The Aesthetic Labour of Protest, Now and Then

Abstract

Alexandra Kokoli explores visual and material strategies used by women protestors against nuclear proliferation during the Cold War, interventions that took the form of performances as well as craft works on the periphery fence of the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common. While focusing on the threat of nuclear war, the protestors’ own living arrangements as well as their visual activism troubled constructs of patriarchal domesticity, as her exploration reveals. Kokoli views the Greenham women's activism as blurring boundaries between not only the realms of aesthetic and activist intervention but also private and public space. Focusing on mother-and-child iconographies in particular, she explores how activists experienced disruptions to their work through the demands of motherhood, but indicates that their caring roles were nevertheless also often used to motivate and shape their anti-nuclear protests.