Graffiti, migrant women, intersectionality: artistic experiences in Portugal

Abstract

The latest world events have impacted the socioeconomic and artistic life of migrants (pandemic, wars and climate change). The feminization of migration has caused a change in the profile of migrant women. These migrant women have been suffering countless experiences that denounce iniquities, some expressed through graffiti art. Objective: To analyze the artistic experiences, resistance to differences and oppression of gender, social class, race and nationality, experienced by a female graffiti artist migrant in the context of COVID-19 in Portugal. Method: Study carried out through action research, netnography and oral history, in dialogue with some concepts: Coloniality, Decoloniality, Intersectionality, Migration, Art. Results: The artist's individual work is present on the walls of Lisbon, portraying peoples in diasporas in different contexts, through aesthetics that reveal Angolan matrices, gender oppression, social class, race and nationality; The artist's collective work has interfaces with social, political and cultural dimensions; During the pandemic, the artist reinvented herself to survive. Conclusion: The artist's work is inserted in the globalized world, where nationality has no borders, bringing to light the colonial discourse that hierarchies society in race, gender and nationality, reverberating power relations, oppression, intersectionality in an aesthetic and political way.