Entangled Histories of Art and Migration

The essays gathered in Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Theories, Sites and Research Methods epitomize the recent ‘migratory turn’ in art-related studies, which has introduced new critical and interdisciplinary methodologies and a much-needed reappraisal of the ways in which migrants, exiles, refugees and asylum seekers are represented in art, architecture, activism, exhibitions, and more. By exploring topical subjects such as the practices of (in)visibilization of migrant and refugee lifeworlds and the production of space and images in diaspora, along with racism and anti-racism resistance in museums and curating, the volume’s in-depth case studies make a valuable, pluriversal contribution to contemporary debates on how migration and forced displacement figure within the field of global art.

Anne Ring Petersen, professor, department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Theories, Sites and Research Methods is a dynamic intervention into the now burgeoning field of art and migration studies. The authors and editors of this rich anthology raise urgent questions about both what we know of the histories of cultural movement and exchange, and how such knowledge is produced in and through the visual, material and spatial registers of the arts. This is a timely engagement with an issue of critical importance and a thought-provoking work of scholarship.

Marsha Meskimmon, emerita professor of transnational art and feminism, Loughborough University

How do art and aesthetic practices reckon with the processes of migration, dislocation, and border crossings world-wide? Bringing together practices and perspectives from art history, ethnography, activism, and performance studies, this timely and important volume offers a far-reaching response to this question. By investigating the intricate entanglements between art and migration, these essays inspire (and are inspired by) highly creative approaches to some of the most urgent societal questions of our time.

Saloni Mathur, professor and chair of art history, UCLA

This book productively deploys a concept whose meaning is usually taken in a negative or dubious sense: entanglements, which are considered messy and problematic; a meaning at issue we consider migration, displacement, and what I call ‘refugeedom’. But when the disciplines touched by millennia-old and now so current entanglements involved with those social practices and situations engage other, very different ones, such as the intellectual and artistic forms of interdisciplinary work, a new field emerges, which addresses, maps, and improves this impossible and necessary task of bringing the victims of violence and social inequality from their invisibility to ‘visibilisation’, which helps not only their situation, but also the limitations of disciplinary academic work, by means of entanglements rather than dogmatic separations.

Mieke Bal, cultural analyst, video artist and curator