From cave paintings to contemporary installations, visual culture has always been shaped by — and has shaped — the political, economic and social forces of its time. Art & Power is where Pen vs Sword explores this relationship directly, examining how images operate as instruments of influence, resistance, persuasion and memory. In moments of upheaval, art often becomes a battleground. It can legitimise authority or undermine it; memorialise trauma or sanitise it; open space for dissent or reinforce dominant narratives.

Today, as images circulate faster than ever and cultural production is increasingly mediated by institutions, platforms and markets, the question of who controls visual language — and to what ends — has become unavoidable.

This section brings together writing on art movements, individual artists, visual cultures and historical moments where aesthetics and authority collide. Rather than treating art as isolated or decorative, Pen vs Sword approaches it as a social force: embedded in ideology, shaped by material conditions, and capable of both complicity and critique.

Art & Power is not concerned with “taste” alone. It asks what art does in the world — how it frames reality, how it distributes visibility, and how it intervenes in political life. In doing so, we invite you to look more closely at the images that surround them, and to question whose interests those images ultimately serve.

The Featured articles and visual interventions below explore how art functions as a site of power — shaping perception, challenging authority, and exposing structures often rendered invisible. From avant-garde disruption to politically charged visual strategies, these pieces show how artists respond to systems of control, inequality and resistance, using image, form and provocation to intervene in public discourse. Together, they position visual culture not as decoration, but as an active force in social and political life.

The recurring question in Art & Power is simple but demanding: what work is art doing at this moment in history? Across different periods and contexts, the essays collected here return to the idea that visual culture is never neutral. Art reflects power structures, but it also helps to produce them.

Many of the pieces explore moments when artists responded directly to crisis — war, authoritarianism, social rupture or technological change. Movements such as Dada, Gutai or Tropicália emerge not merely as stylistic innovations, but as reactions to violence, repression and dislocation. In these cases, experimentation itself becomes political: a refusal of inherited forms, a rejection of imposed meanings, or an attempt to imagine alternatives.

Another recurring tension is between institution and intervention. Galleries, archives and curated spaces appear not only as sites of preservation, but as filters — deciding which works are elevated, contextualised or forgotten. Essays in this category are attentive to how power operates through curation, classification and visibility, and how artists navigate, exploit or resist those structures.

The category also draws on thinkers and traditions that treat art as a form of social analysis rather than aesthetic retreat. From avant-garde movements that sought to collapse the boundary between art and life, to contemporary practices that interrogate surveillance, spectacle and propaganda, the underlying concern is how images shape perception — and how perception shapes political possibility.

What binds these essays together is a refusal to separate art from the conditions of its production. Art & Power insists that to understand visual culture, we must also understand the histories, conflicts and systems that give rise to it. By tracing these connections, the category positions art not as an escape from politics, but as one of the places where politics becomes visible.