Is art (still) a political act?

Talking about politically engaged art seems almost outdated, so overused is the expression. Yet, on every street corner, on every wall, in every gallery, nestle works that disturb, question, and denounce. So, is art still political in 2025? Or has it always been?

Art as mirror and resistance

Art has always been a reflection of a world in motion.

Francisco Goya painted the horrors of war. Picasso painted Guernica as a silent cry against the violence of Francoism.

Today, artists are not changing their posture, but their medium, their terrain and their tone.

Consider JR , the French artist renowned worldwide for his monumental black and white collages. By installing a migrant's gaze on the border wall between Mexico and the United States, he turns the architecture of control into a scene of empathy.

Ai Weiwei , a key figure in artistic protest in China, who uses installations and performances to denounce surveillance, repression and the global migration crisis.

By filling the facade of the Berlin Konzerthaus with life jackets collected on Lesbos, he contrasts classical aesthetics with raw contemporary violence.

Public space, a theater of protest

Street art, due to its illegal, ephemeral nature and its proximity to social margins, remains today one of the most direct vectors of political art. It occupies unconventional locations, captures the gaze of public spaces, and speaks to everyone, without filter.

Artists like Combo Culture Kidnapper , who blends pop culture with anti-racist or pro-secular messages, pose disturbing questions on the walls of Paris. He confronts passersby with their biases, with visual diversions that are as provocative as they are effective. As for Miss.Tic , a pioneering figure of feminist street art, she populated the streets of Paris with silhouettes of free, irreverent, and poetic women. Chiseled slogans that read "I am a woman, I am a work of art" or "I make my body a public place." Until her death in 2022, she embodied a vision of art as a critical mirror of society, accessible and urban, engaged without being dogmatic.

In 2005, British artist Banksy took over the Israeli-Palestinian separation wall with a series of powerful stencils that have become emblematic of politically engaged art. Among them, the Flying Balloon Girl , a little girl rising above the wall, pulled by balloons, evokes the hope of escaping a confining reality. The Flower Thrower , meanwhile, subverts the imagery of revolt: a hooded man throws not a Molotov cocktail, but a bouquet of flowers. These works, simple in appearance, condense a political message of great subtlety: resistance also involves the imagination .

The digital age: dilution or multiplication of politics?

With the advent of AI and digital tools, a new generation of engaged artists is emerging through Instagram feeds, NFT galleries, and virtual performances. Does this mean the end of engagement? Not necessarily.

Artistic activism is not disappearing: it is changing form, adapting to new mediums. It is becoming a mutant , like our times.

The French collective Obvious , known for having sold an artificially intelligent portrait (Edmond de Belamy) at Christie's, subtly questions the notions of authorship, collective memory, and identity. Their approach is based on a paradox: using a technology perceived as cold and impersonal to raise eminently human questions.

In a completely different vein, queer and racialized creators on TikTok are harnessing the codes of virality to deconstruct norms, question representations, and convey powerful messages in the form of trends, performative makeup, or historical reenactments. It's a less frontal, more contextual, often diverted, but always subversive activism. Art no longer always shouts. Sometimes it whispers, it plays, it infiltrates.

Philosophy of artistic commitment

But ultimately, does art have to be political? Is it a duty or a choice? Can it also be content to be aesthetic, without message, without memory? The question divides opinion.

The philosopher Jacques Rancière invites us to shift the debate: " Political art does not consist of delivering messages, but of creating new forms of visibility ." In other words, the political act does not reside so much in the explicit content of the work as in its power of revelation : what it shows differently, what it makes visible to those who were no longer looking, what it gives to feel, to think, to live.

It is therefore not always in the slogan that art is political, but in the shifting of the gaze , the reappropriation of spaces, the highlighting of hidden realities. Silence can be just as committed as the cry.

What if...

The political act no longer resides solely in the content of the work, but also in its mode of diffusion , in the living link that it creates between people. Because in a world saturated with images, it is not what we show that counts, but how we make it exist together . And what if tomorrow, artists used Artgapi not only to exhibit, but to unite ? To create a sensitive and awakened community, which debates, which shares, which acts?

And you, when was the last time a work of art changed your mind?