as a radical rethinking of art venues and urban spaces according to racial, class, or gender-based disparities, including demonstrations against the extractive and exploitative practices of neoliberal accumulation and climate catastrophe.
Throughout history, artists and citizens have turned to protest art as a means of demonstrating social and political discontent. From the earliest broadsheets in the 1500s to engravings, photolithographs, prints, posters, murals, graffiti, and political cartoons, these endlessly inventive graphic forms have symbolized and spurred on power struggles, rebellions, spirited causes, and calls to arms. Spanning continents and centuries, Protest! presents a major new chronological look at protest graphics.
Talking to action : art, pedagogy, and activism in the Americas
Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy and Activism in the Americas is the first publication to bring together scholarship, critical essays, and documentation of collaborative community-based art making by researchers and artists from across the American hemisphere. This volume is a compendium of texts, analysis, and research documents from the Talking to Action research and exhibition platforms as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an initiative of the Getty.
The art of defiance : dissident culture and militant resistance in 1970s Iran by Peyman Vahabzadeh
Examines how the arts popularised militant resistance to the monarchy in 1970s Iran. At a time of growing state control, censorship and wholesale crackdown on opposition in post-1953 Iran, intellectuals and artists began to produce works that defied the Shah’s dictatorship and the regime’s ‘Great Civilisation’ propaganda.
Unspeakable acts : women, art, and sexual violence in the 1970s by Nancy Princenthal
A groundbreaking exploration of how women artists of the 1970s combined art and protest to make sexual violence visible, creating a new kind of art in the process…Award-winning author Nancy Princenthal takes on these enduring issues and weaves together a new history of performance, challenging us to reexamine the relationship between art and activism, and how we can apply the lessons of that turbulent era to today.
Whitewalling : art, race & protest in 3 acts by Aruna D’Souza
Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts reflects on…the long and troubled history of art and race in America. It lays bare how the art world–no less than the country at large–has persistently struggled with the politics of race, and the ways this struggle has influenced how museums, curators and artists wrestle with notions of free speech and the specter of censorship.
Shirin Neshat : facing history
In her mesmerizing films and photographs, Shirin Neshat (Iranian-American, b. Qazvin, 1957) examines the nuances of power and identity in the Islamic world–particularly in her native country of Iran, where she lived until 1975. This book, the companion volume to the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum exhibition of the same name, presents an array of Neshat’s most compelling works, illuminating the points at which cultural and political events have inflected her artistic practice.
Barbara Kruger : thinking of you, I mean me, I mean you
Since the mid-1970s, Barbara Kruger (born 1945) has been interrogating consumer culture in works that often combine visual and written language. In her singular graphic style, Kruger probes aspects of identity, desire and consumerism that are embedded in our everyday lives. This volume traces her continuously evolving practice to reveal how she adapts her work in accordance with the moment, site and context…This volume explores how her pictures and words remain urgently resonant in a rapidly changing world.
Guerrilla Girls : the art of behaving badly
The Guerrilla girls are a collective of political feminist artists who expose discrimination and corruption in art, film, politics, and pop culture all around the world. This book explores all their provocative street campaigns, unforgettable media appearances, and large-scale exhibitions.
