Intersectionality and art therapy

The current state of the world

The world is once again going through immense change and disruption: from the global pandemic and the disproportionate impact on poorer nations and classes to the murder of George Floyd and the return to prominence of the fight for racial equality; from the urgent fight for the rights of women highlighted by the reversal of Roe vs Wade in the US, the recent killings of Mahsa Amini and many more children, women, and men by the theocracy in Iran, and the young women recently denied access to their universities in Afghanistan to the World Cup highlighting the alarming lack of LGBTQ + rights and shocking labour practices towards migrant workers in some regions; and UNICEF announcing that 1 in 10 children worldwide continue to be denied basic rights due to disabilities (UNICEF, 2021). These snapshots from the past few years indicate just some of the landmarks within a much bigger problem of marginalisation and give us a glimpse of the ongoing fights for the rights of us all within the varying intersectional systems of oppression (patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, etc.). These flashpoints show just how much we are moulded by the socio-political as much as the psychological.

Calling for the art therapy profession to respond

The art therapy professional, like many other professions, is now being called upon to take a moment to look up, become more responsive to the socio-political contexts we are all living in, and provide more culturally responsive and relevant services. To highlight the importance of responsive, relevant and anti-oppressive practices, three art therapy journals are collaborating internationally to publish sister special issues including a diverse group of authors, peer reviewers, associate editors and editors with a broad range of lived and professional experiences: the Canadian Journal of Art Therapy is highlighting anti-colonialism and re-indigenization within art therapy; Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association is focusing on cultural humility in art therapy; and here, at the International Journal of Art Therapy, we are foregrounding intersectionality as a theoretical framework for art therapy.

Intersectionality as a theoretical framework for art therapy

The importance of theory here is eloquently articulated by bell hooks; ‘I came to theory because I was hurting—the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend—to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing’ (hooks, 2014). Intersectionality is a term coined by Crenshaw (1989) to name a concept which came from the thinking and theorising of a previous generation of feminists including Claudia Jones, bell hooks, and Cherrie Moraga amongst others. Crenshaw’s term further defined the already existing social justice actions of many movements that were led by women of colour in the US earlier in the twentieth century; movements that challenged colonialism, racism and sexism (Collins & Bilge, 2016). In her seminal paper, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality to acknowledge the 'compoundness' of discrimination due to multiple factors such as race, gender, age, sexuality, etc and highlighted the limits of 'single issue analyses'. Crenshaw suggests that we can’t fully understand the oppression of Black women unless we stand at the ‘crossroads’ to understand how being Black and a woman ‘intersect’. Intersectionality recognises that as much as we are influenced by the varying systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism etc, our experiences are also moulded by them (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1989).

More recently, Srinivasan has highlighted that intersectionality has since often been reduced to a ‘mere attention to difference’ and reminds us that this negates its power as a theoretical framework suggesting that its central insight is that any movement (e.g. feminism, anti-racism, labour movement) that focuses only on what the members of the relevant group have in common (e.g. women, people of colour, working-class) will best serve those members of the group who are least oppressed – if we want to serve those who are marginalised in any group we must look to the intersection where the multiple aspects of oppression collide (eg being a woman who is Black and working class) (Srinivasan, 2021).

One of the pertinent things about intersectionality is that it brings into focus the fact that we all walk with multiple sub-personalities, parts of our adapted personas which may hold aspects of privilege or otherness at any given moment (Turner, 2021). After over a decade of invitations to consider intersectionality as a relevant theory for art therapy (Datlen & Pandolfi, 2020; Eastwood, 2021; Gipson, 2015; Karcher, 2017; Kuri, 2017; Talwar, 2010, 2018; Wright & Wright, 2017; Zappa, 2017), this framework is now gaining traction and the literature is growing (Collier & Eastwood, 2022; Eastwood, 2022; Talwar & Sajnani, 2022). We are also now beginning to recognise the professional yet also personal and emotional labour required and their intrinsic costs to those who may challenge injustice and bias from positions of lived experience of oppression. Intersectionality and how it arose from the lived experiences and labour of Black feminists and activists is now becoming better understood within the realms of the arts therapies (Collier, Eastwood, & Talwar, 2022; Collier & Eastwood, 2022; Talwar, 2018). We would like to take a moment here to also acknowledge the Black arts therapists and arts therapists of colour who have advanced the discourse surrounding intersectional thinking and sentiment in the arts therapies through practice, publication, and activist-therapist work from within and outside of the institutions (Eastwood, 2022).

