How do artists use their work to express political statements ?

How do artists use their work to express political statements ?

So today I’m going to talk to you about the theme Arts ans Debates and especially

about how artists use their work. I’ll use 4 documents to explain my words. So first a

complete piece which is The Handmaid’s Tale and the chapter 13 of this novel, written by

Margaret Atwood, then a literary text from the novel Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua

Achebe. Furthermore I’ll use a visual artwork, a Sheppard Fairey’s piece of art entitled

“Make Art, Not War”, and also a non literary text which is going to be an extract from a

news paper article named “Visions of Africa”, from The Gardian, written by Mike Philips.

We will raise here the question of how artists use their work to express political

statement ?

We’ll start with how they use their work and then we’ll continue with how this art

involves its public

At first, I think, we will all agree to say that art always has a message to deliver.

Every artist wants to express an idea, whatever they are happy, sad, or humorous. And

everyone will perceive it differently, based on our way of thinking. Sometimes, artists go

even more faraway, by using testimonies expressed trough pages, images, or sculptures. By

doing it, artists reveal us a fact, or an event which makes us feel a very strong emotion.

Indeed, art explores the depths of emotions, of which it’s hard to put in words. It stands

against injustice and celebrates the intricacies of humanity. Most of us know the feeling of

being moved by a work of art, whether it is a song, a play, a poem, a novel, or a painting.

When we are touched, we are moved ; we are transported to a new place that is,

nevertheless, strongly rooted in a physical experience, in our bodies.

But artists uses the liberty of expression that art gives them to express different

messages, based on their own ideology. We’ll see 3 examples of different ideologies artists

defend in their works, based on the documents I chose.

It can be to talk about feminism, like Margaret Atwood in her novel The Handmaid’s

Tale. Indeed, she questions what would happen if these “casually held attitudes about

women” were taken to their logical. She was inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran in

1978-79 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and

imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, very much like that of Gilead. In this novel,

we can also find the picture of a society ruled by men who professed high moral principles,

but are in fact self-interested and selfish, related to Islamic Ideology.

Oral LLCE

Moreover, to illustrate my remark and this book, I used an extract of the novel which

corresponds to Chapter 13. Especially the “Slut Shaming” scene. Indeed, in this scene,

Jeanine, one of the handmaids, told during what is called the Testifying that she has been

gang raped when she was fourteen so she had to have an abortion. In order to not have

problems, the other handmaids have to shaming her, saying that it’s her fault and that she

made it happen because God wouldn’t have allowed such a terrible thing and that it was to

punish her. Here we see that the society, represented by the other handmaids, make the

victim feels ashamed of what happened, saying that it’s her fault, even though it is not. The

author wants to denounce something that happens in real life. Indeed, rape victims

sometimes feel ashamed about it. But it is because they have been told that they actually

wanted it, or because their outfit suggested that she consented it.

But feminism isn’t the only problem artists want to denounce. Artists could want to

denounce war for example, like Shepard Fairey did in its artwork “Make Art not War”. This

print, created during the Iraq war, is an alternative phrase inspired by popular 1960s antiwar mantra “Make love, not war”. In this case, Fairey asserts the need for creative rather

than destructive acts. So we can say that this picture refers to the hippie art of the 60s,

including many anti-Vietnam war posters. The image and the colors are strong and

advocates art, creation, dialogue in war, violence through this work. This could be seen as a

propaganda sign but, as it’s made with good intentions

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