Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will focus on the study of contemporary Palestinian women artists’ self-referential artistic practices. My aim is to explore the use of personal experience as a tool to present ambiguous and inquiring positions regarding notions of home and homeland that sustain concepts such as ‘hybrid identities’ and displacement.

Paper long abstract:

Self-portraiture —and more broadly self-representation— have been traditionally widely practiced genres in visual arts. In recent years they have also become a fertile soil for critical discourses around authorship, identity and agency. These practices are often politicised. Particularly trasgressive examples of the political use of self-representation may be found during the Women's Art Movement (under the claim 'the personal is political') and further within postcolonial practices.

Within this general framework of self-representational practices, personal experiences of movement, migration and exile have been central to contemporary discourses on identity. In this poster I will address how the personal experiences of war and exile inform the way in which a number of Palestinian women artists represent themselves taking the ideas of home and homeland as their central subject.

Through the close analysis of two key studies —Mona Hatoum´s video installation Measures of Distance (1988) and Emily Jacir´s photo-text installation Where we come from / (Im)mobility (2001-03)— I intend to explore how these practices challenge both the artistic genre or practice in which they may be inscribed, and the theoretical background with which they are in dialogue. These artists imagine 'the self' as shaped by its 'home' and in turn 'home' as a place that no longer exists, that has never existed. The analysis of these critical, ambiguous, fragmented self-representations and personal narratives that I propose to undertake, intend to challenge conventional representations of the self and its story, and also puts forth a revision of theoretical discussions around displacement, belonging and hybridity.