The importance of the desupremification of the visual realm

In exploring social justice perspectives within art therapy, Talwar (2018) asserts that the decolonising of art therapy may require totally rethinking the purpose of art. Continued development of this type of embracing of complexity and the holding of the social, political, and personal all at once in art therapy practice must also include considerations of aesthetic subjectivity and the decolonising of the visual realm (Eastwood, 2021). This is an essential task if we are to make meaningful change and diversify our profession. When reflecting on objects, images, and visual media, art therapists are well-equipped to embrace alternative ways of coming to know oneself and other through art practice.

Self-reflexive and intersectional examinations of identity through art-based research can support this untangling and examining of ones own psychological and social aesthetic subjectivity, supporting robust and continual questioning of existing certainties (Collier & Eastwood, 2022; Eastwood, 2021, 2022; Talwar, 2018).

Considering the visual realm beyond the traditions of one’s own cultural positionings or experiences of education, and viewing knowledge formation in this realm as interactive, ongoing, and potentially contestable can support greater anti-oppressive and non-colonising art therapy practice.

The reading and interpretation of visual media in the therapeutic space will always be culturally bound and shaped by the multiple and interacting identity markers and lived experiences of the therapist. In turn, the place where these may intersect and interact with that of the client must be a place of non-colonising collaboration, curiosity, and anti-oppressive shared making of meaning (Eastwood, 2021).

Arts therapists here in the UK often come to this work through art education and may well be greatly influenced by theories of Western aesthetics. Racism manifesting as a lack of curiosity beyond this, including on art therapy trainings, may be one of the underlying causes of an ongoing lack of diversity within this profession. Here, we’d like to propose that an intersectional framework may be helpful for a necessary desupremification of the visual realm and that the current moment, following the toppling of multiple statues across the world, can help us all examine the impact of a potential Western male gaze, White paradigm, or dominant heteronormative, ableist, or Eurocentric values resulting in blinkered worldviews or trapped ontologies. Aesthetic subjectivity must be robustly interrogated by art therapists to better examine ambiguous ethical concerns in the understanding of image within practice. As one of the most prominent contemporary artists, noted for her work cutting across personal identity, gender, race, species, health, and art history, Wangechi Mutu says about her statutes of female sentries, The Seated I-IV (Mutu, 2019) made for the four niches of the historic facade of The Met; “They (have) carried the power that this pre-pandemic/post-pandemic moment has exuded: the power of the reiteration of human rights, social justice, environmental awareness, as well as the kismet that came with the severity of the conditions that they were made in” (Edwards, Martin, Jones, & Okeke-Agulu, 2022).

Applying intersectionality within art therapy pedagogy

Despite the past decade of invaluable contributions to the ongoing discourse surrounding anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice, we still have a long way to go to ensure a meaningful embedding of intersectional sentiment and its key principles into mainstream art therapy discourse, literature, and education. We hope to go some way further in a necessary and ongoing process of learning and unlearning for the art therapy profession. The British Association of Art Therapists has thus joined the Coalition for Inclusion and Anti-Oppressive Practice expressly to support the development of an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Toolkit for Educators and has begun to work strategically to diversify their continued professional development programme for art therapists. In An art therapy education response: linking inequality and intersectional identity, Wood and McKoy-Lewens (2023) document the way one art therapy training course is attempting to use an intersectional framework to consider and work with the health and social inequalities that become apparent when trainees are on placement. Trainees are encouraged to use an intersectional lens when developing innovative practices in response to how clients and therapists cope with health inequalities and discrimination, the pain of being Othered, and the effects of unconscious privilege.

