The exhibition at MIMA Museum entitled “May ’68 and protest movements in posters” recollects legendary posters used as protesting political vehicles from the sixties. The images, large, colorful, strong show the power they still have, before social media allowed sharing images so freely.
The elements are printed or drawn in paper. For its inexpensiveness, posters become an art and a message abled to cover distances, to reach everybody and to disseminate widely. And, as a vehicle born for public spaces, to be printed and distributed, to be pasted in doors, walls, streets, public buildings, is an art of congregation and of collective resistance.
Protesting against different injustices can rarely go without signs specifically designed to address the issues protesters rally against. Cynicism, humor, and irony are often deployed and should be as weapons against authority, as Bakhtin conceptualizes, laughter and carnival are a popular creation that opposes the serious tone from the official culture.
“The principle of laughter and the carnival spirit on which the grotesque is based destroys this limited seriousness and all pretense of an extratemporal meaning and unconditional value of necessity. It frees human consciousness, thought, and imagination for new potentialities. For this reason, great changes, even in the field of science, are always preceded by a certain carnival consciousness that prepares the way.”
