SITAC Is the Political Still Personal?

During the 1970s, women artists examined the private dimensions of their lives in their art-making practices, using narrative, appropriation, and irony to critique both universal and specific instances of exclusion in society. In film and video, such practices have become permanently associated with a political agenda, employing these aesthetic strategies to examine other forms of social or cultural repression. In an era when amateurs can become sophisticated cultural producers through new technologies, contemporary artists have had to alter their strategies accordingly, embracing distancing techniques such as those found in ethnographic practices. What do artists mean when they say their work is “political”?