This is a summary of the article on the art(s) of conflict disruption in South Sudan, published in Third World Quarterly; the original article can be read here.
This article explores how artistic practices in South Sudan advance the justice imagination in the service of peace, as spaces of conflict disruption that articulate, activate and imagine the justice needs and hopes of conflict-affected communities in times of enduring violence and impunity. This analytical reading of artistic practices as spatial practices of everyday peace in contexts of enduring violence is situated within the wider and burgeoning aesthetic turn in research and contributes to growing academic conversations on spaces of conflict disruption. It adopts Chipato’s ‘relatively broad understanding of aesthetics, anchored around a creative sensibility’ to engage with diverse forms of ‘artistic production’ (Chipato 2024, 2) that include music, painting, political cartoons and public art installations and spaces. Using the empirically illustrative case of South Sudan, it argues that as part of the justice imagination in South Sudan, the arts disrupt conflict by resisting the erasure of past and present violence and offer visions of justice that refuse the totality of violence by rendering visible an imagined future without war.
Arts as accountability
In South Sudan, artists turn to the arts to render personal and collective experiences of injustice public and put on display enduring legacies of poor governance and violence. Political cartoons and music are particularly popular artistic spaces that counter the erasure of past and enduring experiences and systems of violence, articulating the justice needs of conflict-affected communities. The country’s bold political cartoon scene regularly publishes visually striking condemnations of both government officials and the international community in newspapers and through social media channels, sharing portrayals of corruption, violence and neglect to audiences around the country, and around the globe. Similarly, musicians use music to criticise the culture of violence and impunity in South Sudan but also to call for peace and justice. For example, in 2023, a collaboration of South Sudanese musicians released a song entitled ‘Disappear’ which pays tribute to the thousands of victims of the 2013 civil war. In an artistic expression of memorialization and truth-telling the song expresses the history of war in South Sudan where ‘because of this beautiful land many have gone’ but are ‘not forgotten at all’. The song also shares the desire for the right to truth in its lyrics that ask to ‘please show me the grave, let me say my last goodbye’, emphasizing that ‘this pain is just too much’.
In expressing what was and is, these spaces of artistic expression articulate what is needed. The enduring nature of violence, impunity and corruption are dominant themes in these spaces, as is the need for, and, correspondingly, the absence of, peace.
Arts as spaces of healing and non-violence
Beyond merely expressing justice needs, the arts also offer platforms to address them, by creating reconciliatory spaces for healing through re-storying past trauma, and by promoting non-violent spaces of dialogue and conflict resolution.
In describing the healing power of the arts in South Sudan, Andy, an art trauma therapy practitioner, shares that ‘art has the power to unify us, our trauma, guilt and remind us of our connections’. Alex, similarly, emphasises that ‘art in itself is a trauma healing factor’ that offers a reprieve from the stresses and insecurities of everyday existence among conflict-affected South Sudanese. Photovoice research in Colombia by Fairey, Cubillos, and Muñoz (2024) similarly highlights the ‘healing impacts of participatory arts’ for conflict-affected communities, where photography specifically contributed to healing by providing a channel through which to stay ‘connected’ to the past, validate and mediate experiences of loss and ‘project[ing] a new future’. In South Sudan, Sam, a visual artist, adds that for them, art has ‘become part of healing’ because it offers moments to ‘feel comfortable’ within the broader context of ongoing violence in the country.
Various artistic practices in South Sudan have been leveraged and transformed to explicitly promote peace by changing ‘the orientation’ of individuals and communities who ‘might otherwise consider engaging in forms of intercommunal violence’ (Verjee 2024, 71). Within internally displaced communities in South Sudan, one initiative promotes the return and revitalisation of culturally significant and diverse dance practices in an effort to counter the erasure of culture that is both a product of, and contribution to, ongoing violence.
Justice hopes
Temporal slippages within the justice imagination mean that these spaces express not only what was and what is, but crucially also what could, and should, be.
In South Sudan justice hopes are given expression in myriad artistic forms. For example, in Juba, a permanent art installation depicts the history of South Sudan across several murals, created by different artists, that taken together visualises the country’s history of violence, progress and unmet expectations. The installation is designed such that you walk past each mural in chronological order until you reach the final space – a wall left intentionally blank, a deliberate choice that serves as a reminder that South Sudan’s ‘history is not yet done’, and that hope remains.
Conclusion
The arts in South Sudan serve to ‘document, activate and imagine’ (Potash and Kalmanowitz 2023, 311) peace by giving multivocal expression to past, present and future justice needs and hopes in a context of enduring violence. However, the contributions and potential of the arts as spaces of conflict disruption in contexts of enduring violence also carry risks, and require further exploration into the limits, tensions and challenges that artistic practices as spaces of conflict disruption navigate. Furthermore, the risks that artist activists confront in contexts of ongoing violence showcase the need for considerable ethical reflection and accommodation in future research.