It is also important to consider how intersectionality can encourage the development of innovative and accessible pedagogical methods for training art therapists. In Enhancing intersectional thinking in the gallery: opportunities for art therapists-in-training, Hartman et al. (2023) propose exhibition curation as a pedagogical method for trainee art therapists to explore intersectional thinking and consider social advocacy. This could further provide alternative and innovative approaches that may challenge colonising of the visual realm, for training and qualified art therapists alike.

Developing innovative intersectional art therapy practices

In honour of ethical and anti-oppressive art therapy practice, we hope to support art therapists using intersectional frameworks in their bravery in being radically vulnerable through their writing (Eastwood, 2022) and beautifully human in sharing of uncertainties and anxieties surrounding ‘getting it right’. Hewins, in Art therapy, intersectionality and services for women in the criminal justice system (2023) and Sochanik, in How does skin colour affect the therapeutic relationship in art psychotherapy? (2023) both write honestly of their anxieties surrounding explorations of their Whiteness and potential unconscious bias and racism when working with Black clients. Both make important calls for action for other White art therapists to hold greater curiosity surrounding the ways in which we may all be complicit with White supremacy within our profession and beyond. These articles act as a great reminder of the continual need for such examination of the intersect of self, client and practice. In addition, Hewins notes her own feelings of Otherness with regard to academia and research practices in the art therapy profession and the importance of community support in risking transparency in these realms.

In their important opinion piece Shifting the Narrative: an intersectional exploration of art therapy in the Caribbean, Valldejuli and Belnavis-Elliott (2023) trace their process of adjustment and reframing of elements of their training in the US and UK to create a more culturally relevant, anti-oppressive therapeutic style that resonates with their Caribbean identities. This article models radical vulnerability by the authors and exemplifies the way in which intersectional frameworks can support adapted practice for all. This article offers a better understating of this area of practice particularly surrounding the integration of different spiritual and community based cultural perspectives within an individual’s process of healing.

A very different example of a culturally sensitive, innovative practice is the peer art therapy approach which values the therapist’s Lived Experience as described by Jewell and Camden-Pratt in Creating ‘art-alongside’ in Peer Art Therapy (PATh) groups: nurturing connection and trust, and responding to power dynamics (2023). Here, making art alongside each other provides a mutually connecting and co-learning experience. The art therapists resist the stigmatising and marginalising of therapist Lived Experience by openly naming their various intersecting identities as people who use art as healing alongside other mental health services.

The importance of engaging with the socio-political context

In the UK, the past few years have forced us to look specifically at modern-day inequality and structural racism within society. The discrimination witnessed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic forced a change in narrative, particularly the narrative of Britain and the Empire. The statue of Edward Colston being pulled down and dumped in the Bristol harbour during the summer of 2020 was a litmus point where the Black Lives Matter campaign collided with the height of the pandemic. This further highlighted the health inequalities agenda and the impact on Black and racialised communities (Vernon, 2020), despite the government being in denial, resulting in a series of public health reports on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19. However, by the spring of 2021, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, appointed by the Prime Minister, published its report (2021) which was widely condemned due to focusing on individual misfortune and seriously downplaying the impact of the history of enslavement, ongoing racism, and structural inequalities on Black and racialised peoples. This highlights the importance of art therapists being engaged with and challenging the socio-political context because otherwise there is a danger of falling into a tradition of focusing solely on the individual within psychotherapy resulting in potential collusion with this blame culture.

By the autumn of 2021, a charity established as a result of Black Lives Matter in Britain, Black Equity Organisation was writing ‘State of Black Britain Report: Discrimination still prevalent’ (2022). This report highlights the lived experience of Black people in the UK and the racism that they still endure – as well as their resilience. With over 67% of Black people, based on the opinion poll of 2,500 people, having a clear experience of racism when accessing primary and secondary care health services, this report shines a light on the issues Black people continue to have to navigate day-to-day. It is now quite clear that the issue of racial discrimination is part and parcel of our healthcare system and commissioning of services, and this report is a reminder that art therapists need to be conscious of social inequalities that are not acknowledged by the state but will be experienced by people who they work alongside in their practice.

