Vista (17) Call for papers until 2 Januray (extended deadline)

The call for papers for issue 17 of Vista magazine is now open, from today until 2 January 2026. The theme is “Constellations of the Sensible: Aiesthesis, Encounters and Frictions in Visual Cultures” and its thematic editors are Patricia Posch (University of Minho, Portugal/State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Alessandra Simões Paiva (Federal University of Southern Bahia, Brazil/Brazilian Association of Art Critics, Brazil) and Rosa Cabecinhas (University of Minho, Portugal).

We live in a time when the production and circulation of images are intertwined with multiple forms of perception, sensory experience and social relations. Based on Walter Mignolo’s concept of aiesthesis, we understand that sensitivity is not limited to visual experience, but is inscribed in specific historical, cultural and political contexts, involving the body, memory, affections and community practices. Looking, feeling and perceiving are not neutral activities, but ways of acting and responding to regimes of power, constituting tools of existence, resistance and epistemological reconfiguration.
This openness to new ways of producing and experiencing visualities has led to a rethinking of the role of images and the gaze in the construction of meaning, as well as the social and cultural power relations that form the backdrop, based on a proposal for an insurgent aesthetic that values linguistic, spiritual and bodily hybridity as a form of sensitive resistance (Anzaldúa, 1987). Contributing to this are proposals for the decentralisation of the sensible, such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s (2010) concept of ch’ixi, which points to sensible logics that resist Western homogenisation and highlight an aesthetic of difference without conciliatory synthesis, and Leda Martins’ (2021) reflections on spiral time, which focus on the body, memory and ancestry as reconfigurers of aesthetic perception.
Fundamentally, investigating and producing visualities in contemporary times requires not only attention to what is seen, but also to the way in which the world is collectively felt, participated in and co-created. Jacques Rancière (2000), in Le Partage du Sensible (The Distribution of the Sensible), reminds us of the need to take a careful look at the distribution schemes of the visible and the aesthetic experience, both intrinsically political and determinative of who has a voice and who can participate in the public sphere. This sensitivity incorporates a poetic and ethical dimension, recognising that perceiving and creating images simultaneously involves affective, ethical and aesthetic experiences.
This new way of looking at images and visualities (slow, attentive and sensitive) invites us to reflect on how practices in the field of visual cultures — including visual arts, the media and curatorial practices—reconfigure ecologies of feeling and can act as instruments of existence, resistance, insurgency and/or epistemological reconfiguration, challenging established social norms, promoting micropolitical insurgencies (Rolnik, 2018) and expanding the understanding of what is experiential and visually shareable as sensitive.
This issue of Vista is dedicated to these diverse manifestations. With the aim of mapping and encouraging research that expands the boundaries of visual culture, incorporating sensitive experiences that go beyond the gaze, promoting dialogues between aesthetics, politics and social practice, we propose to explore the importance of being open to new ways of producing and feeling visualities. Taking as our guiding thread the concept of aiesthesis proposed by Walter Mignolo (2010, 2019), we invite contributions that explore aesthetic, cultural, political and/or epistemological dimensions in visual manifestations. We aim to bring together contributions that investigate ways of apprehending and creating images that challenge paradigms, broaden ways of seeing (Berger et al., 1972) and reconfigure the visible-sensitive space.

The practical dimension of this reflection may be manifested, for example, in projects, performances, exhibitions, activism, and digital networks that strain the relationship between visibility, power, and ethics, promoting encounters and friction between different epistemologies and ways of seeing and creating visualities.
We encourage submissions in the form of articles, visual essays, case studies, interviews, or book reviews that use or critically examine contemporary visual arts practices that propose new poetics and visual ecologies. Submissions from various fields of knowledge are welcome, including (but not limited to) works that address the following topics:

• Theoretical and practical explorations of the concept of aiesthesis;
• Decolonial visual practices, counter-archives, and the restitution of memories;
• Contemporary visual arts as modes of production of sensitivity and resistance;
• Aesthetics of activism and visual, digital or media-mediated performance;
• Politics of visibility, insurgent images and modes of visual resistance;
• Visual production by marginalised groups (Latin American, indigenous, Afro-descendant, among others);
• Different modes of producing sensitivity;
• Relationships between image, sensitivity, and alternative epistemologies;
• Textual and visual hybridisms, poetics of encounter and friction;
• Visual education, community curation, and participatory practices;
Contemporary technologies and their aesthetic, ethical, and political implications in image production;
• Co-creation and processes of reinterpretation of images and monuments;
• Sensitive reinterpretations of tangible and intangible heritage.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission period (full texts): 23 September to 5 December 2025
Publication period: continuous edition (January to June 2026)

LANGUAGE
Articles may be submitted in English or Portuguese. Articles selected for publication will be translated into Portuguese or English, respectively, and published in full in both languages.
PUBLICATION AND SUBMISSION
Vista is an open-access academic journal that operates according to rigorous peer review standards, using a double-blind review process. Each submitted work will be sent to two reviewers who have been previously invited to evaluate it according to its academic quality, originality, and relevance to the journal’s objectives and scope.
Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal’s website (https://www.revistavista.pt). If you are accessing Vista for the first time, you must register in order to submit your article (instructions for registering here).

The author guidelines can be found here.

For further information, please contact: vista@ics.uminho.pt

[Posted: 23-09-2025]