Fighting Gender-Based Violence With Feminist Art Pedagogy A Co-Choreography Between Teacher, Students, and Anonymous Activists

Article Sidebar

2.PDF
Published: May 12, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26443/crae.v51i1.1372
Keywords:
Feminist pedagogy, Gender-based violence, Art teaching

Main Article Content

Annik Bilodeau
University of Waterloo
Ariane Wilson
University of Waterloo

Abstract

Activist groups like No Estamos Todas (NET) leverage social media to share art memorializing feminicide victims. While analyzing NET’s social media posts for patterns in representations of victims, we noticed contributions starting in 2017 from middle schoolers in Illinois. The way these artworks focus on victims’ lives led us to explore a collaboration between NET, these students, and their teacher. Through a feminist pedagogical analysis of the project, we argue that the students engage in recognition-based gender justice. We provide guidelines for implementation and pedagogical approaches, hoping to inspire teachers to recognize students as agents of change.


Keywords: Art Teaching; Gender-Based Violence; Feminist Pedagogy

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

How to Cite
Bilodeau, A., & Wilson, A. (2025). Fighting Gender-Based Violence With Feminist Art Pedagogy: A Co-Choreography Between Teacher, Students, and Anonymous Activists. The Canadian Review of Art Education, 51(1), 23–41. https://doi.org/10.26443/crae.v51i1.1372
Issue
Vol. 51 No. 1 (2025): The Multifaceted Nature of Art Education Research
Section
Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The copyright notice is CC BY SA. 

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same license. Thus any derivatives will also allow commercial use. For example, if someone translates your article into French, the French version of the article will also have to be shared under a CC BY SA license.

Author Biographies

Annik Bilodeau, University of Waterloo

Annik Bilodeau is an educational developer and researcher at the Centre for Teaching Excellence and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Waterloo (Ontario). She obtained her PhD in Spanish (2016) from the University of Ottawa, studying Spanish American narrative and its integration in second language teaching, as well as the evolution of cosmopolitanism thought in Mexican and Peruvian contemporary literature.

She is the author of two monographs: Belonging Beyond Borders: Cosmopolitan Affiliations in Contemporary Spanish American Literature (University of Calgary Press, 2021), which traces the evolution from aesthetic cosmopolitanism through anti-colonial nationalism to modern political cosmopolitanism in the works of Elena Poniatowka, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jorge Volpi; and Pasting Up Protest: The Art of Memorializing Violence in Mexican Printmaking (McGill-Queens University Press, forthcoming November 2025), which explores the sociopolitical engagement of contemporary Mexican street artists and printmakers, and examines the role of art in creating public memory.

She is currently researching feminist street art and activism about gender-based violence and reproductive rights in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina (SSHRC Insight Grant, 2022-2027). Her research interests also include foreign language reading anxiety, collaborative learning, and feminist pedagogies.

Ariane Wilson, University of Waterloo

Ariane Wilson is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher in her 5 to 9, and a public engagement professional in her 9 to 5 at a Canadian gender justice non-profit organization. She specialized in Collaborative Design while completing a Bachelor of Knowledge Integration (2021) at the University of Waterloo (Ontario) with a Fine Arts Studio Minor and a Spanish Language II Diploma. In the spring of 2021, she was awarded the University of Waterloo’s Angus Kerr-Lawson Essay Prize in Philosophy for her paper, Quantum Bayesianism – Embracing Subjectivity in Science, which explores how a philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics tells us that welcoming subjectivity in empirical science could give rise to scientific progress.

Since 2019, she has been researching how public art can bolster social movements protesting gender-based violence in Latin America, working closely with Dr. Annik Bilodeau on several projects, including the literature review for her book, Pasting up Protest – The Art of Memorializing Violence in Mexican Printmaking (McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming November 2025). Currently, she is assisting Dr. Bilodeau with her research on feminist street art and activism about gender-based violence and reproductive rights in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina (SSHRC Insight Grant, 2022-2027).

Funding data

References

Acevedo, E. (2023). Gender-based violence and femicide in Mexico: Why is the law failing to protect Mexico’s women? In D. S. Peterson & D. Zhang (Eds.), International responses to gendered-based domestic violence: Gender-specific and socio-cultural approaches (pp. 39–50). Routledge.

Anttila, E. (2013). Choreographed childhoods: Patterns of embodiment in the lives of contemporary children. In G. Boldt & F. McArdle (Eds.), Young children, pedagogy and the arts: Ways of seeing (pp. 106–125). Routledge.

