Using Visual Art Workshops with Female Survivors of Domestic Violence in Portugal and England: A Comparative Reflection

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a reflection on the use of visual art workshops in an interdisciplinary feminist project with female survivors of domestic violence living in refuges in England and Portugal. The paper discusses the fieldwork in each location with attention to the interaction between participants, between participants and the researcher/s, and the cultural and institutional structures influencing the research and the images produced. Despite some key differences in the context, the analysis highlights key resonances and commonalities amongst the objects that survivors of domestic abuse depicted in each location. We use the feminist notion of ‘giving voice’ as an analytical tool throughout the paper. The paper argues that ‘giving voice’ was not unproblematically accomplished by using visual methods and suggests that our understanding remained partial and often reliant on verbal narratives accompanying the visual images produced. We also highlight issues of power emerging when exhibiting art generated through the study.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based research
• interdisciplinary
• participatory research
• domestic violence
• feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an internal grant from Royal Holloway, University of London, where two of the authors were based when the research was carried out.

Notes on contributors

Vicki Harman

Vicki Harman is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK. She is a qualitative researcher whose primary interests include family life, gender, food practices and social inequalities. Recent publications include Feeding Children Inside and Outside the Home: Critical Perspectives (co-edited with Benedetta Cappellini and Charlotte Faircloth and published by Routledge in 2019).

Benedetta Cappellini

Benedetta Cappellini is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Durham, UK. Her research interests are in family consumption, food culture, ethnography and qualitative methods. She has published in journals such as Consumption, Markets and Culture, Sociology, Sociology of Health and Illness and the Sociological Review.

Susana Campos

Susana Campos is a visual artist and a Senior Lecturer of Drawing and Visual Communication at the University of Lisbon. Her research interests include arts-based methods, creativity and visual culture, drawing-based learning applied to design, and feminist studies. She has exhibited her work in Portugal and abroad, including the Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, the Fundação D. Luís I/Cultural Centre, Cascais, the Museu António Duarte, Caldas da Rainha, institutional events and commercial galleries. She has published in national magazines, catalogues and online journals and in the Linha do Horizonte Drawing Journal.