Textile Activisms and Practices: A Systematic Review of Recent Literature in the Scopus Database
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17561/rtc.extra11.9936Keywords:
Textile activisms, Literature review, Artivism, CraftivismAbstract
Textile work emerges in various contexts as a means to claim rights and build peace. Understanding it, within the sphere of arts and activism, as a form of visual, narrative, and tactile communication, this study aims to contribute to reflections on textile activisms through a systematic review of recent literature on the subject. We seek to understand from which voices, locations, and approaches this body of literature is constituted.
To this end, texts published between 2019 and 2023 indexed in the Scopus database were gathered, using the terms textile associated with activism, artivism, or craftivism. The analysis of the 39 publications found indicates the predominance of female authors, with institutional origins concentrated mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States, followed by Colombia.
Their main disciplines are Arts, Management, and Anthropology, with interdisciplinary contributions from feminist studies appearing in nearly 30 percent of the cases. The recurrence of the craftivism perspective and the absence of artivism in the approaches may suggest the persistence of framing textile work within the craft universe, to the detriment of artistic interpretations.
Methodologies based on the researcher’s in-person engagement are frequent, pointing to a type of knowledge inherent to textile practice. The review allows us to glimpse elements of the complex web of social, political, and cultural dynamics that permeate the historical development of textile work, as well as the circulation of academic knowledge within databases.
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