This special issue seeks to address recent developments of socially engaged practice in the field of art production and curation. A significant body of literature has delved into its different manifestations in the contemporary art scene as well as its potential to question established modes of cultural praxis, often embedded in the neoliberal system. Moving from relatively marginal contexts to mainstream, the social turn has achieved significant recognition and visibility in the last two decades, both in museum and academic settings. However, despite opening art and curation to multiple agencies, collaborative practices, as contemporary scholarship suggests, also reveal inconsistencies and points of tension. Given these ambivalences, these are some of the main questions the selected articles address through a hybrid approach combining theoretical reflection and creative practice: How can art create alliances to complement and sustain political action without appropriating collective struggles and experiences? In what ways do socially engaged initiatives contribute to transform structures of cultural production and challenge systems of oppression? How do artists, collectives and curators address problematic power asymmetries within their own creative process and avoid capture mechanisms (Gallisá Muriente et al., 2023), that is to say forms of cognitive extractivism?  What contradictions emerge in light of the growing institutional and academic acceptance of these art forms? Can mainstream exposure contribute to dilute the political and contentious dimension of these collective art practices as well as reintroduce them in the conventional art circuits and value-generating systems? How can theoretical reflection on these cultural manifestations be decolonized through non-Western-centric conceptualizations and studies? 

Editor: Chiara  Sgaramella (Ph.D.), Universitat Politècnica de València 

In collaboration with:

Anna Maria Guasch Ferrer, REGAC Editor-in-chief

Anna Pérez Milán (Ph. D. candidate, Universitat de Barcelona)

Sergio Rodríguez (Ph. D. candidate, Universitat de Barcelona)

Special thanks to all the blind peers for ensuring academic quality of this journal and providing valuable feedback to authors. 

This issue was made possible thanks to:

Ayudas Margarita Salas (2021), Programa de Requalificación del Sistema Universitario Español (Ministerio de Universidades),  funded by the European Union –NextGenerationEU

R+D project "Visualidad y geoestética en la era de la crisis ecosocial. Enfoques analíticos (VIGEO)", PID2022-139211OB-100.

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Image credit: Carolina Caycedo, Alejandra Tatiana Montoya and Mireya Perea (2024). Atarraya, collective performance. Courtesy of Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del País Vasco, Artium Museoa. Photography: erredehierro.