Arte Útil: Isabel Lima

Newcastle-based artist Isabel Lima’s socially engaged practice addresses the connections between sense of place, identity and displacement.

This talk looks at ways of mapping and rendering visible the current migrant crisis, particularly in the southern European border, and questions the ethical role of the artist as an image producer.

Lima’s projects involve various groups of people, particularly refugees and asylum seekers, and often take the form of video, performance and installation.

‘Arte Útil’ roughly translates as ‘useful art’. This type of practice focuses on the applied dimension of art, stressing the beneficial outcomes of projects for their users. The Office of Useful Art at mima presents examples from the Arte Útil archive, a series of case studies of projects that operate in this way.

This series of talks reintroduces the old idea that art is not for its own sake, but can be a tool for social change. Talks are open to all and we hope you will come and share ideas of what useful art means to you.

The Arte Útil talk series is organised by mima as a partner of ‘The Uses of Art – The Legacy of 1848 and 1989’, a project by the European museums confederation L’Internationale.