Protest

Protest art is simultaneously the antithesis of propaganda and a form of propaganda in it's own right, depending on how you look at it, and perhaps, what side of the issue you are on. Art often touches on social issues, inequality, and injustice, but in my mind, in order to really qualify as “protest art”, some perpetrator of injustice must be implicated.

The witch series I'm working on, for example, bears themes regarding gender, religious, and culteral inequality, but doesn't really point the finger at any particular purveyor of oppression. In order to do that, I think I would have to take it further somehow and give it a more contemporary context. Perhaps an instillation which juxtaposes images of ordinary women and asks the viewer to somehow label which one is a witch. This kind of thing could be expanded to include a multitude of cultural and ideological labels which dangerously rub shoulders with stereotypes including race, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, subculture, etc. Still, protest art needs to point the finger at someone or something. Maybe that someone is ourselves.