[Commlist] Vista Journal (Vol 18) Call for Papers : ‘Visual Artivism Against Necropolitics: An Invitation to Artivist Research’

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The  Call for Papers for Vista Journal (Vol 18), with the theme ‘Visual 
Artivism Against Necropolitics: An Invitation to Artivist Research’ is 
open from 10 March to 24 May, 2026.
*Thematic Editors*: Nicoletta Mandolini (CECS, University of Minho, 
Portugal), Dori Nigro (University of Porto, Portugal) and Renísia Garcia 
Felice (University of Brasília, Brazil).
These are dangerous times. Local and global conflicts are increasingly 
turning into wars that expose humans and non-humans to lethal weapons 
and profound trauma, leaving them confronted with a widespread shortage 
of essential resources and services. Security rhetoric, implemented 
through political actions promoted by emerging dictatorial and 
quasi-dictatorial regimes, leads to a gradual abdication of fundamental 
rights in the name of fear — whether fear of others, of disease or of 
possible planetary upheavals. At the same time, technocapitalism is 
rapidly eroding the ability to imagine futures in which relationality is 
not mediated by algorithmic logic and financial interests. Finally, 
climate change is already manifesting devastating consequences through 
catastrophes that disrupt ecosystems and lives. Disasters often 
classified as “natural” further expose social inequalities and 
profoundly affect lives already marked by racialisation (Bullard, 1993). 
Examples of this can be seen in consecutive floods, particularly in 
countries in the Global South, which show that certain populations are 
disproportionately affected. In other words, danger, far from being 
distributed equitably among those who inhabit the globe, constitutes a 
space where privilege is evident. Fear is also a way of processing and 
confronting traumas arising from unresolved social and racial relations. 
It is in this sense that both Frantz Fanon (1952/2008) and Grada Kilomba 
(2019) problematise trauma from personal, political and artistic 
perspectives, reflecting on how racism produces fatal wounds on both a 
psychological and physical level. Achille Mbembe's (2016) influential 
concept of ‘necropower’ has helped to clarify how exposure to the risk 
of death is unevenly distributed. Far from being random or uniform, such 
exposure is deeply intertwined with the systematisation of neocolonial 
dynamics that ensure the expansion and protection of certain categories 
of people, while simultaneously denying others the right to life. 
Although danger may be experienced as a common condition of 
hypermodernity, it often materialises in the erosion of the most 
fundamental of rights — the right to life — especially in the case of 
racialised individuals, women, and queer and trans* subjects, who are 
asymmetrically exposed to contemporary forms of exploitation, systemic 
poverty, and widespread discrimination.
It is therefore no coincidence that it is from the Global South, among 
communities that remain persistently unprotected in the face of a series 
of potentially devastating dynamics of social subordination and 
extractivism, that the concept of “reexistence” emerges. Introduced by 
Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves, the idea of ‘reexistence’ plays on the 
word ‘resistance’ to describe acts of reinvention and renegotiation that 
facilitate the formation of new spaces of vitality and affirmation of 
oppressed subjectivities (Hurtado & Porto-Gonçalves, 2022, p. 5). The 
same concept was later appropriated by decolonial and anti-extractivist 
feminist thinkers, who recognised its relevance in describing the 
strategies adopted by women and gender non-conforming individuals to 
resist patriarchal femicidal and transfemicidal violence, as well as 
highlighting the close link between these practices and imperialist 
necropower in South America (Estupiñan Valencia, 2021; Glockner et al., 
2024). Such practices, knowledge and ways of doing things act as forms 
of re-existence in the face of the layers of the cosmogony of racial 
capitalism (Adeyemo & Oliver, 2020), problematising the continuity of 
coloniality based on realities situated in different social contexts and 
reinforcing the idea that there is no future without the present — it is 
in the present that freedom is practised and transformation is built 
(Freire, 2019).
It is precisely the idea of re-existence, and its various 
manifestations, that we wish to highlight in order to discuss and give 
greater academic visibility to the struggle against necropower. The 
specific focus of this thematic issue is on artistic activism, or 
artivism, and its mobilisation as a tool to challenge necropolitical 
trends that affect, albeit in different ways and to disturbingly 
different degrees, both the Global South and the Global North. Artivism 
simultaneously invokes poetic and political dimensions, based on the 
understanding that the political is inherent to artistic practice. In 
this sense, no artistic practice is neutral — all production implies a 
situated position and a perspective on the world. Artivism moves between 
urban and digital spheres and crosses political, artistic, social and 
educational fields, questioning the institutionalities and canons that 
structure the contemporary world (Fernandes et al., 2022). Contemporary 
artistic practices can play a significant role in this context by 
raising questions and opening spaces for poetic and political dialogue, 
even in the face of the imminent dangers that mark the present. Art can 
create zones of listening, friction, and radical imagination, in which 
other ways of thinking and reimagining utopias become possible.
