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16 pages, 283 KB

Open AccessArticle

El Museo de los Desplazados: An Anarchive as an Epistemic Practice of Urban Activism

by Óscar Salguero Montaño

Humans 2026, 6(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/humans6010010 - 16 Mar 2026

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This article analyses the Museo de los Desplazados (Museum of the Displaced), a collaborative platform conceived by the Left Hand Rotation collective to foster shared reflection on gentrification processes. This project takes the form of a collective and decentralised digital archive, functioning as an open, ‘in-process’ collaborative tool. Within the context of the proliferation of self-organised digital archives, this study explores how the Museum acts as a dynamic social object that articulates dispersed narratives. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of the ‘anarchive’, the research validates the hypothesis that there is a direct relationship between the profiles of autonomous collectives and their specific epistemic practices. The findings reveal that activists utilise the archive as a tool for legal defence, ‘heat-of-the-moment’ ethnography, and networking, thereby resisting ‘archival violence’ and constructing collective counter-memory. Ultimately, the Museum demonstrates that memory is not a guarded site, but a living network built through horizontal and rhizomatic collaboration. Full article

19 pages, 4676 KB

Open AccessCommunication

“Which Voices Are Heard? Who Is Silenced?”: Learning from Young People About the Climate Emergency Using Artivism as a Sustainable Pedagogy

by Inma Alvarez, Deborah Ayodele-Olajire, Gemma Burnside, Carolyn Cooke, Margaret Ebubedike, Alison Fox, Alison Glover, Lloyd Muriuki Wamai and Catriona Willis

Sustainability 2025, 17(21), 9825; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17219825 - 4 Nov 2025

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Abstract

This article reports on an international project involving higher education institutions working in partnership with third sector organizations, to explore facilitating children and young people in expressing their concerns and ideas about climate change directly to decision-makers. Children and young people were invited to engaged in ‘artivism’ (the use of art for activism) to create exhibitions for policymakers and business leaders in Scotland, Kenya and Nigeria. Through co-creation, underpinned by the principles of sustainable pedagogies, the project team created spaces and research methods exploring how artivism for climate action can be supported and enacted. The focus of this article is on the role of adults as local facilitators, educators, research team members, and exhibition attendees in facilitating, listening to, and engaging with children and young people as they express themselves and generate climate action through their artivism. It illustrates how adults enacting sustainable pedagogies, care and compassion are critical, and how arts-based education for sustainability involves pedagogies of collaboration and co-creation which entangle us with people, places, ideas, languages, materials and environments beyond our immediate educational settings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Higher Education for Sustainability)

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21 pages, 4612 KB

Open AccessArticle

Sòrò-Sókè: A Framing Analysis of Creative Resistance During Nigeria’s #EndSARS Movement

by Taiwo Afolabi and Friday Gabriel

Journal. Media 2025, 6(2), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6020069 - 7 May 2025

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3161

Abstract

This study examines the role of creative resistance, or “artivism”, in Nigeria’s #EndSARS movement, a youth-led campaign against police brutality that peaked in October 2020. Drawing on Robert Entman’s Framing Theory, it analyzes how different art forms reframed public perceptions of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and countered government efforts to delegitimize the protests. Using a qualitative approach, the research employs purposive sampling of Twitter-sourced art forms to explore how these pieces exposed systemic injustice, amplified protester voices, and mobilized local and global support. Findings reveal that artivists personalized SARS brutality, dismantled narratives portraying protesters as criminals, and invoked moral urgency through evocative symbolism, leveraging social media’s virality to sustain the movement’s momentum. The study highlights SARS’ paradoxical role as a state-sanctioned yet reviled entity, demonstrating how creative expressions clarified this ambiguity into a clarion call for reform. By situating #EndSARS within Nigeria’s protest legacy, this analysis underscores art’s transformative power in digital-age activism, offering a blueprint for resistance against oppression. It contributes to scholarship on social movements by illustrating how art and technology intersect to challenge power, preserve collective memory, and demand accountability, with implications for future struggles in Nigeria and beyond. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Journalism in Africa: New Trends)

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19 pages, 1536 KB

Open AccessArticle

Ar(c)tivism and Policing: Unveiling the Theatrics of Justice and Resistance in Nigeria’s S

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-Sókè Movement

by Friday Gabriel and Taiwo Afolabi

Arts 2025, 14(3), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14030046 - 23 Apr 2025

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3026

Abstract

The S

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-Sókè movement, sparked by Nigeria’s 2020 #EndSARS protests, represents a pivotal stand against systemic injustice, with its Yoruba rallying cry “S

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-sókè” (“Speak Up” or “Speak Louder”) capturing the collective demand [...] Read more.

