Studies on participatory art practices have long been framed in
predominantly celebratory and optimistic terms, emphasising inclusion,
cohesion, and empowerment while overlooking the ambivalent
or negative long-term aftereffects that emerge once projects
conclude. This essay shifts the focus to the question of legacy,
interrogating how the rhetoric of social impact often conceals
experiences of abandonment, participation fatigue, creative precarity,
cultural extractivism, and conflicting memories. Drawing
on recent contributions in the field, the analysis highlights how
socially engaged art is often instrumentalised by institutions for
symbolic capital accumulation, artwashing practices, or market-
oriented cultural policies, thereby reproducing rather than
dismantling social inequalities. It argues that only transdisciplinary
field research can adequately address these complex legacies,
recognising them not as marginal epiphenomena but as a
critical node for rethinking, in ethical and political terms, both
the theory and practice of socially engaged art (SEA) and the
methodological credibility of art-based research.
