About COMbART

The 21st century has seen various upheavals and a continuous resurgence of protest revolutions leading to social change. We can take as an example the Arab Spring, that took place in North Africa and in the Middle East, from 2010 onwards. These movements fought for justice, democracy, human rights, the dignity of life, and against police and/or (para)military abuses. In the same period, several protests also erupted because of the financial crisis, mainly in southern European countries. In other contexts, such as Brazil, Hong Kong, Kenya or Senegal, there have also been massive dynamics of protest, directed at power. At the same time, the post-pandemic period saw large-scale wars break out. The 21st century has been marked by constant global insecurity, in the sense that there have been several military and political confrontations, from Ukraine and Russia, through the conflicts in Sudan, Israel and Palestine.

At the same time, we are witnessing the rise of populism, xenophobic and homophobic discourses, employed by a far-right that threatens a set of values that we thought were guaranteed. Change, resistance and opposition have often been brought about through art. In the present century we are witnessing the revival of political art. It is increasingly common for artists to engage in the defense of political ideologies and in the elaboration of activist practices engaged with different social movements — such as climate justice, feminist, LGBTQIA+, anti-racist movements, among others. This notion of political art dialogues with multiple performance practices and performativities related to the broader field of artistic creation. These aesthetic and visual protests, in fact, demonstrate the transformative potential of individuals as social agents, that is, they show that any individual is capable of carrying out aesthetic-political actions. Historically, the arts have been associated with revolutionary processes of various types. In addition to the collective dimension of the revolution, artists who adopted a political position and portrayed revolution and protest in their artistic creations are also important.

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