Dr Deléne Human

Bringing Agency to the Silenced: Visual Art Education as a Tool for Social Justice and Gender-Based Violence Awareness

 

An artivist - artist and activist - uses art as a tool to fight against injustice and oppression by any means necessary. Artists are the voice of the marginalised, oppressed and silenced.

 

This paper explores how Visual Art Education students engage with and reflect on how art illuminates and challenges social and cultural structures perpetuating societal ills, particularly Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

 

I will particularly focus on the visual meaning-making processes of South African Visual Art Education students by critically exploring their contemporary artworks (created between 2019 and 2025) addressing contemporary real-life issues dealing with social ills, created during their final practical year-project.

 

By embracing the turmoil of a post-COVID-19 global context, imagery of protest, violence, hate speech, murders and socio-political (in)differences, students were encouraged to draw from personal experiences and observations of injustices.

 

Many focused on gender-related issues and GBV in a South African society, using their art to raise awareness, foster dialogue and empower silenced voices. Selected examples focusing on GBV and related issues are critically analysed, relying on semiotics, intertextuality and other arts-based analysis methods and theories, such as those by Berger (1972) and Mirzoeff (2023).

 

The arts-based research methodology thus significantly links to qualitative research approaches and the interpretivist paradigm. As Gadamer (1989, 306) explains, understanding emanates from both viewer (interpretation) and creator (intention).

 

Consequently, the study is situated within a conceptual framework that addresses issues of interpretation and perception, namely, a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach. The findings highlight the significance and transformative power of creative expression, as well as students’ strong sense of accountability and social justice.

 

This paper concludes that by bringing awareness to GBV, art education has the potential to bring agency to those whose voices are silenced, to highlight the human within all of us and build harmony in and through unity.