The paper looks into a participatory art project developed in two women’s refuges, one
in Portugal and the other in England. Addressing liminality after surviving violence, the project
constructs a portrait of survivors, utilising feminist pragmatist aesthetics to transfer representational
agency to participants. Against a background where women who have experienced domestic violence
have often been portrayed in simplistic representations of damaged beauty, the study sought to gain a
deeper unde…
Read moreThe paper looks into a participatory art project developed in two women’s refuges, one
in Portugal and the other in England. Addressing liminality after surviving violence, the project
constructs a portrait of survivors, utilising feminist pragmatist aesthetics to transfer representational
agency to participants. Against a background where women who have experienced domestic violence
have often been portrayed in simplistic representations of damaged beauty, the study sought to gain a
deeper understanding by holding visual art workshops with participants (Portugal, England) and
analysing data from verbal testimonies (England). The paper contributes to a discussion of the
practical issues negotiated when establishing a representational power balance between researchers
and research participants. It does this by providing a critical discussion of three ethical problems
emerging in relation to the project. The first concerns the dominant representation of survivors, the
second the need for participants’ anonymity and the third the challenges of inequality in qualitative
research.
