The Context of Murals as Youth Media in the Aesthetic Perspective of Marxism

Abstract

Murals are often found as a medium to express what lies in the imagination of their artists. Talks and murals are often discussed, primarily related to social issues, which are often the central theme when young people are the artists. This research explores murals from another point of view, namely from youth-media activism through the aesthetic perspective of Marxism. The aim is to find the contextual relations of social issues with the phenomenon of youth media in the aesthetics of Marxism. The research method is grounded in theory by exploring how the aesthetics of Marxism sees the mural phenomenon, which has played an essential role in the social movement of young people. In this study, it is known that apart from choosing the place, the material to be depicted, and the message to be conveyed, this activist mural artist also illustrates how interrelated the current protests are with the phenomena that emerged during the time of Marx. This shows the existence of a hermeneutic role in framing phenomena that are contextualized to the present.
 Keywords: mural, activism, hermeneutic, youth media, Marxist aesthetics