Thinking about ‘transcultural capital’ and ‘transnational artistic practices’ of migrant Portuguese visual artists

Abstract

This article is inspired by the idea of a transnational art world focused on migrants and the visual arts and it delivers a preliminary theoretical discussion. The article discusses the notion of ‘transcultural capital’ as a perspective within the study of contemporary migrations of artist. It also looks at the concept of ‘cultural scenes’ as places of significant cultural and artistic activities and amenities. Linked to these are ‘transnational artistic practices’ and the production of translocal geographies drawn by an overlap of the migratory destinations of artists and networks of places of creation, production and artistic dissemination which enhance different art markets. This article discusses the ways in which these different theories can contribute to our understanding of the mobility of cultural professionals and, in particular, of the emigration of Portuguese visual artists.

A study of the transnational journeys of British Asian music and musicians in the 21st century

“…If we wish to capture how these transcultural identities function across borders, we can turn to the concept of transcultural capital introduced by Ulrike Meinhof (2009). Transcultural capital is a term often used in migration studies to describe the complex ways in which transnational artistic careers can be read in the framework of Bourdieu's concepts of social and cultural capital (Meinhof, 2009, Hope, 2011, Gabriel, 2017. Bourdieu suggested that the basis of all relations in society is capital.…”