'Devious silence': Refugee art, memory activism, and the unspeakability of loss among Syrians in Turkey.
In the past few years, and especially since the start of the 'refugee crisis', a number of research, NGO, and policy initiatives have channelled resources to representing refugees through artistic endeavours. The underlying assumption in such projects is that art offers refugees a significant avenue...
| Publicado en: | History & Anthropology Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 462 - 481 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Oct 2021
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=153877065&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 153877065 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02757206 7VZ jtl: History & Anthropology issn: 02757206 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct 2021 vid: 32 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 153877065 10.1080/02757206.2020.1830383 ppf: 462 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.9MB tig: atl: 'Devious silence': Refugee art, memory activism, and the unspeakability of loss among Syrians in Turkey. aug: au: Chatzipanagiotidou, Evropi Murphy, Fiona affil: School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK su: Refugees in art Nongovernmental organizations Ethnology Syrian art Aesthetics sug: subj: Refugees in art Nongovernmental organizations Ethnology Syrian art Aesthetics keyword: art loss refugees Silence Syrian Turkey ab: In the past few years, and especially since the start of the 'refugee crisis', a number of research, NGO, and policy initiatives have channelled resources to representing refugees through artistic endeavours. The underlying assumption in such projects is that art offers refugees a significant avenue to tell their story and acquire a 'voice' that is otherwise restricted in contexts of limited rights. In this article we aim to complicate some of the straight-forward assumptions underlying the connections between art and the representation of displacement and loss through ethnographic research conducted with professional Syrian artists in Istanbul. With an emphasis on 'refugee art', such artistic projects force artists to conform and identify with this category, silencing more complex processes of identification and subjectivity, communal historical continuities and personal loss, as well as artistic aspirations and expressions. The article demonstrates that the aestheticisation of displacement and loss produces an 'unspeakability' (Weller, Robert. 2017. "Salvaging Silence: Exile, Death, and the Anthropology of the Unknowable." Anthropology of this Century 19 [Online publication]. Accessed June 6, 2019. http://aotcpress.com/articles/salvaging-silence/) of personal experience and trauma, and, in some cases, a permanent withdrawal from artistic production. As much as artists experience this as a form of imposed silencing, they also articulate their withdrawal as a tactic of agentive creativity. We, therefore, argue that unlike in the modern art practices described by Sontag (1983 [1982]. "The Aesthetics of Silence." In A Susan Sontag Reader, 187–188. Harmondsworth: Penguin), this 'permanent silence' is not an elitist, individualistic and dehistoricizing strategy. This context of conflict and protracted displacement reveals multifarious silences that are both results of unequal politics of representation but also tactics of reclaiming identity and artistic integrity, and of maintaining continuities between past, present and future. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of History & Anthropology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: History & Anthropology holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2021 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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