What is austerity?
Austerity measures are policies that cut government spending for social services or impose new taxes on the people. They are strings attached with foreign loans from international finance institutions (IFIs), to pay for these same loans. Austerity means governments tighten their belts, as ordered by IFIs. Austerity, enforced on the people, is a shackle of neocolonial, economic domination amid pandemic and crisis.
Who are the faces of austerity today?
Austerity hurts the people, and women the most, in societies of patriarchy and economic exploitation. Women in public service sectors face lay-offs. Women join social movements who fight fatal state budget cuts in social services, cuts that mean more expensive healthcare, housing, transportation, and the absence of social protection. Women’s underpaid and unpaid care work are forced to compensate for gaps.
Facing the austere world:
Realities, recovery, resistance
The exhibit aims to portray both the chains created by economic structures and the efforts to break them.
It will be a month-long online virtual gallery of various forms of art works launched at the End Austerity Activism Festival. It is art against austerity.
Could we still submit? How long will the exhibit be online?
The virtual exhibit was launched on September 29, 2022.
It will still accept artists’ contributed visual pieces until October 7, 2022. Send in your pieces, their brief descriptions, and your bio-notes to austerityexhibit@gmail.com
The exhibit will run throughout October. It will stay live during the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) in Washington, DC, where social movements, will question the IMF-WBG’s role in economic recovery and continue to call for the end to austerity as well as other neoliberal conditionalities.
Why a virtual art exhibit?
IBON International’s mandate cuts across (1) building and sharing knowledge, (2) providing a venue for people’s organisations and civil society organisations to express and build consensus around their concerns and demands, and (3) tackling international development issues in a way that people’s organisations and social movements can engage with. Art and digital multimedia could support these objectives, in representing people’s stories, narratives, and concerns, while still acknowledging the reality of the digital divide.
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Contact us for any questions, clarifications, or suggestions:
Use the form below, or write to us at austerityexhibit@gmail.com
Facing an austere world
DEVELOPED BY IBON INTERNATIONAL
AS PART OF THE END AUSTERITY ACTIVISM FESTIVAL
