The Politics of Artists in War Zones

The Politics of Artists in War Zones
Author: Kit Messham-Muir
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1350386014

What exactly is contemporary war art in the West today? This book considers the place of contemporary war art in the 2020s, a whole generation after 9/11 and long past the 'War on Terror'. Exploring the role contemporary art plays within conversations around war and imperialism, the book brings together chapters from international contemporary artists, theorists and curators, alongside the voices of contemporary war artists through original edited interviews. It addresses newly emerged contexts in which war is found: not only sites of contemporary conflicts such as Ukraine, Yemen and Syria, but everywhere in western culture, from social media to 'culture' wars. With interviews from official war artists working in the UK, the US, and Australia, such as eX de Medici (Australia) and David Cotterrell (UK), as well as those working in post-colonial contexts, such as Baptist Coelho (India), the editors reflect on contemporary processes of memorialisation and the impact of British colonisation in Australia, India and its relation to historical conflicts. It focuses on three overlapping themes: firstly, the role of memory and amnesia in colonial contexts; secondly, the complex role of 'official' war art; and thirdly, questions of testimony and knowing in relation to alleged war crimes, torture and genocide. Richly illustrated, and featuring three substantial interview chapters, The Politics of Artists in War Zones is a hands-on exploration of the complexities and challenges faced by war artists that contextualises the tensions between the contemporary art world and the portrayal of war. It is essential reading for researchers of fine art, curatorial studies, museum studies, conflict studies and photojournalism.

The Politics of Artists in War Zones

The Politics of Artists in War Zones
Author: Kit Messham-Muir
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1350385999

What exactly is contemporary war art in the West today? This book considers the place of contemporary war art in the 2020s, a whole generation after 9/11 and long past the 'War on Terror'. Exploring the role contemporary art plays within conversations around war and imperialism, the book brings together chapters from international contemporary artists, theorists and curators, alongside the voices of contemporary war artists through original edited interviews. It addresses newly emerged contexts in which war is found: not only sites of contemporary conflicts such as Ukraine, Yemen and Syria, but everywhere in western culture, from social media to 'culture' wars. With interviews from official war artists working in the UK, the US, and Australia, such as eX de Medici (Australia) and David Cotterrell (UK), as well as those working in post-colonial contexts, such as Baptist Coelho (India), the editors reflect on contemporary processes of memorialisation and the impact of British colonisation in Australia, India and its relation to historical conflicts. It focuses on three overlapping themes: firstly, the role of memory and amnesia in colonial contexts; secondly, the complex role of 'official' war art; and thirdly, questions of testimony and knowing in relation to alleged war crimes, torture and genocide. Richly illustrated, and featuring three substantial interview chapters, The Politics of Artists in War Zones is a hands-on exploration of the complexities and challenges faced by war artists that contextualises the tensions between the contemporary art world and the portrayal of war. It is essential reading for researchers of fine art, curatorial studies, museum studies, conflict studies and photojournalism.

Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human Migration

Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human Migration
Author: George Butler
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1536217751

"Resisting his own urge to walk away, award-winning artist George Butler took his sketchbook and made, over the course of a decade, a series of remarkable pen-and-ink and watercolor portraits in war zones, refugee camps, and on the move. While he worked, his subjects--migrants and refugees in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia--shared their stories. Theirs are the human stories behind the headlines that tell of fleeing poverty, disaster, and war, and of venturing into the unknown in search of jobs, education, and security. Whether sketching by the hospital bed of a ten-year-old Syrian boy who survived an airstrike, drawing the doll of a little Palestinian girl with big questions, or talking with a Masai herdsman forced to abandon his rural Kenyan home for the Kibera slums, George Butler turns reflective art and sensitive reportage into an eloquent cry for understanding and empathy."--

Images of War in Contemporary Art

Images of War in Contemporary Art
Author: Uroš Cvoro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1350227358

