The Paradoxical Engagement of Contemporary Art with Activism and Protest

Abstract

As the contemporary art scene expands outwards with the financial intervention of the corporate sector, the underground cultural activities, experimental communities, and anti-establishment art spaces resist the systematization of the corporate logic. With what has been described as a “social turn of art,” we witness a shift in art’s engagement with politics, from igniting critical awakening in society to creating communal and egalitarian relations in the public spaces. Hence, the social, political, as well as aesthetic viability of these practices are often questioned. The tension between political activism and artistic representation still persists in the century-old paradox: aestheticization of politics that leads to spectacularization of art to make political ideologies attractive, and politicization of aesthetics that strips art of its autonomy, thus its power to operate as a creative process. Both views place art and politics in two different spheres that intersect and interact in desirable but dysfunctional ways. This article discusses that art is not trapped in the paradox between the aestheticization of politics and politicization of aesthetics; it finds its radical meaning and function in this position.