ART AS RESISTANCE
ART AS RESISTANCE
“Art As Resistance” Promo Poster by Sloane Empke
In March 2025, myself and my beautiful MA cohort for Social Justice and Equity studies organized and ran the Niagara Social Justice Forum. As we worked very diligently for eight months to plan, communicate and execute the workshops and speakers for the day, I needed to highlight some memorable moments from the forum.
We chose ‘Art as Resistance: The Veins of Intersectionality’ as the theme for the year, mainly to highlight the transcendental ways that art and artistic practice work to represent and connect folks of various identities and backgrounds. Through art, I aim for understanding. Through art, we all connected and shared our passions with each other.
the forum
Photo Credit: Bella Athanasas
Behind The Scenes
My role in planning and developing this Forum was co-organizer. Being type A and good with lists, I took on the pivotal role of keeping everyone organized within their assigned tasks, while tackling some of the bigger planning logistics myself.
I created and oversaw forum emails, planning meetings, and coordination with our Program Director to ensure we would make our timeline.
We got to connect with some wonderful guest speakers and workshop leaders across various disciplines for this event. I personally got the pleasure of working with The Willow Arts Community to coordinate their workshop for our attendees.
I came up with the idea for Art as Resistance. So many of us were coming from diverse backgrounds, and we wanted to focus on intersectionality as a core theme for the Forum, so I suggested we focus on Art as something that all of us could relate to. With that theme in mind, I suggested that we look into the Marilyn I Walker campus and gallery space to host us, as it was the most fitting environment for our plans.
Through this, I also made and distributed the marketing materials, including both of the promotional posters we had mass printed and put up around campus and the Niagara Region. I made the posters with two things in mind: one poster was a nod to my own thesis and featured graffiti lettering and designs, and the second was dedicated to Palestinian resistance and solidarity. The colours represented the colours of the Palestinian flag, the olive branches were present, and it complimented our lovely caterer for the day that featured traditional Palestinian food for our attendees.
The final significant portion of my duties included the interactive installation that I wanted to make available to the participants.
I took a white sheet, and spray-painted Art as Resistance on it. For our last planning meeting before the Forum, my cohort and I took turns spray painting and colouring the sheet before we featured it at the Forum for the participants to add their thoughts on how they resist. We had some incredible answers, and by the end, had a really cool interactive piece that encapsulated everything we had worked hard to put on for the Forum.