Skip navigation

Main menu

  • What's on
  • Art & Artists
    • The Collection
      Artists
      Artworks
      Art by theme
      Media
      Videos
      Podcasts
      Short articles
      Learning
      Schools
      Art Terms
      Tate Research
      Art Making
      Create like an artist
      Kids art activities
      Tate Draw game
  • Visit
  • Shop
Become a Member
  • DISCOVER ART
  • ARTISTS A-Z
  • ARTWORK SEARCH
  • ART BY THEME
  • VIDEOS
  • ART TERMS
  • SCHOOLS
  • TATE KIDS
  • RESEARCH
  • Tate Britain
    Tate Britain Free admission
  • Tate Modern
    Tate Modern Free admission
  • Tate Liverpool + RIBA North
    Tate Liverpool + RIBA North Free admission
  • Tate St Ives
    Tate St Ives Ticket or membership card required
  • FAMILIES
  • ACCESSIBILITY
  • SCHOOLS
  • PRIVATE TOURS
Tate Logo
Become a Member
Back to Tate Modern
Free Display

Artist and Society

Explore artworks from Tate's collection that respond to their social and political context

  • About
  • Rooms
  • Highlights

Photo © Tate (Madeleine Buddo)

This wing is concerned with the ways in which artists engage with social ideals and historical realities. Though some artists associated modernism with a utopian vision, art has also provided a mirror to contemporary society, sometimes raising awareness about urgent issues or arguing for change. Whether through traditional media or moving images, abstraction or figuration, militancy or detached observation, all the artworks in this wing highlight aspects of the social reality in which they were made, and try to generate a reaction and convey a more or less explicit message to their publics.

Read more

Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 2 West

Getting Here

Ongoing

Free

12 rooms in Artist and Society

Betye Saar and Firelei Baez

Betye Saar and Firelei Baez

This room brings together two artists from different generations and places whose art reimagines historical narratives and visual references to the past

Go to room

Betye Saar, Mti 1973. Tate. © reserved.

A view from São Paulo: Abstraction and Society

A view from São Paulo: Abstraction and Society

Explore how geometric abstraction fabricated dreams of a new society in the twentieth century 

Go to room

Carmelo Arden Quin, Carres 1951. Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Latin American Acquisitions Committee 2014. © estate of Carmelo Arden Quin; courtesy Ignacio Pedronzo, Sammer Gallery Miami.

Civil War

Civil War

The works in this room find visual expression for the complex horrors of civil war

Go to room

André Fougeron, Martyred Spain 1937. Tate. © The estate of the André Fougeron.

Nation Building Between Heaven And Earth

Nation Building Between Heaven And Earth

Explore photobooks published by the Chinese government from the 1950s to the 1980s that aimed to build international diplomacy

Go to room

Spread from 'Commemorative album of the 26th World Table Tennis Championships' (1961)

Wael Shawky

Wael Shawky

This striking video installation uses 200-year-old marionettes to depict the story of the First Crusade from the perspective of Arab historians

Go to room

A screen showing two puppets looking at each other.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

How do histories and actions exist on our bodies? Ramírez-Figueroa uses performance to tell stories about memory and identity

Go to room

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Life in His Mouth, Death Cradles Her Arm 2016. Lent by Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Latin American Acquisitions Committee 2021 . © reserved.

Joseph Beuys and Vlassis Caniaris

Joseph Beuys and Vlassis Caniaris

These artists used found objects to make sculptures that demonstrate the political potential of art

Go to room

Photo © Tate (Matt Greenwood)

Tourmaline

Tourmaline

Salacia uses split-screen montages of archival footage and 16mm film to imagine a dream of freedom for 19th-century trans sex worker Mary Jones

Go to room

Tourmaline, Salacia 2019. Tate. © Tourmaline. Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York.

Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson’s photographs invite questions about truth, manipulation and the role of photography in constructing reality

Go to room

Deana Lawson, Nation 2018. Tate. © Deana Lawson.

