Socially engaged practice

Socially engaged practice is a strand of contemporary art in which the work is collaborative, often participatory, and people together with their relationships become both the medium and the material. Instead of producing a finished object, the artist initiates processes, encounters and actions that unfold within real communities beyond the gallery walls. Its roots lie in the performance, conceptualism and institutional critique of the 1960s and 1970s, while theoretical framing came from Nicolas Bourriaud's notion of relational aesthetics and from dialogical art. Artists such as Tania Bruguera and Thomas Hirschhorn address migration, labour, education and political participation. In Ukraine this approach became especially vivid after the Revolution of Dignity and during the war, with art projects working alongside displaced people, veterans and urban communities, turning art into a tool of solidarity, healing and collective action.