ARTivism: Gender and artistic expression at AWAC.

This thesis explores the power dynamics inherent in discussions about legitimate knowledge and gender expectations. Through eight sessions of art and eleven interviews, it exposes oppressive systems and compares the intersections of race, class, sex, and sexuality. My interdisciplinary approach expands from the work of local contemporary artist and researcher Zandra Dahne Harding. Building upon her thesis, and including influences from feminist theorists such as Rich, hooks, and Butler, and minority activists like Tuhiwai Smith and Feinberg, I situate voices emerging from marginalized populations as equally relevant and poignant, using the case study of seventeen residents of AWAC Homeless Shelter. Art is a means of expression for those whose experiences are muted by socioeconomic disadvantage, differential access to education, and non-normative gender identities. This thesis shares an example of how oppressed people can use and personalize participation in the visual arts to subvert elements of prevailing power structures, like those related to education, criminal corrections, and gender hierarchies. Art sessions and interviews conducted with feminist and indigenous frameworks, called artivism' helped participants involved with a street-level shelter in Northern British Columbia communicate some aspects of their diverse truths of subordination. --Leaf 2.