Street art and protest under pandemic conditions in Colombia: A visual semiotic approach
Street art and protest under pandemic conditions in Colombia: A visual semiotic approach
Author(s): Hernando Blandón GómezSubject(s): Visual Arts, Health and medicine and law
Published by: Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku
Keywords: aesthetic learning; dissensus; social mobilisation; social transformation; spatial aesthetics;
Summary/Abstract: This article engages in a visual critical semiotic analysis of Medellín street art and its interpretation as political action in the Colombian social mobilisation of 2021. I explore three epistemological turns towards a descriptive and contrastive methodology to contextualize street art and its transformative potential. Firstly, the spatial turn leads us to understand how space and street art function as a framework of life and conflict that challenges viewers socially and politically. Secondly, following Peirceʼs ideas, I reinterpreted some images. I explain how they function as theoretical objects related to indices, signs and symbols. According to Mitchell's image turn, the image functions as a significant semantic unit. Thirdly, I read the political turn based on Rancièreʼs works in which he equates the political and the aesthetic as an act of visibility, always existing together at a conceptual and substantive level, and with which emancipation is objective. The article does not try to argue whether street art has a transformative power as this has been widely discussed in the literature. The article looks at street art that appeared in the context of the social mobilisation of 2021-2022, and partially in the context of the recent pandemic as a social transformation, the fact of which was proven by the recent elections.
Journal: Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies
- Issue Year: 2022
- Issue No: 02 (37)
- Page Range: 81-102
- Page Count: 22
- Language: English