It is suggested that artistic practice constitutes a place of vitality. 
Creativity emerges from living tensions — individual or collective — 
while also feeding them. It is therefore not surprising that art often 
converges with activism to denounce necropolitical forces and support 
the struggles of those who embody the idea of reexistence. In the field 
of visual culture—an area of media, artistic, and academic intervention 
that has long intersected with reflections on the functioning of power 
relations (e.g., Berger, 1972; Mulvey, 1989; Mirzoeff, 1999), as well as 
on practices of resistance to them (e.g., Herwitz, 2021; hooks, 
1992)—countless artivist projects have emerged that seek to denounce and 
symbolically overcome necropolitical regimes. Some of these projects 
have already received critical attention (e.g., Demos, 2020; Freitas, 
2019; Ogula, 2025). However, no systematic academic intervention has 
specifically addressed this issue.
The articulation between art and activism is the main object of study 
and discussion in this thematic issue, as well as the main method of 
analysis of the academic contributions that this volume of Vista aims to 
bring together. Situated within the scope of an academic journal 
dedicated to the analysis of visual cultures, this issue necessarily 
raises reflections on the connection between artivist operations and 
research practices. At a time when both artistic activism/artivism 
(Correch, 2019; Groys, 2014; Lacy, 2010; Serafini, 1999) and artistic 
research (Capous-Desyllas & Morgaine, 2018; Lacey, 2020; McLeod & 
Holdridge, 2006) are widely recognised and explored as productive 
intersections, an additional convergence is proposed under the notion of 
“artivist research”, which informs and guides the editorial choices of 
this issue. In this context, artistic practices become not only 
spatio-temporal places of enunciation, in which traumas and wounds that 
are still open can be processed, but also environments capable of 
expanding debates arising from experiences situated in self-managed 
communities in the Global South, in relation to counter-colonisation 
(Santos, 2015, 2023). In these practices, gestures, corporeality, and 
ancestry are invoked, contributing to a deeper reflection on broader 
social public policies.
This thematic issue aims not only to recognise and critically examine 
artivist practices against necropolitics, but also to actively encourage 
them by accepting contributions that, while preserving academic rigour, 
are not limited to canonical models of academic writing and 
(phalo)logocentric thinking. By opening space for experimental, hybrid 
forms based on the practice of knowledge production, this issue seeks to 
recognise artistic research and artivist practices as interconnected and 
legitimate modes of research and political engagement, capable of 
challenging dominant epistemologies and resisting necropolitical forms 
of power.
We welcome submissions of academic articles, visual essays, and other 
hybrid contributions that critically engage with the relationship 
between artivism, reexistence, and resistance to necropolitical forces.
*Possible topics include, but are not limited to:*

  * Visual artivism and practices of reexistence
  * Visual culture and necropolitics
  * Decolonial and anti-extractivist artistic practices in the visual 
domain
  * Gender and queer politics of reexistence through visual artivism
  * Ecological visual artivism
  * Visual artivism and migration
  * Digital visual artivism against technocapitalism
  * Artivism as a pedagogical practice in the field of visual arts
  * Artivism, corporealities, and new visualities
  * Artivisms, eco- and techno-performances in the field of visual culture

*IMPORTANT DATES*
Submission period for proposals (full texts): 10 March to 24 May 2026
Publication period: continuous edition (July to December 2026)
*LANGUAGE*
Articles may be submitted in English or Portuguese. Articles selected 
for publication will be translated into Portuguese or English, 
respectively, and published in full in both languages.
*PUBLICATION AND SUBMISSION*
Vista is an open-access academic journal that operates according to 
rigorous peer review standards, using a double-blind review process. 
Each submitted work will be sent to two reviewers who have been 
previously invited to evaluate it according to its academic quality, 
originality, and relevance to the journal's objectives and scope.
Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal's website 
(https://www.revistavista.pt <https://www.revistavista.pt>). If you are 
accessing Vista for the first time, you must register in order to submit 
your article (instructions for registering _here_ 
<https://revistavista.pt/index.php/vista/user/register>).
The author guidelines can be found _here_ 
<https://revistavista.pt/index.php/vista/about/submissions>.
For further information, please contact: _vista@ics.uminho.pt_ 
<mailto:(vista /at/ ics.uminho.pt)>
*References*
Adeyemo, D., & Oliver, C. (2020–2021). The cosmogony of (racial) 
capitalism [Filme/Multimédia]. Empathy Revisited, 5th Istanbul Design 
Biennial, Istambul, Turquia.
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation.
Bullard, R. D. (Ed.). (1993). Confronting environmental racism: Voices 
from the grassroots. South End Press.
Capous-Desyllas, M., & Morgaine, K. (Eds.). (2018). Creating social 
change through creativity: Anti-oppressive art-based research 
methodologies. Palgrave.
Correch, M. (2019). Decolonizing artivism. Nuart Journal, 1(2), 104–106.
Demos, T. J. (2020). Blackout: The necropolitics of extraction. In E. 
Steinbock, B. Ieven, & M. de Valck (Eds.), Art and activism in the age 
of systemic crises: Aesthetic resilience (pp. 43–67). Routledge. 
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012252-004 
<https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012252-004>
Estupiñan Valencia, D. (2021). Victims of development, Afrourban 
communities, and dynamics of re-existence in Buenaventura. In S. 
Federici, L. Mason-Deese, & S. Draper (Eds.), Femicide and global 
accumulation: Frontline struggles to resist the violence of patriarchy 
and capitalism (pp. 28–36). Common Notions.
Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, White masks (C. L. Markmann, Trad.). Pluto 
Press. (Original work published 1952)
Fernandes, C. S., Herschmann, M., Rocha, R. de M., & Pereira, S. L. 
(Eds.). (2022). Artivismos urbanos: Sobrevivendo em tempos de urgências. 
Sulina.
Freire, P. (2019). Pedagogia da liberdade: Ética, democracia e coragem 
cívica. Editora Paz e Terra.
Freitas, M. (2019). Os corpos dissidentes de gênero nas artes visuais 
como reação à necropolítica. Hipocampo. 
https://hipocampo.space/os-corpos-dissidentes-de-genero-nas-artes-visuais-como-reacao-a-necropolitica/ 
<https://hipocampo.space/os-corpos-dissidentes-de-genero-nas-artes-visuais-como-reacao-a-necropolitica/>
Glockner, V., Borzacchiello, E., Torres, R. M., Faria, C., Danze, A., 
Herrera-Martínez, E., García-Figueroa, G., & Niño-Vega, N. (2024). The 
cuerpo territorio of displacement: A decolonial feminist geopolitics of 
re-existencia. Geopolitics, 29(4), 1220–1244. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2023.2213639 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2023.2213639>
Groys, B. (2014). On art activism. E-flux Journal, (56), 1–10.
Herwitz, D. (2021). The political power of visual art: Liberty, 
solidarity, and rights. Bloomsbury.
hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. South End Press.
Hurtado, L. M., & Porto-Gonçalves, C. (2022). Resistir y re-existir. 
GEOgraphia, 24(53), 1–10. 
https://doi.org/10.22409/GEOgraphia2022.v24i53.a54550 
<https://doi.org/10.22409/GEOgraphia2022.v24i53.a54550>
Kilomba, G. (2019). Plantation memories: Episodes of everyday racism. 
Transcript Verlag.
Lacey, P. (2020). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. 
Guilford Publications.
Lacy, S. (2010). Leaving art: Writings on performance, politics, and 
publics, 1947–2007. Duke University Press.
Mbembe, A. (2016). Politiques de l’inimitié. Editions La Découverte.
McLeod, K., & Holdridge, L. (Eds.). (2006). Thinking through art: 
Reflections on art as research. Routledge.
Mirzoeff, N. (1999). An introduction to visual culture. Routledge.
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and other pleasures. Palgrave.
Ogula, V. (2025). Necropolitics and necropolice: Death, immortality, and 
art-activism in Russia. International Political Sociology, 19(2), 1–20. 
https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf006 <https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf006>
Santos, A. B. dos. (2015). Colonização, quilombos: modos e significados. 
Instituto INCTI/UnB.
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Routledge.
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