This will be held at The Ledward Centre, Brighton, BN1 1GE

FREE and open to all but do please register:  here

Join us to celebrate the launch of Global Queer and Feminist Visual Activism – A Special Issue of the Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change.

What is the role of visual culture and art in today’s global queer and feminist movements? Together with SEAS (Socially Engaged Art Salon) we invite you to an afternoon of sampling some of the content of this special issue which seeks to foreground queer and feminist visual activism from across the globe, with articles addressing work from South Africa, China, Brazil, Lebanon, Cote d’Ivoire, the UK, and the United States.
There will be short presentations, Q&A, tea and cake!

In the current context of gender backlash, forms of queer and feminist activism are increasingly important, and so too is the scholarship that engages with them. Queer and feminist visual activism has varied origins in different global contexts and has emerged in a fluid cultural field of visual arts, popular culture, and protest aesthetics. This special issue is interested in queer and feminist expression through images and their context of production, mediation and re-mediation. Across 12 articles the special issue explores the aesthetics and performativity of visual activism, and the opportunities it affords social justice actors, with the aim to expand on existing scholarship both geographically and conceptually. The history of global feminist and queer activism has too often been dominated by Western perspectives. Articles engage with a range of diverse topics including trans Instagrammers, feminist fibre art, queer Roma self-representation, learning disability amateur filmmaking, and sexual violence in the museum. Taking the notion of social practice as an integral part of the ‘process’ of visual activism, we identify three emerging themes across the articles in this special issue: refusal, care and thriving.
The ‘Global Queer and Feminist Visual Activism’ special issue edited by Olu Jenzen and Tessa Lewin is available fully open access, free to all, so anyone who is interested can get the 12 articles from the Journal website:
https://www.lectitopublishing.nl/journal-of-cultural-analysis-and-social-change

Articles include

  • Olu Jenzen & Tessa Lewin: Global Queer and Feminist Activism: An Introduction
  • Anna Stielau: Radical Decomposition: Unravelling Agencies in the Art of Zanele Muholi, Jean Brundrit, and Nolan Oswald Dennis
  • Lara Perry & Elke Krasny: Against Sexual Violence in the Museum: Art, Curating, and Activism
  • Chloe Skinner: ‘The Spatial Void Could be a Chance to Recreate’: Queer Visual Activism in the Fallout of the Beirut Blast
  • Flavia Pinheiro Meireles: The Visual Activism of Street Signs and the Legacy of Marielle Franco: Disseminations, Controversies, and Resistance around the Globe
  • Jenna Allsopp: Building Community Through Queer Learning Disability Amateur Filmmaking: Oska Bright Film Festival and Queer Freedom
  • Xiying Wang: A Complex Landscape of Fun, Queerness and Desire in China: Introducing Three Films by He Xiaopei
  • Lucie Fremlova: Challenging Misrepresentations of Roma Through Queer Romani Visual Self-Representations
  • Nana Soares: A Pleasant Ride: Vintage Aesthetics as a Strategy to Deliver Sex Education and Harm Reduction on Instagram
  • Ace Lehner: The Transgender Flipping Point: How Trans Instagrammers Flip the Script on Identity
  • Priya Raghavan: ‘Oh, There Are Politics in Billie’s Work!’: Billie Zangewa and/at the Boundaries of Feminist Visual Activism
  • Kylie Thomas: Unravelling Anti-Feminism: On the Domestication of Resistance

If you have any questions contact: o.jenzen@brighton.ac.uk