Art in Protest: An Examination of the Power of Spanish Voices 2 Favorite 

Among social issues seemingly unrelated to each other, protest and art in Spain today are what tie these projects together. Whether these actions evaluate the feminist movement, LGBTQ+ rights, the 15-M protests, or animal rights, the intersections of art and protest have served a purpose in pushing the narratives of each of these issues in Spain today. The boundaries of protest can be defined by a variety of actions that each have their own lasting effect, size, and mission, ranging from actions as simple as creating a new iconography to sparking a large collective gathering of thousands of people. We want to investigate further how art has been used within these respective movements throughout Spain, and explain the role that art plays in protest as well as discover how art itself can be a form of protest. While exploring the groups and individuals responsible for these artistic actions, we aim to analyze when, where, and how forms of protest advance different social justice missions. The forms of protest covered by our foci vary from détournement, to die ins, to voting for change, to other displays of artistic expression utilizing the human body that have been used across time and space. Their relevance hails from decades of inequality and injustice experienced by marginalized communities and others that continue to be promoted by the traditions and politics in Spain.
-Undergraduate students of Art & Activism, CIEE Open Campus. Fall 2021, Madrid, Spain.