Protesta, arte y espacio público: Cuerpos en resistencia

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the power of art in relation to public space and social protest in the context of Medellin (Colombia). Emphasis is placed on the ‘social outbreak’ (April-June 2021), a moment in which crowds took to the streets to denounce their social discontent. It dialogues with theoretical referents of the categories art-body, public space and protest, and with empirical data from ethnographic observations and testimonies of creative processes related to the social outburst. It is argued that the relevance of aesthetic languages allows us to think about the configuration of a new repertoire where art, artists and participants become agents of social action. In this process, subjective and social transformations are experienced, whose traces remain in bodies, memories, spaces, collectivity and utopias themselves.