by Emma Grima
The Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator was an EA project running from November 2023 until April 2024 which offered European youth and community leaders a way to engage in, and build, European democracy, by establishing a transnational network able to connect national and local issues to EU-level policymaking.
The project aimed to increase the engagement of young people and their communities in constructing European democracy by the creation of a network of young people living in Europe. These young people participated in trainings to help them activate their local communities and to articulate their issues and demands, testing out ways to take collective action in their communities.
This tight-knit network of engaged young European citizens and organizations have worked as a link between institutions and their citizens and especially frontline communities.
In this article by Emma Grima we present the experience of one of the participants of the first cohort of YMCA programme.
‘We are a bunch of dreamers us artists’, a good friend told me over a phone call last week. Hearing this made me cringe, as somehow, being a dreamer doesn’t sit quite right with me. The concept of dreaming was a topic of conversation that week, which kept coming back. One was an encounter with a philosopher, who pointed out that my practice sounded like a heterotopia. This term refers to the in-between of a utopia, a partially tangible social dream physically represented in this world. This concept did sit better with me, thank-you Foucault for that. This made me reflect on how I search for ways to make the ungraspable graspable, through my artistic practice. Sure, we are dreamers, but hopeful ones I would say, as hope usually arises when we see action in play.
Artistic individuals have one thing in common, creating a personal methodology. This is a bottom-up working approach, a method in which one carves out a unique journey to get from A to B, which so happens to be a successful approach to changing old systems. Now I’m not saying all artists have socially engaged practices, but there is a large creative movement around societal issues that instigates impact and change.
I would like to introduce you to a few inspirational artists part of this movement having an active role in society, art and politics. How they go about visual storytelling has impacted many on micro and macro levels.
Laia Abril is a research-based artist working on long-term projects. Her most known work is ‘A History Of Misogyny’ split up into chapters on rape, abortion, mass hysteria, menstruation and femicide. She gathers, records, researches, and photographs, turning this into exhibition installations and publications. Her work is educational and has been successful in getting people to listen, lending a platform for the voiceless on a global scale.
During an interview, Abril stated that she does not wish to be called an activist as her act of creating comes from more personal curiosity, but she then manages to create quite a communal impact. This makes me question why artists are so obsessed with finding that perfect label that best molds their work.
Then we have Nan Goldin, a ground-breaking artist who has shifted her practice towards activism over the years. Having gained a profound voice as an artist she has used this to her benefit, channelling this platform into activism. In 2022 she released a film documentary called ‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’, about her life story as a photographer, intertwining it with her current work as an activist with P.A.I.N. A group that is fighting for justice against the pharmaceutical industry making money off the opioid crisis. She successfully targeted the Sackler family through civil disobedience, making large museums such as The Louvre and The Met pull out of multi-million funding deals with their blood money.
Photography was the tool that gave Nan a voice, wanting to eternalise a history that was slipping rapidly away. She documents her life and circle of Queer friends in the 70s and 80s to the present day, capturing the rawness and tenderness of human life without passing judgement. Through her work, we have seen two sides of the coin – joy, desire, love, and a more destructive one – what drugs and sex did to her friends during the AIDS pandemic in New York. Artists like Nan have shown how art can impact many and inspire social change.
I cannot leave out Carrie Mae Weems’s unique way of storytelling. She creates extravagant immersive installations and multimedia performances depicting several layered stories of silenced, ignored, historical, racial and identity-driven works. One of Weems’ most renowned works is her timeless project, ‘The Kitchen Table Series’, 1990 . This is a series of 20 black
and white medium format images of Carrie Mae herself sitting at the tabel. One can observe different daily activities that could happen around the kitchen table. In every act, Weems is there, alone or with others. It is a self-portrait that shows the passing of time and portrays her role as a woman in society. This simple setting amplifies the larger picture. It is relatable to the masses and universal. This is why it hits home to many, which is not an easy accomplishment. That gaze she locks in with the viewers, the story she tells through these images, speaks mountains.
