Effective visual communication has become an essential strategy for
grassroots political activists, who use images to publicly express
resistance and make their claims visible in the struggle for political
power. However, this aesthetics of resistance is also employed by
political and economic elites for their own purposes, making it
increasingly difficult to distinguish from the aesthetics of rule.
Through illuminating case studies of street art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá,
Caracas, and Mexico City, The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance explores
the visual strategies of persuasion and meaning-making employed by both
rulers and resisters to foster self-legitimization, identification, and
mobilization.
This book will be an important intervention into the study of street art in
particular, and of public art and artistic activism in general. The author
approaches the subject with the rare combination of a scholars critical
intellect and an artists aesthetic eye. Stephen Duncombe, New York
University
An excellent book that captures the agency of street art interventions. The
clear and innovative research methods represent a significant step
forward in visual methodology, offering a lucid account of how to
understand visual communication. Aidan McGarry, Loughborough
University