In order for art therapists to recognise the trauma experienced by many communities and provide effective services, we must increase our understanding of what the denial of structural racism means in relation to health inequalities, policy, and how these are related to the commissioning and development of services. This also necessitates an awareness of how much is ignored by policies which influence services. In the UK, government policy is currently ignoring the impact of enslavement, colonisation, war, conflict, the eugenics movements, and the history of racism from Enoch Powell’s speech, Rivers of Blood, to the uprisings in St Pauls, Brixton, Broadwater Farm, Toxteth and other parts of the country in the 80s, to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 leading to the McPherson Report (Macpherson, 1999). It is important to acknowledge structural racism and institutionalised racism as part and parcel of everyday society.

In “You’re black, I’m black”: art therapy, race, autism, and domestic abuse, Nyamka Nevers-Ashton (2023) helps us think about the experience of Black children and Black bodies in art therapy. It's a timely reminder of what happened to Child Q, the 15-year-old girl that was strip-searched in a school in Hackney during the height of the pandemic, which only recently came to light because of an independent report (Gamble, 2022). This case highlighted the systemic problems which can lead to Black children being traumatised in schools and Child Q being treated in the dehumanising and distressing way that she was. Art therapists may have the potential to play a pivotal role in helping Black children to articulate the impacts of racism, their own identity, and their aspirations in a potentially problematic environment.

For children who have been adopted transracially, there are additional complexities to understanding their own identities. In Transracial adoption: art therapists’ views on facilitating children's racial and adoptive identity, Morrison-Derbyshire (2023) reports on her study exploring how art therapists work with transracially adopted children to help them find a coherent sense of self. This article describes therapists’ perceptions of the benefits and limitations of art therapy and advocates for intersectional thinking as a way to ensure that identity differences are not examined in silos. One participating art therapist, Anna (pseudonym) highlights how essential it is to be aware of the socio-political context in this work, stating that “we need to challenge… the internal world is not the only way that we are shaped, we are… profoundly shaped by society’s messages and the social political context that we live in…  we [need to] find a way to bring the two together”.

Community trauma and the power of language

In the UK, the term ‘Hostile Environment’ was used by the government for a 2012 policy to deter illegal immigration and had serious consequences for Commonwealth citizens who had been living in the UK legally since before 1973 (many of whom were from the ‘Windrush’ generation) (House of Lords, 2018). Hundreds of people from the Windrush generation received strongly worded, threatening letters and many endured forced detentions, loss of employment, housing and livelihoods, and were forcibly separated from families. This has left a whole community facing humiliation, degradation, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress without adequate mental healthcare (Vernon, 2019).

So, we end with a call to art therapists to continue to develop much-needed culturally sensitive services for our global communities. In recognition that it is not possible to begin to start thinking about how to develop anti-oppressive practices with which to meet the needs of our communities without also taking into account the power of language we invited Kapitan and Kapitan to contribute an article called Language is power: anti-oppressive, conscious language in art therapy practice (2023) which contributes a critical discussion of the power of words to harm. This opinion piece was invited following the authors’ video presentation on this important topic at an annual conference of the British Association of Art Therapists, which was made freely available to all members as part of the work of the professional body to support art therapists in their own development as clinicians. The article offers helpful examples of how art therapists can disrupt oppression by tapping into the potential emancipatory power of language.

Acknowledgements

Finally, we’d like to acknowledge the labour and bravery of all of the authors and artists we have mentioned above, and the amount of generosity involved in attempting to make systematic change a possibility. We’d like to thank the authors, peer reviewers, editors, associate editors and collaborating journals for taking time to hear other perspectives and for using creative thinking to marry lived experiences with the aims and scope of an academic journal. We’d also like to acknowledge that the important work of everyone involved in co-producing this special issue has been enabled by the support within and by the British Association of Art Therapists and that the considerable resource the Board of Directors invests in the journal enables this vital exploration of emerging and important areas of practice.