Migration, home, and home-making in contemporary visual art

Underhill, H

doi:10.4337/9781800882775

Migration, home, and home-making in contemporary visual art

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Helen Underhill ORCiD

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Edward Elgar , 2023.

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Abstract

This chapter maps existing theory on migration, home, home-making and visual art across Art History and the Social Sciences, noting the recent increase in focused analytical engagement with the work of artists attending to this convergence of concerns. The chapter progresses via a discussion of representations of home and displacement within Palestinian contemporary visual art, by focusing on the work of two artists who use representations of domestic spaces to address the relationship between the Palestinian national struggle for statehood and homeland, questions of protracted asylum foregrounded by longstanding refugee camps, and contemporary social, political and religious dynamics, particularly concerning gender roles and feminism. The chapter uses a mixture of theoretical literature review, empirical material, and art historical case studies, engaging with selected artwork to unpick the productive differences between analyzing artworks themselves, using art to illuminate issues of home and migration, and taking artistic approaches as a provocation to extend the methodological and theoretical reach of social science engagement with what I shorthand here the home-migration-art nexus.