Entangled Histories of Art and Migration (Book)

Theories, Sites and Research Methods

Dedicated to the stories of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and exiles, this collection explores the entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration, flight, enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts – a significant phenomenon of social transformation in the 20th and 21st centuries. 131 b/w illus.

Category: Visual Arts

Edition

Dedicated to the stories of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and exiles, this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art, art practices, activism, reception, and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration, flight, and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

These entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa), when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places, or when materialities, sites, and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes.

Giving space to these stories of art and migration and its power of pluriverse knowledge production, the book takes an art and cultural studies perspective and questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory formation. Bringing together its case studies and theoretical approaches, the argumentation unfolds over the five sections of the book Visibilities | Invisibilities, Sites | Spaces, Materiality | Materialisation, Racism | Resistance and Practices | Performativity.

 

 

 

 

Cathrine Bublatzky, Ph.D., is a visual and media anthropologist. She works as a senior lecturer and researcher at the department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Tübingen University, Germany. In her recent research and publications she focuses on migration, visual cultures, and the aesthetics and politics of belonging.

Burcu Dogramaci is Professor of 20th Century and Contemporary Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU). In 2016 she was been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant and leads the research project “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile” (METROMOD).

Kerstin Pinther is a Professor of African Art History and Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art in a Global Context at the Staatliche Museen Berlin, Germany.

Mona Schieren is Professor of Transcultural Art Studies at the Hochschule fur Kunste, Bremen, Germany, and co-editor of FKW Journal for Gender Studies and Visual Culture. She is a member of the DFG research network Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents and the SNSF research project Materialized memories (in) the landscape at the Zurich University of the Arts.



List of figures 


Introduction 
Cathrine Bublatzky, Burcu Dogramaci, Kerstin Pinther
and Mona Schieren


SECTION 1: VISIBILITIES | INVISIBILITIES 
Cathrine Bublatzky and Burcu Dogramaci


1. Artistically Juxtaposed (Hi)stories: Hiwa K’s View
from Above as a Multidirectional Memory Practice
Kea Wienand


2. “I Like It but That’s Not What We Need”: Critical Ethnographic
Accounts of Art Workshops in Refugee Reception Centres
Alessandro Mazzola


3. Making Precarious Migrant Workers Visible and Audible
Through Art and Ethnography
Burcu Dogramaci and Ger Duijzings


4. Between Lights and Shadows: Border Crossing and the Art
of ‘Seeing’ and Being Seen
Sholeh Shahrokhi


SECTION 2: SITES | SPACES
Kerstin Meincke and Kerstin Pinther


5. Towards a Minor Textile Architecture: Kathryn Clark,
Loren Schwerd, and Igshaan Adams
Jessica Hemmings


ENTANGLED HISTORIES OF ART AND MIGRATION
6. Spatial Practices, Craftsmanship, and Empowerment.
On the Collaborative Project Faţadă/Façade on Roma
Building Culture in Dortmund
Kerstin Meincke


7. Evolution of a Hybrid Typology: Catholic Churches
Built in Huế, Vietnam in the Early Twentieth Century –
Nationalism and Decolonisation
Phi Nguyen


8. Atmospheres of Designed Diversity? The Spatial Politics of
Superkilen in Copenhagen
Mareike Schwarz


SECTION 3: MATERIALITY | MATERIALISATION
Buket Altinoba and Alma-Elisa Kittner


9. Silk Road Works 
Azra Aksamija


10. Singular Travels: Microhistory as a Museology
of Migration
Fabrice Langrognet


11. A Painting Goes into Exile. Picasso’s Guernica in the 
United States
Martin Schieder


12. Displaced Migrant Mobility: On Reappropriating Spaces
Through Embodied Materiality
Lilian Haberer


13. Norman Lewis’ Black Paintings in the 1960s:
Diasporic Image Concepts of Materiality and
Historicity
Angela Stercken


14. Halil Altındere’s Wonderland: Sacralisation and Subversion
in Sulukule
Gabriele Genge


15. On Materiality, Migration, and the Arts 
Alma-Elisa Kittner

SECTION 4: RACISM | RESISTANCE 
Elke Gaugele and Birgit Mersmann


16. The Difficulty of Remembering Racism Jena, Chemnitz,
Zwickau, and the NSU Complex
Maria Alexopoulou


17. Migratory Birds
Cana Bilir-Meier


18. Curatorial Strategies and Anti-racism in the Museum:
‘Exhibiting’ Racism, Resistance, and Empowerment
Josephine Apraku, Ismahan Wayah and Susanne Wernsing


19. Decolonial Insurgency for Art-Systemic Change:
Dissenting Art Museums in New York
Birgit Mersmann


20. Entangled Histories and ‘Influence’: Loïs Mailou Jones’
View on the Black Arts Movement in Her 1976 Dakar Lecture
Annabel Ruckdeschel


SECTION 5: PRACTICES | PERFORMATIVITY 
Burcu Dogramaci, Franziska Koch and Mona Schieren


21. Reparative Workshop and Body Practices in the Field of
Art, Diaspora, and Migration 1969 and 2020
Elke Gaugele and Mona Schieren


22. On the Performative Theory of a Migrant Body:
Theorising Bodily Speech Act – Thinking Together with Judith Butler
Yana Meerzon


23. China–Africa: Performing the Image of Migration and
Migration of Image
Mi You


24. On the (Im)possibilities of Migrating Images 
Anahita Razmi and Cathrine Bublatzky


25. Beyond Apprenticeship: El Loko and Joseph Beuys 
Anna K. Brus

26. Living Migration on Fluxus Island? Artistic World-Making as Both
Collaborative and Transcultural Endeavour
Franziska Koch


Biographies of the Authors

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