MgA. Barbora Müllerová gained her master’s degree in graphic design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem where she continues in her doctoral studies in the field of visual communication. Her thesis focuses on the socially engaged drawing and the phenomenon of the artzines selfpublishing. Since 2015 she has been an editor in chief of the magazine “Fůd” focused on the current illustrative drawing, since 2020 she has been working as a curator and a production manager of the International Festival of Illustration Lustr. She also works as an illustrator and pedagogue and occasionally publishes in A2 cultural newspaper.
Socially Engaged Illustration and Artzines Across Europe
The paper focuses on the today’s role of drawing and illustration within both direct and indirect visual activism. The attention is given mostly to the topics and the fields that have been engaged with socially engaged illustration only as of recently – to the fields of mental health, ecology and environmentalism, gender and transgender, issues of urban life, and social exclusion. A varied range of forms of visual activism is shown on the specific examples of illustrative drawing – from the direct support of demonstrators to the effort to purify visual communication from stereotyping clichés. At the same time, the paper searches for the places of presentation of engaged illustrative drawing and technologies used in the field, finding out a huge tendency to media nostalgia. The paper also indicates a broader context of engaged illustration and its connections to the current cultural and social affairs. What does the return of paper media and self-publishing mean at the time of Web 2.0, and what is it caused by? How does its role differ in the countries of Western Europe and in other countries, such as Hungary or Russia? What are the important centres of events on the scene and what is the social-economic context of it like? The methodology of the data acquisition is based on the methods of qualitative research: interviews with chosen artists and art interpretation, followed-up with examinations of exhibition programmes of relevant galleries and other institutions and of secondary literature.