Artivism across borders: The influence of digitalised activist art about Iranian women’s protest

Application summary

Activist art constitutes ‘action to generate an effect’. Yet, research on the influence of activist art on audiences is surprisingly scarce. Prior work has mainly studied the perspectives of artists instead of the meaning-making of audiences that could become engaged through art. Moreover, investigations of the influence of activist art have so far focused on climate art, and there is little research on the potential impact of activist art on people’s perceptions of women’s rights and protest. This project investigates the influence of activist art on Iranian women’s protest. More specifically, we explore how differing audiences make meaning of activist art and what predicts different kinds of meaning-making and increased impact. Our approach combines qualitative and quantitative methods. We will interview Iranian artists to explore what kind of audience meaning-making they aim to encourage. Together with social psychological work, the findings of these narrative interviews will be used to design a mixed method study on the influence of an online art exhibition. We will recruit audiences from different countries, with a focus on diversity in religious, political, and gender-related outlooks. The participants will be asked about their meaning-making of women’s protest with open-ended questions and a new measure. They will also answer questions exploring what may predict different kinds of meaning-making and other influence of the activist art. Furthermore, comparing questionnaires completed before and after the exhibition, we will examine what increases the influence of the artwork. Activist art has become particularly prevalent over the last decades. Accordingly, understanding the influence of activist art is an emerging interest for institutions, artists, policy, and empirical research. Combining artistic work and activism with digital humanities, cultural studies, and psychological approaches, the project opens new avenues for creating impact through art.