Farah Al Qasimi

Farah Al Qasimi

Farah Al Qasimi builds a world in which images transcend borders and decorative interiors to tell tales of identity, colonialism and taste

Go to room

Farah Al Qasimi, Woman in Leopard Print, 2019. Tate. © Farah Al Qasimi

Witnesses

Witnesses

Arahmaiani’s paintings and healing performances lament violence against women in Indonesia.

Go to room

Burning Body, Burning Country (Manila 1999)

Joseph Koudelka

Joseph Koudelka

Informed by his experiences of political upheaval and exile, Josef Koudelka captures 20th-century Europe through a critical, yet poetic, lens

Go to room

Josef Koudelka, On 22 and 23 August, Wenceslas Square was Cleared of People, August 1968 1968, printed 1970s. Tate. © Josef Koudelka / MAGNUM Photos, Courtesy of the Josef Koudelka Foundation.

Lucio Fontana, Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’  1960

In 1959, Fontana began to cut the canvas, with dramatic perfection. These cuts (or tagli) were carefully pre-meditated but executed in an instant. Like the holes in some of his other canvases, they have the effect of drawing the viewer into space. In some, however, the punctures erupt from the surface carrying the force of the gesture towards the viewer in a way that is at once energetic and threatening. Although these actions have often been seen as violent, Fontana claimed ‘I have constructed, not destroyed.’

Gallery label, April 2009

1/6
highlights in Artist and Society

More on this artwork

Betye Saar, Mti  1973

2/6
highlights in Artist and Society

More on this artwork

Andrea Bowers, The Worker’s Maypole, An Offering for May Day 1894 (Illustration by Walter Crane)  2015

The source for Bowers’ drawing is an illustration by the British artist Walter Crane (1845–1915), published in The Clarion, a socialist magazine, in 1894. Emphasising a continuous tradition of political activism, Bowers recreated the image on sections of cardboard boxes, using a permanent marker pen. She had seen similar materials used to construct placards by twenty-first century protestors such as the Occupy Wall Street encampment. She also altered some of the text on Crane’s banners to reflect more recent political campaigns.

Gallery label, February 2016

3/6
highlights in Artist and Society

More on this artwork

Siah Armajani, Room for Deportees  2017

4/6
highlights in Artist and Society

More on this artwork

Tourmaline, Salacia  2019

5/6
highlights in Artist and Society

More on this artwork

Farah Al Qasimi, Woman in Leopard Print  2019

6/6
highlights in Artist and Society

More on this artwork

Highlights

T00694: Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’
Lucio Fontana Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’ 1960
T15984: Mti
Betye Saar Mti 1973
L03750: The Worker’s Maypole, An Offering for May Day 1894 (Illustration by Walter Crane)
Andrea Bowers The Worker’s Maypole, An Offering for May Day 1894 (Illustration by Walter Crane) 2015
T15571: Room for Deportees
Siah Armajani Room for Deportees 2017
T15683: Salacia
Tourmaline Salacia 2019
P82696: Woman in Leopard Print
Farah Al Qasimi Woman in Leopard Print 2019

You've viewed 4/6 highlights

You've viewed 6/6 highlights

See all 71 artworks in Artist and Society

We recommend

  • Audio Highlight Tour: Natalie Bell Level 2

    Listen to artists, curators and conservators talk about key artworks in Tate Modern

  • Audio Description Tour: Tate Modern

    Listen to audio descriptions about key artworks from our collection, for visually impaired visitors

Artwork
Close

Join in

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Sign up to emails

Sign up to emails

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Tate’s privacy policy

About

  • About us
  • Our collection
  • Terms and copyright
  • Governance
  • Picture library
  • ARTIST ROOMS
  • Tate Kids

Support

  • Tate Collective
  • Members
  • Patrons
  • Donate
  • Corporate
  • My account
  • Press
  • Jobs
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Contact
© The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, 2025
All rights reserved