Kitchen Tabel – 1990, By Carrie Mae Weems
These are the living women I relate to and look up to as a female artist and activist. My artistic practice subconsciously awoke the activist in me, bringing me into this social movement towards advocating for change and excavating insidious power. I awoke deeply seated emotions, and unmetabolized pain, which awoke a wave of anger. Audre Lorde an intersectional feminist, writer and philosopher explains this awakening so perfectly by distinguishing between the feeling of pain and suffering.
Suffering is the nightmare, the reliving of unmetabolized and unrecognised pain. Pain is an event, an experience that must be recognised, a force that can catalyse change, (force) knowledge or fuel action. We have been taught to endure suffering, to suppress our longings, and to silence ourselves. Understanding your pain can fuel change. In my case, I have used this pain to liberate our rights to body autonomy and agency.
Through my artistic practice, I have been decolonising the female mind due to my Maltese upbringing embedded in trans-generational trauma. I continuously aim to destigmatize, depatriarchalize, and decolonize intersectional bodies towards autonomy. I have been addressing topics central to the theme of sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) working on socio-political long-term projects. On Abortion, Sexual Pleasure, HIV and Post-Porn tapping into social constructs, posthuman and intersectional feminism.
My latest is a collaboration with Checkpoint Malta intertwining a campaign and artivism. ‘We Are Positive’, 2024, asks everyone in Malta to ‘walk in the shoes’ of people living with HIV (PLHIV) to humanise and build a PLHIV community. Our first action was an interactive art installation wrapping Maltas LOVE Monument in St. Julian’s with 620 HIV self-testing kit boxes to highlight the human element of those living with HIV, the stigma that is still tied to living with the virus, and, the importance of regular HIV and sexual health screening. The general public was encouraged to engage with the art installation, by taking off a box to start, a conversation and increasing access to information about why everyone should know their status; how and where to get tested and normalising testing to reduce stigma.
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We Are Positive – 2024, By Emma Grima in Collaboartion with Checkpoint Malta
My passion and love for artistic creativity has always come first. The act of creative making for me has compensated for not knowing how to change a situation that sometimes feels hopeless. My artistic career has taught me to take a hands-on approach in working with communities and individuals who do care, however, the system in power manipulates its way through corruption, greed, and capital, shutting us out which is so demotivating.
I keep on coming back to my homeland Malta and all I can think of is shouting out ‘shame on you’ for not listening to us, for ignoring our basic human rights and insidiously controlling the masses.
Our Sexual health policies in Malta have not changed in 14 years which reflects the way our citizens are treated. I feel silenced by the lack of progress. Why are we the last EU country with the strictest anti-abortion laws in 2024 having a complete blanket ban, and the highest rates of HIV and syphilis in the EU/EEA due to our poor sexual health policy, leaving the GU clinic in despair with waiting lists of over 6 months?
Working on artivist projects in Malta has opened my eyes to the current despair and tiredness of Maltese activists and NGOs, which saddens me. The lack of enthusiasm and communal efforts are rising in a sea of people choosing not to care.
At times I feel torn between the artist and activist, wishing to create for creating sake but having the drive to educate and impact. Perhaps, I am a stubborn dreamer, who wishes for a heterotopic future and probably will not choose one over the other.
And here I go again, igniting some big ideas that involve a lot of large-scale collaboration between countries, as opposed to remaining Malta-specific. To give you a graspable picture, I am inspired by the creative methods easily replicated for others to do by the Chilean feminist collective LasTesis who created a street performance ’The rapist is you!’ which became an international phenomenon unifying many countries. Perhaps Carrie Mae Weems’s kitchen series also has a similar effect to this feminist group’s way of intriguing many. So I somewhat draw my conclusion and leave you with this. Relatability and simplicity are key, known to spread like wildfire, creating tractions larger than the powers that try to silence us all.
Emma Grima is a Maltese socially engaged interdisciplinary artist in the Netherlands and Malta, specialising in documentary photography and fine arts. Her practice focuses on human rights, sexuality and identity with the aim to spark change, educate and empower others through the intersection of art and activism.