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- Convenors:
-
Sabrina DeTurk
(Zayed University Dubai)
Sarina Wakefield (University of Leicester)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Archives and Museums
- Sessions:
- Monday 14 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel explores how artists, cultural heritage practitioners, archaeologists and others working in the field of visual and material culture represent and interrogate displacement, border-crossings and migrant experiences and the institutionalization of displacement in settings such as museums.
Long Abstract:
In 2019, two art installations focused on issues of migration, displacement and loss gained widespread media attention. At the Venice Biennale, Christoph Büchel's Barca Nostra, an installation of the wrecked fishing boat on which hundreds of migrants died while fleeing from Libya in 2015, was criticized for its placement in the midst of a spectacle of global contemporary art as crass and lacking in context. On the Mexico and United States border, the architecture studio Rael San Fratello installed Teeter-Totter Wall, seesaws straddling the border fence, on which children played briefly before the work was removed. Photos of the work went viral and it was primarily celebrated for promoting a vision, however fleeting, of harmonious connection. This panel seeks to critically explore the ways that artists, architects, cultural heritage practitioners, museums and others working in the field of visual and material culture strive to represent and interrogate geographical displacement, border-crossings and the resultant migrant experiences, especially in terms of cultural politics, the emotive and performative nature of visualizations of displacement, and the ways in which displacement is institutionalized within global settings such as museums and galleries. This cross-disciplinary panel welcomes proposals from archaeologists, architects, artists, and museum practitioners as well as academics from, but not limited to, the fields of archaeology, anthropology, geography, critical heritage studies, museum studies and the visual arts. We are interested in proposals taking a case study approach and those that critique the success and problematics of such works, particularly by considering community responses.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 14 September, 2020, -Annette Loeseke
Paper short abstract:
25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, activists from the Centre for Political Beauty removed a memorial for Berlin Wall victims in order to protest EU migration policies. By exploring the multi-layered project, I discuss the blind spots in the institutionalized representation of displacement.
Paper long abstract:
In 2014, during the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, activists from the Centre for Political Beauty removed a memorial for Berlin Wall victims—fourteen white crosses—from its location near the German Parliament. Following a crowd-funding campaign, two buses drove 100 activists equipped with bold cutters to the EU's external border in Bulgaria in order to re-install the white crosses near the border fences and protest EU migration and border policies. The paper examines the activists' artistic and communication strategies, collaboration with migrants, media coverage, response by German authorities and Bulgarian police, legal investigations and subsequent debates about censorship and freedom of artistic expression, response by families of Berlin Wall victims and victim associations, and the ways political parties tried to gain leverage from the controversy. By examining the multi-layered dynamics the project has induced, the paper explores the political, aesthetic and ethical implications of appropriating a memorial and translating its symbolic value into the present. To what extent have the activists been able to mobilize the performative and trans-formative powers of representations of displacement? How have they explored the boundary between symbolic action and political activism? How have they been able to generate publicity, and to what end(s)? Who were their target audiences and stakeholders? What are the ethical implications of such an exploration? By discussing to what extent the artistic activism was able to re-politicize the public debate, the paper identifies blind spots within the institutionalized, often emotive and depoliticized representation of displacement.
Brandon Sward (University of Chicago)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on four Asco performances. Two of these performances, Stations of the Cross and First Supper, parody Catholic liturgy and the other two, Walking Mural and Instant Mural, parody Mexican muralism. These performances show us a group struggling to speak against stereotypes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on four performances by Chicano/a art collective Asco along Whittier Boulevard in Los Angeles during the '70s. Two of these performances, Stations of the Cross (1971) and First Supper (After a Major Riot) (1974), parody Catholic liturgy and the other two, Walking Mural (1972) and Instant Mural (1974), parody Mexican muralism. Together, these four performances show us a group struggling to speak against stereotypes around artistic production that would seek to domesticate and folklorize them. Although preexisting scholarship on Asco explains these gestures as first and foremost "protest art" against the Vietnam War, situating these performances against the backdrop of Whittier Boulevard allows us to appreciate the radicality of Asco. A major commercial artery through the solidly Chicano/a East LA, Whittier Boulevard is overlaid over parts of El Camino Real, the "royal road" that linked the 21 missions of Alta California. By engaging with Catholic and muralist imagery, Asco draws parallels between their experience as racial minorities in the US and the history of Latin American colonialism, which helps us to appreciate the composite nature of Chicano/a identity and how artists might make site-specific work when sites themselves have histories.
