Precarious Solidarities: Artists for Democracy 1974–77

Edited publication with introduction and c.10,000 words essay contribution.

This publication takes Artists for Democracy as a starting point to explore the entanglement of artistic practices with transnational solidarities shaped by migration and political mobilisation.

Artists for Democracy formed in London in 1974 to give ‘material and cultural support to liberation movements worldwide’. Precarious Solidarities addresses the far-reaching actions of this group of cultural workers – whose personal/artistic trajectories span Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas – and the entanglement of artistic practice with transnational solidarities shaped by migration and political mobilisation. Through a range of new commissions, contributions from AFD members, and extensive archival documentation, Precarious Solidarities highlights the group’s multiple agencies and conditions of possibility – artistic, social, political, historical and geographic – and the potentials of these histories today. Contributors include: Rasheed Araeen, Guy Brett, Virgil Calaguian, Wing Chan, Cường Minh Bá Phạm and George Clark, Charles Esche, Hannah Healey, Susan Hiller, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, María José Lemaitre Mujica and Caroll Yasky, David Medalla and Brandon Taylor, David Morris, Annabel Nicolson, Nii Kwate Owoo, Vijay Prashad and Cecilia Vicuña.