Understanding Displacement Aesthetics
Understanding Displacement Aesthetics and Making Change in the Art Gallery with Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities.
Key people: Professor of History Ana Carden-Coyne, Professor Charles Green, Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Melbourne Dr Chrisoula Lionis, Dr Angeliki Roussou
Duration: 01/02/21 - 31/01/24
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council
This three-year AHRC project investigated the humanitarian aspirations of art and craft, and analysed the impact of artistic responses to displacement and refugeedom.
The research team aimed to understand how and in what forms 'displacement aesthetics’ emerged in response to the Second World War and its aftermath, especially in art and craft practices and in exhibitions in international museums, UN sponsored welfare programmes and UNESCO’s cultural work.
Challenging the patterns and practices of ‘displacement aesthetics’, the project sought to amplify the voices of refugee and migrant artists and curators. It examined how they have sought to overturn displacement aesthetics and critique its discourses, and can offer new ways of seeing not necessarily defined by or confined to the performance of refugeedom or the experience of displacement.
In doing so, this collaborative project brought communities together to create resilience through the shared enterprise of making significant institutional changes in two major art spaces in Manchester.
Challenging the patterns and practices of ‘displacement aesthetics’, the project sought to amplify the voices of refugee and migrant artists and curators.
The project consisted of three research strands:
- Historical and Contemporary Forms of ‘Displacement Aesthetics’ - in two key periods of displacement and forced migration in the wake of the Second World War AND from 2002 to the present-day.
- Art-Making and Art Galleries - examining local and international art collections and artistic practices, and their interventions into ‘displacement aesthetics’. Through our partnership with Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery, the project made significant curatorial and infrastructural changes in the art institution.
- Art as Cultural Resilience - studying the impact of these changes arising from a creative entrepreneur programme for artists and curators (delivered by the internationally renowned arts NGO In Place of War; gallery collections research programme with communities; a participatory arts exhibition with the Whitworth Art Gallery; commissioning of new works; and the permanent redesign of a key ‘welcome space’ in Manchester Art Gallery.
The project also connected with galleries, curators and artists around the world, especially in Greece, Australia and the Middle East.
Alongside conferences and workshops, it is currently producing a book that takes account of best practices in the international arts community and assesses the art and curating projects in Manchester.
- Principal Investigator: Professor Ana Carden-Coyne
- Co-Investigator: Professor Charles Green, Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Melbourne
- Research Fellow: Dr Chrisoula Lionis
- Research Associate: Dr Angeliki Roussou
Advisory Board:
- Professor Anthony Downey - Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa, Birmingham School of Art / Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts (BICA)
- Dr Suzannah Biernoff - Reader in Visual Culture, Department of History of Art Birkbeck, University of London
- Ambrose Musiyiwa - NWCDTP Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD Researcher | Department of Drama and Film in collaboration with Community Arts North west (CAN)| School of Arts, Languages and Cultures | University of Manchester
The Traces of Displacement exhibition was part of the Understanding Displacement Aesthetics research project and used the Whitworth’s collection to address one of the major humanitarian concerns of the 20th and 21st centuries – forced displacement. In tracing displacement within the collection, a partial, fragmentary, and yet compelling set of stories emerged from academic and community collaboration.
Traces of Displacement uncovered stories of persecution, creativity, and resilience, and the experiences of artists and makers who were displaced in their homelands, forced to flee, survived, and even thrived in exile.
Artists included Mounira al Solh, Otti Berger, Leilah Babiyre, Caroline Walker, Safdar Ahmed, Bashir Makhoul, Frank Brangwyn, Cornelia Parker, Mandla Rae, Raisa Kabir, Dusan Kusmic, Ian Rawlinson, Cecily Brown, Charles Green and Lyndell Brown, Francesco Simetti, Lucien Freud, Marc Chagall, Mary Kessell, Edward Bawden, James McBey, and Frank Auerbach amongst others.
The exhibition was shown in the Whitworth Art Gallery from Friday, 7 April 2023 to Sunday, 12 May 2024 and more information can be found on The Whitworth website.
Research outputs
This article by Research Fellow Chrisoula Lionis published in Third Text demonstrates how humour in contemporary art contributes to three forms of cultural resilience: ‘authenticity’, ‘enactment’, and ‘placemaking’.
