The art and politics of imagination: remembering mass violence against women

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the role of artistic memory in processes of redressing political violence and historical injustices. Combining philosophical reflection, insights from memory studies and examples of artistic practices, it focuses on how memory and imagination coalesce in problematising mass violence against women and resisting its ‘official’ oblivion. The argument is that artistic memory work can foster collective memories of the painful past in ways that overcome both individual and national representations. To this end, this paper aims to explore various contemporary art productions as new models of memorialization, which deal with the representation of violence against women in armed conflicts and under political repression. The academic literature on the role of art in processes of dealing with the past tends to examine literature, film, theatre, painting and other more traditional artistic media of commemorating the victims of mass violence. In contrast, this paper explores the political potentialities of new artistic models of memorialization, namely participatory and collaborative artistic practices. Unlike the traditional media, they can commemorate victims performatively and collaboratively, simultaneously catalysing transnational solidarity and new forms of politics ‘from below.’