Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Women’s Empowerment and the Art for Social Change Against the backdrop of a highly unequal and volatile world, hundreds of artists, activists and communities create art as a way of making sense of their realities, challenging the status quo and imagining new ways of being. Art for Social Change (ASC) is an emerging community-based creative practice associated with social justice and the empowerment of communities. Inspired by thinkers from the Global South, these emancipatory practices have become broadly accepted, seen as contributing to community participation and as a way of engaging with marginalised communities. This paper centres on the processes of ASC in the context of a colonial settler society and First Nations Women. From a feminist perspective of racialized women from the Global South and using a case study of Aboriginal women in Western Australia, this paper examines how ASC unfolds at the intersection of complex racial relations, where art making and story-telling shapes unique possibilities for personal and community connection. The paper argues that whilst the ongoing dominant power relations embedded in Australian coloniality continue to be extremely challenging, the processes of ASC encourage Aboriginal women to find their own voices when anchored in their culture, identity, and sense of place. The paper further demonstrates that ASC can be empowering and decolonizing especially for women, as it encourages them to use their own arsenal of gendered resilience to foster resistance to domination, as well as critical hope, through the reinvention of personal narratives.