Precarious Solidarities

Critical reflections on the global reach of the groundbreaking 1970s collective by its founders and progeny, including Cecilia Vicuña and David Medalla

Published with Afterall Books.

This volume takes Artists for Democracy (AFD) as a starting point to explore the entanglement of artistic practices with transnational solidarities shaped by migration and political mobilization. AFD formed in London in 1974 to give "material and cultural support to liberation movements worldwide" and to use art as "a way of making global political struggles visible." Over the next three years, the collective arranged several large-scale festivals dedicated to the relief of political crises in Chile, Vietnam, Indochina and the United States. Through detailed contextualization, scholastic and artistic commissions and extensive archival documentation, Precarious Solidarities applies a variety of lenses―artistic, social, political, historical and geographic―to explore AFD's legacy today. The book includes writings by some of AFD's original founders including Cecilia Vicuña, Guy Brett and David Medalla, as well as by landmark artists such as Rasheed Araeen.