'Art and migration: revisioning the borders of community is a collective response to current and historic constructs of migration as disruptive of national heritage. This interplay of academic essays and art professionals’ interviews investigates how the visual arts – especially by or about migrants – create points of encounter between individuals, places, and objects. Migration has increasingly taken centre stage in contemporary art, as artists claim migration as a paradigm of artistic creation. The myriad trajectories of transnational artworks and artists’ careers outlined in the volume are reflected in the density and dynamism of fairs and biennales, itinerant museum exhibitions and shifting art centres. It analyses the vested political interests of migration terminology such as the synonymous use of ‘refugees’ and ‘asylum seekers’ or the politically constructed use of ‘diaspora’. Political and cultural narratives frame globalisation as a recent shift that reverses centuries of cultural homogeneity. Art historians and migration scholars are engaged in revisioning these narratives, with terms and methodologies shared by both fields. Both disciplines are elaborating an histoire croisée of the circulation of art that denounces the structural power of constructed borders and cultural gatekeeping, and this volume reappraises the historic formation of national identities and aesthetics heritage as constructed under transnational visual influences. This resonates with migrant artists’ own demands for self-determination in a display space that too often favours canonicity over hybridity. Centring migration – often silenced by normative archives or by nationalist attribution practices – is part of the workload of revisioning art history and decolonising museums.'
Source: Abstract.
'During the 1920s, in the minds of many Australians, Britain was still considered ‘Home’, and London the centre of the Empire. Australian artists were not fully accepted in the British art scene and, although they still identified as Australians, were often ostracised by their homeland. Australian cultural custodians at the time considerably marginalised expatriatism in favour of nationalistic and patriarchal narratives, restricting the definition of Australian art as being strictly produced within the geographical borders of Australia. However, as early as the 1920s, a number of individuals sought to assert Australian art as existing beyond the geographical boundaries of Australia, and defended the work of Australian expatriate artists who travelled to Europe. Among them, Edith Fry championed the tradition of Antipodean expatriatism, publishing articles and organising exhibitions to promote the achievements of Australian artists abroad. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how she stressed the significance of expatriate art in the construction of transnational culture, bringing the role of expatriate artists as agents into the network of commerce, experience, and representation of modernity, and as creating an art that transcends national boundaries.'
Source: Abstract.