Veronica Sesana Grajales (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)
Paper short abstract:
Camilo Ontiveros's work Temporary Storage: The Belongings of Juan Manuel Montes, 2017 is a sculptural composed of what remained of Montes' possessions after his deportation which speaks to the transitory nature of migration and the impermanence of home as a movable element.
Paper long abstract:
On February 17, 2017 Juan Manuel Montes became the first Dreamer to be deported under Trump's administration. Three years later news about deportations and the migration crisis make up the majority of headlines to the point that people are becoming anesthetized to the border crisis. These issues of migration have ignited the imagination of those in the creative fields—particularly artists who are using their work as a way to shock the audience by making them face these issues in unexpected settings. With this in mind, this presentation will focus on Camilo Ontiveros's practice and his repurposing of everyday materials to represent the migrant experience as sculptures and installations. Specifically I will focus on his work Temporary Storage: The Belongings of Juan Manuel Montes, 2017. As the title implies, the sculpture is composed of what remained of Montes' possessions after his deportation. Recalling the haphazardly tied objects one might encounter on trucks crossing the border this piece speaks to the transitory nature of migration and the impermanence of home as a movable element. I seek to place this work within Ontiveros's larger artistic practice in order to highlight his exploration of the US-Mexico border, and its autobiographical significance, through politically charged works. Specifically I am interested in how through his works objects take on the identity of the person who is no longer there.
Mekhala Dave (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
From interviews with Indian artists as their works and protests are on migration flow and legality issues in South Asia, I coalesce art history and legal studies to understand migration as a concept in the 21st century
Paper long abstract:
I will examine the concept of 'migration' through the lens of art history, legal and political theory.
The current outrage of protests in India concerning the illegal status of Muslim migrants comes after the passing of the recent law 'Citizenship (Amendment) Act' 2019 in December 2019. Many experts have pointed that it directly contravenes the basic foundation of the Constitution of India where no law shall be passed on the basis that it is discriminatory to a particular religion. This law allows migrants facing persecution from neighboring Islamic countries into India with the religious faith of Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists and Jains but not Muslims. As a result, this law will potentially displace more than 200 Muslim migrants in South Asia.
From my interviews with artists, Berlin protests against the law are being lead by a young Berlin based Indian artist Sujatro Ghosh whose art remains affected by the nationalistic agenda of the Indian government that reflects in these protests as performative democracy.
I wish to highlight the Indian artist Shilpa Gupta's artistic practices which explore the historical border tensions and narratives of migration between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. My interviews with Shilpa Gupta and Sujatro Ghosh as a methodology and their artistic practices enquiry into the migration politics will show as their work maps the need to research on migration crisis globally.
Their position questions the value that art places in a dynamic socio-political changing world unfurling the debate of art's usefulness to politics and the aesthetics of politics.
Sophie Kazan (University of Leicester)
Paper short abstract:
Displaced by development: how has contemporary art in a developing traditional society, such as the United Arab Emirates, been shaped by displacement, migration and ideology? The contradictory co-existence of tradition and modernity and what UAE art has come to represent will also be considered.
Paper long abstract:
The dictionary definition of displacement pertains to the "moving of something from its place or position." In the case of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) a country that has known rapid development, modernisation and expansion since the discovery of oil and the country's unification in 1971 and where the native population has become outnumbered by over 800% by foreign workers and expatriates, displacement seems a suitable term for the feelings expressed in art by Emiratis, who can feel like strangers in their own country.
This visually-led paper will begin with a brief introduction to the UAE context and to the country's particular art ecosystem. Art by Abdulqader Al Rais, Najat Maki, Hassan Sharif, Karima Al Shomely, Nasser Nasrallah and Afra Al Dhaheri will be explored. Many express the rapid urbanisation, the speeding up of time and other changes to Emirati traditional life.
It is important to consider the role of art by Emiratis within the UAE and abroad, as a means of communication and diplomacy. The responsibility of art organisations, museums and galleries may also be observed. Though tradition and heritage are important to UAE cultural identity, many Emirati artists attended art schools or residencies in Europe and the United States. Should observers therefore expect art by Emiratis to reflect Western art history, with art critics, muses and involved collectors also playing a part? What has art come to represent for the UAE?
This research includes interviews with over fifty artists, collectors, curators, writers, art dealers in the UAE.