Migration and contemporary visual art: exploring intersections and possibilities

Abstract

Art is a realm of symbolic dispute and serves as one of the "structuring structures" within societies (Bourdieu, 2001). Contemporary art encompasses a diverse array of materialities and mediums for creative expression (Cauquelin, 1992). In contexts marked by social and cultural asymmetries, art produced by marginalized social groups — the "silent and silenced centres of the circuit marked by this epistemic violence", as said by Spivak (2010, p. 54) — introduces new perspectives that challenge prevailing norms across various social and cultural domains. When crafted by migrant individuals, whose multiple viewpoints and intervisualities shape their creations (Mirzoeff, 2000), such artworks have the potential to stimulate discourse on both aesthetic ideologies and the personal ideologies of the artists (Hadjinicolaou, 1978). By considering artistic production as an individual proactive act of externalizing an internal experience of reality (Kandinsky, 1998), the artistic creations of migrant individuals figure as communication instruments that serve as mediations (Mateus, 2021) between the dual realms that coexist within individual subjectivity and its expressions. They serve as tangible evidence through which the narratives of the artists can authentically "speak" rather than merely serving as illustrations (Mirzoeff, 2011), owing to their discursive positioning carrying inherent disruptive potential (Blocker, 1999). Consequently, they illuminate counter-narratives that contest hegemonic discourse across various domains (Maneval & Reimer, 2022). Therefore, in the light of propositions such as Gombrich's (1995, p. 15) statement that "there really is no art, there are only artists", which accentuate the significance of artists' biographies and personal experiences, the study of artworks produced by migrant individuals is "theoretically innovative and politically crucial" (Bhabha, 1994, p. 20). The present work follows this path and delves into the relationship and intersections between Migration and Contemporary Visual Art. Through this examination, this paper presents discussions that bring a multidimensional perspective on the subject and point to new possibilities for interdisciplinary research concerning Migrations and Art.