Contemporary art on the current refugee crisis: the problematic of aesthetics versus ethics

Arda, Balca

doi:10.1080/13530194.2019.1569307

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Much of the extant research examining issues of representation and refugeeness has tended towards media analyses (see El-Enany 2016;Chouliaraki & Stolic 2017;Mortensen & Trenz 2016;Prøitz 2018), and less on the everyday implementation and political role of artistic projects for and by the displaced (see however Arda 2019), which this article explores. In this project, we focus on the urban landscape of Istanbul, where, unlike the camps in which most art projects take the form of charitable events, artists engage in creative practice as a major means to employment and generating income.…”

Section: Art(ists) In Exile In Turkeymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has particularly proliferated in refugee camps with notable and much cited examples being the Za'atari project in Jordan (https://joelartista.com/syrian-refugees-thezaatari-project-jordan/) and the UNHCR-funded "Artists for Refugees" in Kenya (https://www.unhcr.org/ke/artists-refugees-project). This "agency empowerment" art (Arda 2019) The putative aim of many of these endeavours, and especially those funded by humanitarian agents and NGOs, is to break public silences and give refugees a "voice", which they are perceived to lack in the public sphere of "host countries" due to restrictions of citizenship and socio-cultural and political inclusion. Such projects also attempt to engage national and international audiences in the "refugee experience" and foster understanding and empathy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Devious silence’: Refugee art, memory activism, and the unspeakability of loss among Syrians in Turkey

Chatzipanagiotidou¹,

Murphy²

2023

Tracing Silences

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In the past few years, and especially since the start of the "refugee crisis", a number of research, NGO, and policy initiatives have channelled resources to representing refugees through artistic endeavours. The underlying assumption in such projects is that art offers refugees a significant avenue to tell their story and acquire a "voice" that is otherwise restricted in contexts of limited rights.In this article we aim to complicate some of the straight-forward assumptions underlying the connections between art and the representation of displacement and loss through ethnographic research conducted with professional Syrian artists in Istanbul. With an emphasis on "refugee art", such artistic projects force artists to conform and identify with this category, silencing more complex processes of identification and subjectivity, communal historical continuities and personal loss, as well as artistic aspirations and expressions. The article demonstrates that the aestheticisation of displacement and loss produces an "unspeakability" (Weller 2017) of personal experience and trauma, and, in some cases, a permanent withdrawal from artistic production. As much as artists experience this as a form of imposed silencing, they also articulate their withdrawal as a tactic of agentive creativity. We, therefore, argue that unlike in the modern art practices described by Sontag (1983Sontag ( [1982), this "permanent silence" is not an elitist, individualistic and dehistoricising strategy. This context of conflict and protracted displacement reveals multifarious silences that are both results of unequal politics of representation but also tactics of reclaiming identity and artistic integrity, and of maintaining continuities between past, present and future.

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Section: Art(ists) In Exile In Turkeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Devious silence’: Refugee art, memory activism, and the unspeakability of loss among Syrians in Turkey

Chatzipanagiotidou¹,

Murphy²

2023

Tracing Silences

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“…Such affects are discomforting because the audience knows that the sole difference between this mundane everydayness and its own, the reason why the film exists on this screen, at this moment, is the predicament of refugeehood. Savvides's work does differ from much of the acclaimed artwork about refugees—from Weiwei's life vests transported from Lesvos to European capitals (Arda, 2019), to Buchel's controversial exhibit in Sicily of the shipwreck off Lampedusa (Brooks, 2020; Nedeljkovic, 2021). It differs in presenting people not only within but also beyond the refugee condition.…”

Section: Kosuth For Refugee Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconsidering the vignette as method

Demetriou

2023

American Ethnologist

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When ethnography is used in fields outside anthropology, vignettes often take a central role. Yet methodological discussions of the vignette are not as central to anthropology as their cross‐disciplinary use might warrant. By dwelling on, but perhaps less stringently guarding, disciplinary boundaries, anthropology can gain a clearer view of its own central tools—in this case, vignettes. Reconsidering these tools holds particular relevance for work on refugee studies, an inherently interdisciplinary field that anthropology has had a key role in shaping. Artistic works focused on refugees are considered here from a meta‐ethnographic perspective that pays attention to the processes through which a specific series of artworks were produced alongside their content. Central to this analysis is the role of the vignette in the artist's presentation of her work, which enables an inquiry into the double role of the vignette as both method and presentation in anthropology.

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“…See also: (Nielsen and Petersen 2021, note 11). For a recent example of how Rancière's theorization of the relationship between aesthetics, politics and ethics can be applied in a study of representations of refugees, see: (Arda 2019). This much debated concept was coined by art theorist and curator Nicholas Bourriaud (Bourriaud 2002).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“In the First Place, We Don’t Like to Be Called ‘Refugees’”: Dilemmas of Representation and Transversal Politics in the Participatory Art Project 100% FOREIGN?

Petersen

2021

Humanities

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100% FOREIGN? (100% FREMMED?) is an art project consisting of 250 life stories of individuals who were granted asylum in Denmark between 1956 and 2019. Thus, it can be said to form a collective portrait that inserts citizens of refugee backgrounds into the narrative of the nation, thereby expanding the idea of national identity and culture. 100% FOREIGN? allows us to think of participatory art as a privileged site for the exploration of intersubjective relations and the question of how to “represent” citizens with refugee experience as well as the history and practice of asylum. The conflicting aims and perceptions involved in such representations are many, as suggested by the opening sentence of Hannah Arendt’s 1943 essay “We, Refugees”: “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’”. Using 100% FOREIGN? as an analytical reference point, this article discusses some of the ethical and political implications of representing former refugees. It briefly considers recent Danish immigration and asylum policies to situate the project in its regional European context and argues that, similarly to its neighbouring countries, Denmark can be described as a “postmigrant society” (Foroutan). To frame 100% FOREIGN? theoretically, this article draws on Arendt’s essay, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s concept of speaking nearby, as well as the feminist concept of transversal politics (Meskimmon, Yuval-Davis). It is hoped that this approach will lead to a deeper understanding of what participatory art can bring to the ethical politics of representing refugee experience.

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Contemporary art on the current refugee crisis: the problematic of aesthetics versus ethics

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

‘Devious silence’: Refugee art, memory activism, and the unspeakability of loss among Syrians in Turkey

‘Devious silence’: Refugee art, memory activism, and the unspeakability of loss among Syrians in Turkey

Reconsidering the vignette as method

“In the First Place, We Don’t Like to Be Called ‘Refugees’”: Dilemmas of Representation and Transversal Politics in the Participatory Art Project 100% FOREIGN?

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