Artivism connects art and activism. It focuses on how art in its multiple forms can embrace political intention, or how political action can become creative, poetic, sensorial. Artivism looks for new ways of political intervention, opens up new forms of disobedience and action that move beyond traditional paradigms of activism. This encounter between art and activism also shakes our representations of artistic practice, teasing it out of its usual circuits and habitats such as galleries and museums into the domain of daily life and public space. Art is not constrained anymore to the representation of reality but engages in its transformation.
Artivism uses creativity to raise awareness, mobilise, and inspire the spectator. Such indiscipline does not pretend to change the world through creation, but has the conviction that change takes shape through individual acts and awareness and through inviting artistic reflection into the gestures of everyday life. Working together day by day we can encourage the construction of a society that is more aware, faire, inclusive, sustainable.
Artivism is open to all: it can be practiced by artists, activists but also anyone whishing to take part. Artivism can give voice or visibility to members of minorities who are silenced in other spaces. It can offer a space for mobilisation but also for socialisation: getting in touch with others who share the same concern or the same situation, and finding strength in the connection. Artivism invites for sharing emotions, desires and boosting solidarity.
Artivism can be poetic, joyful, creative, funny, cruel, ridicule, utopic, irreverent, dark. It can use a range of different media: painting, drawing, photography, voice, body, music, word… it complex and diverse, difficult to pin down, if not through creativity. Artivism stirs social change and calls for new forms of artistic and political action. Artivism invites to reinvent life with art
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