Publication Date

Summer 2026

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art and Art History

Advisor

Sarah Mills; Eleanor Pries; Ella Maria Diaz

Abstract

In the 1980s to 1990s, movements emerged such as the U.S Multiculturalism Movement which responded to the Reagan era’s (1981-1989) conservate wave in the United States. Alongside these movements, many artists of minoritized identities (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women, disabled, etc.) were under attack and made art designed to inspire an empathetic response in the viewer as a form of defensive activism. These artists created art designed to protect themselves and their marginalized communities by provoking an empathetic connection between the viewer and the artist’s minoritized community to combat internalized stereotypes. I apply Heidi Maibom’s theory of “moral imagination” to activist art and through this lens have identified artists connected by their intention to foster empathy in their audience, exercising the viewer’s “moral imagination” with the hope to inspire empathy for the artist’s minoritized identity. These artists are not linked by medium, movement, or even message, but through their intention and approach. Through primary source materials and conversations with the artists, I examine the empathy eliciting artistic practices of Chicana multimedia installation artist Amalia Mesa-Bains and the Queer-Feminist “Ecosexual” performance artist duo Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle from the 1980s through 2000s. These artists use tactics of vulnerability and engagement in their art to elicit empathy in the viewer as a form of activism; a highly effective method with the goal of not only activating the viewer to the cause, but to inform and create an emotional connection. Today artists build on these methods in their response to our current way of conservatism.

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