Blandy, D. (1999). Review of the books Art education: Issues in postmodernist pedagogy, by R. Clark & Postmodern art education: An approach to curriculum, by A. Efland, K. Freedman, & P. Stuhr. Studies in Art Education, 40(4), 373–376. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1320555

Blandy, D. (2021). Promising democracy. Studies in Art Education, 62(3), 286–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2021.1936429

Buscemi, E. (2023). Deploying private memory in the virtual sphere: Feminist activism against gender-based violence in Mexico. International Journal of Communication (Online), 17, 2180–2199. https://go-gale-com.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&u=uniwater&id=GALE%7CA745268302&v=2.1&it=r&sid=summon&aty=ip

Chicago, J. (1974–1979). The Dinner Party [Exhibition]. Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY, United States. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party

Congdon, K. G. (1993). Art and teaching for peace and justice. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, 13, 13–36. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jstae/vol13/iss1/4/

Doll, W. E., Jr. (1989). Foundations for a post-modern curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 21(3), 243–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027890210304

Duran, A. R. (2021). Art history and human suffering: Pasts, pedagogies, and possibilities. In C. Hutt & M. Celinscak (Eds.), Artistic representations of suffering: Rights, resistance, and remembrance (pp. 59–78). Rowman & Littlefield.

Fraser, N. (2007). Feminist politics in the age of recognition: A two-dimensional approach to gender justice. Studies in Social Justice, 1(1), 23–35. https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v1i1.979

Fregoso, R. -L. (2023). The force of witness: Contra feminicide. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478024385

Hochtritt, L., Ploof, J., & Quinn, T. (Eds.). (2012). Art and social justice education: Culture as commons. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203852477

Kloppe-Santamaría, G., & Zulver, J. (2023). Beyond collateral damage: Femicides, disappearances, and new trends in gender-based violence in Mexico. Wilson Center. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/beyond-collateral-damage-femicides-disappearances-and-new-trends-gender-based-violence

Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. Routledge.

Lozano, N. M. (2019). Not one more! Feminicidio on the border. Ohio State University Press.

Morbiato, C. (2017). Prácticas resistentes en el México de la desaparición forzada. REVISTA TRACE, 71, 138–165. https://doi.org/10.22134/trace.71.2017.100

Nelson, M. (2017). No Estamos Todas: feminicide presentation [PowerPoint slides].

No estamos todas. (n.d.). Posts [Facebook page]. Facebook. Retrieved March 20, 2025, from https://www.facebook.com/noestamostodas

No estamos todas [@noestamostodas]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram. Retrieved March 20, 2025, from https://www.instagram.com/noestamostodas/

No estamos todas [@noestamostodas]. (2019, July 19). No estamos todas, nos falta Juanita 23/04/19 - Oaxaca - Tenía 14 años Ilustración por: Aylah. Estudia el séptimo grado en la [Photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/BztmyHaDuu1/

No estamos todas [@noestamostodas]. (2019, October 21). No estamos todas, nos falta Sofía 10/06/19 - Veracruz - Tenía 50 años Ilustración por: Ninna Falla

IG: @ninna_falla / @queenv.brand [Photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B35kpkcDHVA/

No estamos todas [@noestamostodas]. (2020, December 11). No estamos todas, nos falta María

Tenía 7 años cuando fue asesinada el 10 de abril de 2020 en Veracruz [Photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CIrRsnLCywn/

Nordlund, C., Speirs, P., & Stewart, M. (2010). An invitation to social change: Fifteen principles for teaching art. Art Education, 63(5), 36–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2010.11519086

Oliver, E., & Valls, R. (2004). Violencia de género: Investigaciones sobre quiénes, por qué y cómo superarla. El Roure.

Retford, K. (2010). A death in the family: Posthumous portraiture in eighteenth-century England. Association of Art Historians, 33(1), 74–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.2009.00717.x

Salguero, M. (n.d.). Yo te nombro: El mapa de los feminicidios en México. Blogger. https://mapafeminicidios.blogspot.com/p/inicio.html

Sisson, E. (1999). Practising theory? Visual arts education and postmodern pedagogy. Circa, 89, 20–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/25563492

Téllez, G.C. (2020). No estamos todas: Ilustrando memorias. Iberoamérica social: Revista-red de estudios sociales, 8(14), 173–201. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7500052

Trans Murder Monitoring. (2024). Will the cycle of violence ever end? TGEU’s Trans Murder Monitoring project crosses 5,000 cases. https://transrespect.org/en/trans-murder-monitoring-2024/

World Health Organization. (n.d.). Violence against women, Impact. Retrieved April 7, 2025, from https://www.who.int/health-topics/violence-against-women#tab=tab_2