For this talk Professor Katy Deepwell discusses the book ‘Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms’, which she edited, (Valiz, March 2020) and the relationship between art and politics, activisms and artivisms therein.

Professor Deepwell offers her thoughts on these questions namely: How can art intervene to challenge or reframe politics and how does politics inform art? The general argument she offers in the introduction is closely related to an analysis she is developing in relation to how to think about the political in feminist art and criticism using Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed (2000). Deepwell also offers some insights into the 39 contributors to the book, each with their own detailed accounts on the contradictions of working as artists, curators and critics on anti-nuclear, ecological, health-care, ageing, menstruation, sexist language, racial and ethnic conflicts past and present as issue-based work in performance, public art projects, poster campaigns and street protests.

Katy Deepwell is Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Criticism in Visual Arts, ACI, MDX. She is the founder of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal (1998-2017), KT press and the Feminist Art Observatory (ongoing). In 2017, she wrote the online MOOC (mass open online course), 10 free lessons on contemporary art and feminisms,