Paper short abstract:

Our purpose is to question how the production of graphic artefacts can activate processes of politicization. This paper is based on the ethnography of the artefacts produced by Mexican artists and members of European activist groups to accompany the journey of a Zapatista delegation to Europe.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the political agency of art through the ethnography of artistic practices undertaken by artists and activists as part of the "Journey for Life". This is a project carried out by the Zapatista movement to meet activist groups, which call themselves "Europe from below", in the five continents, and whose first act, called « Capitulo Europa », was achieved in Madrid on 7 December 2021.

Several artists and collectives have joined this initiative, such as Antonio Griton, who contributed with the sale of his works to finance the journey of a Zapatista delegation or the Mexican street artist Grand OM who has taken charge of the production of posters and communication elements for this unexpected journey to Europe.

At the same time, in the countries destined to host the delegation, other artists and activists have deployed several strategies to support the Zapatista journey by producing collective fanzines, posters, or even board games. This is the case of a French illustrator who, since April 2021, has been publishing episodes of a comic strip documenting the meetings between the members of the Zapatista delegation and the social collectives that, from Europe, adhere to the project of social and political transformation defended since 1994 by the EZLN.

This case allows us to reflect on how the political performativity of art manifests itself at the articulation of an aesthetic of resistance and social movements.

If we rely on the work of anthropologists who have theorized the agency of art at the iconic (Gell, 1998) or ontological (Descola, 2019) level, however, it is in the field of political agency that we wish to question the operational modes of artistic productions as well as the functions that are devolved to them in contexts of political protest.

How do actors mobilize art to produce forms of autonomy or resistance to neo-liberal logics? How do these practices structure the organization of militant collectives?