Art as a Site of Protest and Resistance

This paper will illustrate how art is a tool for disrupting stigmatising discourse around abortion and movement building for Alliance for Choice (AfC). Several artistic interventions into abortion stigma in Northern Ireland (NI) were created by activists from the movement. The focus is art with explicit collaboration or implicit involvement of Alliance for Choice which illuminates projects that generated potential change for Alliance for Choice.

Art has been a tool of reproductive justice in Ireland, North and South for decades, illustrated by an examination of the importance of AfC’s creative projects including: ‘When they put their hands out like scales’, ‘An Appropriate Hobby’ and ‘As Others See Us.’ and ‘The Druthab’s Ball’ The work will be framed as socially engaged art (Helguera, 2011), a nebulous but significant categorisation of art used to increase public engagement with a particular social issue via engaged and dialogical practice.