The S

\overset{̀}{ọ}

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-Sókè movement, sparked by Nigeria’s 2020 #EndSARS protests, represents a pivotal stand against systemic injustice, with its Yoruba rallying cry “S

\overset{̀}{ọ}

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-sókè” (“Speak Up” or “Speak Louder”) capturing the collective demand to end police brutality, notably, by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). This study employs Digital Artivism as its theoretical lens to investigate the fusion of art and activism within the movement, analyzing how creative and performative expressions amplified its message and mobilized diverse populations. Applying Feldman’s Model of Art Criticism, it dissects the theatrical elements of selected protest artworks, revealing their role in inciting resistance and fostering solidarity in the pursuit of justice. By situating S

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-Sókè within global discourses on art and social justice, this research underscores its significance as a model of artivism’s power to challenge oppressive systems and inspire collective action. The critique of these artworks illustrates their lasting influence on Nigeria’s socio-political landscape and their resonance with worldwide struggles against systemic violence and inequality. Highlighting the transformative potential of theatrical activism, this study advances understanding of how digital artivism can unite voices, elevate causes, and drive societal change. Full article

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22 pages, 313 KB

Open AccessArticle

Women Hip-Hop Artists and Womanist Theology

by Angela M. Mosley

Religions 2021, 12(12), 1063; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121063 - 1 Dec 2021

Viewed by 6307

Abstract

Hip-Hop is a cultural phenomenon steeped in the conservative ideologies of individualism and capitalism. It sells a lifestyle and its most recent surge of rap music and popular culture spotlights Black women more than ever before. Although Black women have always been significant piece in Hip-Hop culture, their artistry has jolted its systemic capitalism and patriarchy to engage intersectionality through a discourse of classism, sexual orientation, and racism while upending White supremacy’s either:or binary. Applying the principles of Womanism, Black female Hip-Hop artists negotiate cultural identity politics as activists to innovatively expand thought on gender performance and produce a fusion of contemporary Blackness for the 21st century. Their artivism builds a safe environment of differences within society using conscious thought, language, and performative methods to defy the White American ethos of sexism, misogyny, and materialism. By garnering a better knowledge of their existence through Indigenous African spirituality, Black women reclaim ownership of their bodies from Western European standards, including race, and gender to challenge Christianity’s meaning of martyrdom. This act of reclamation provides a reformative tool of inclusion and being fluidity through Hip-Hop music and its culture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women Still Run This Thing: Hip Hop, Womanism, Sexuality, and Religion)

20 pages, 2646 KB

Open AccessArticle

Corporeal Identities, Maternal Artivism: A New Decolonial Approach to the Study of Latin American Women Artists

by Lara Demori

Arts 2019, 8(4), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8040137 - 18 Oct 2019

Viewed by 6905

Abstract

Stemming from Grosfoguel’s decolonial discourse, and particularly his enquiry on how to steer away from the alternative between Eurocentric universalism and third world fundamentalism in the production of knowledge, this article aims to respond to this query in relation to the field of the art produced by Latin American women artists in the past four decades. It does so by investigating the decolonial approach advanced by third world feminism (particularly scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty) and by rescuing it from—what I reckon to be—a methodological impasse. It proposes to resolve such an issue by reclaiming transnational feminism as a way out from what I see as a fundamentalist and essentialist tactic. Following from a theoretically and methodological introduction, this essay analyzes the practice of Cuban-born artist Marta María Pérez Bravo, specifically looking at the photographic series Para Concebir (1985–1986); it proposes a decolonial reading of her work, which merges third world feminism’s nation-based approach with a transnational outlook, hence giving justice to the migration of goods, ideas, and people that Ella Shohat sees as deeply characterizing the contemporary cultural background. Finally, this article claims that Pérez Bravo’s oeuvre offers the visual articulation of a decolonial strategy, concurrently combining global with local concerns. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decolonizing Contemporary Latin American Art)

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