The semiotics of hope: Visual chronotopes of the community pantry movement

‘In the current context of global crisis’, Bonnin writes, ‘we have the opportunity to design a research agenda for an uncertain future from a dark present. But there is no reason why that agenda should also be uncertain and dark’. My article takes up this challenge by exploring the visuality of hope. Drawing on the community pantry movement that sprouted across the Philippines during the pandemic, I examine the online representations of these pantries and the ways they mediate and circulate hopeful imaginaries amid the crisis. Using a chronotopic approach, I trace how such visual practices creatively mobilise different spatiotemporalities, thereby suturing the past, present and future, and in effect, registering alternative lifeworlds in the face of systemic collapse. This article contributes to hope studies by rendering visible the visual materiality of hope.