Online and offline solidarities : Dignidad Rebelde’s multi-platform art-activism

Abstract

With the advent of Web 2.0, users consistently connect with others and access information. Online applications, such as Social Media platforms, are a creative space for consuming cultural content, digital marketing, and spreading awareness. Social Media giant Meta, specifically their app Instagram, allows public and private photo and video sharing. How are artists and creatives manipulating Instagram as a national and global platform to forward political values and community goals? Artist-Activist collaborative Dignidad Rebelde’s artwork exemplifies the tension between offline and online methods for advocating for social justice issues through visual and rhetorical means. In this thesis, I demonstrate how Dignidad Rebelde’s performance on Instagram does more than spread information on their artistic production and personal lives by also creating and linking networks of solidarity through complementing their offline cultural work. Through crafting an online persona that rallies for Palestinian liberation, I question how performing solidarity online accumulates a form of social capital for the artists while simultaneously employing marketing strategies for their offline screen-printed work. This project focuses on three of Dignidad Rebelde’s transmedia images, Free Palestine/Viva Palestina Libre, We Teach Life, and Hola Gatita Dice Ceasefire, primarily looking at how the works operate as posts on their Instagram page (@dignidadrebelde) in conjunction with their physical presence at local events and exhibitions. Oakland First Fridays, Crosspollination Block Party, Hands Off Rafah Rally, and the exhibition Exist & Resist & Decolonize & Indigenize & Free Palestine are events where these images reappear throughout the Bay Area in 2024. The methods of the thesis are intentionally interdisciplinary. I draw on visual analysis from an art historical lens to dive into the composition of the images. I also incorporate scholarship from American Studies and Indigenous Studies to establish a historical background between the solidarities between Chicana/o/x and Indigenous peoples with Palestinians. I bring in Digital Media Studies through the discussion of how hashtags open spaces for creating networks but also leave behind a trail for possible censorship efforts. Interviews with both the artists are interwoven throughout the thesis as their input was crucial to the development of the project.Art Histor