Art Therapy

This new course explores the impact of identity politics on the practice and curation of visual art from 1965 to the present.

We’ll be taking a closer look at artworks informed by feminism, anti-racism, post-colonialism, class and labour advocacy, LGBTQ+ and disability rights as well as their intersections. These works often represent the artist’s authentic life experiences to counter and interrogate stereotypes, leading to innovations in both the subject matter and form of art.
Such innovations also include the varied forms of activist art, direct action and public intervention aimed at combatting the systematic exclusion of minorities from culture. Activism has informed the re-writing of art history, the curation of exhibitions and the expansion of collections.

Though ‘identity politics’ is a contentious term, students will examine its origins and the contemporary intersectional politics that follow on from it, moving beyond the tokenism that merely extends existing canons, aiming instead to question the very value systems that underpin them.