In Images of War in Contemporary Art, Uroš Cvoro and Kit Messham-Muir mount a challenge to the dominance of theoretical tropes of trauma, affect, and emotion that have determined how we think of images of war and terror for the last 20 years. Through analyses of visual culture from contemporary "war art" to the meme wars, they argue that the art that most effectively challenges the ethics and aesthetics of war and terror today is that which disrupts this flow-art that makes alternative perceptions of wartime both visible and possible. As a theoretical work, Images of War in Contemporary Art is richly supported by visual and textual evidence and firmly embedded in current artistic practice. Significantly, though, the book breaks with both traditional and current ways of thinking about war art-offering a radical rethinking of the politics and aesthetics of art today through analyses of a diverse scope of contemporary art that includes Ben Quilty, Abdul Abdullah (Australia), Mladen Miljanovic, Nebojša Šeric Šoba (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Hiwa K, Wafaa Bilal (Iraq), Teresa Margolles (Mexico), and Arthur Jafa (United States).

Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction

Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Julian Stallabrass
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2006-03-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0192806467

"Bloodied toy soldiers, gilded shopping carts, and Lego concentration camps. Contemporary art is supposed to be a realm of freedom where artists shock, break taboos, and switch between confronting viewers with works of great profundity and jaw-dropping triviality. But away from shock tactics in the gallery, there are many unanswered questions. What is contemporary about contemporary art? What effect do politics and big business have on art? And who really runs the art world?" "Previously published as Art Incorporated, this controversial and witty Very Short Introduction is an exploration of the global art scene that will change the way you see contemporary art."--BOOK JACKET.

Performance in Place of War

Performance in Place of War
Author: James Thompson
Publisher: Seagull Books London Limited
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781906497132

'Performance in Place of War' is concerned with theatre in refugee camps, in war-affected villages, in towns under curfew, in cities under occupation. It presents theatre and performance that occurs literally at the moment bombs are falling, as well as during times of ceasefire and in the aftermaths of war.

The Migrant Image

The Migrant Image
Author: T. J. Demos
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2013-03-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0822353407

In The Migrant Image T. J. Demos examines the ways contemporary artists have reinvented documentary practices in their representations of mobile lives: refugees, migrants, the stateless, and the politically dispossessed. He presents a sophisticated analysis of how artists from the United States, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East depict the often ignored effects of globalization and the ways their works connect viewers to the lived experiences of political and economic crisis. Demos investigates the cinematic approaches Steve McQueen, the Otolith Group, and Hito Steyerl employ to blur the real and imaginary in their films confronting geopolitical conflicts between North and South. He analyzes how Emily Jacir and Ahlam Shibli use blurs, lacuna, and blind spots in their photographs, performances, and conceptual strategies to directly address the dire circumstances of dislocated Palestinian people. He discusses the disparate interventions of Walid Raad in Lebanon, Ursula Biemann in North Africa, and Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri in the United States, and traces how their works offer images of conflict as much as a conflict of images. Throughout Demos shows the ways these artists creatively propose new possibilities for a politics of equality, social justice, and historical consciousness from within the aesthetic domain.

Double War: Shaun Gladwell

Double War: Shaun Gladwell
Author: Kit Messham-Muir
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Afghan War, 2001-
ISBN: 9780500500545

Dr Kit Messham-Muir's Double War: Shaun Gladwell, visual culture and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is the first published sustained critical investigation into the artwork of Shaun Gladwell, one of Australia's leading contemporary artists. Messham-Muir, an art theorist and Museologist, focuses on the psychological and emotional dimensions of visualising war. He is also a member of Newcastle's Centre for the History of Violence. Messham-Muir was given privileged access to Gladwell's studio throughout the development of Gladwell's work. Double War's six chapters explore Gladwell's war artist works, as well as the broader political and cultural contexts of the War on Terror. Gladwell is known for his video installation works, has represented Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale and was appointed as an Australian Official War Artist in late 2009. He spent a month in Afghanistan and the Middle East with the Australian Defence Force, and drew upon this experience to produce a large body of paintings, video and photographic works.

The Politics of Art

The Politics of Art
Author: Hanan Toukan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2021-06-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503627764

Over the last three decades, a new generation of conceptual artists has come to the fore in the Arab Middle East. As wars, peace treaties, sanctions, and large-scale economic developments have reshaped the region, this cohort of cultural producers has also found themselves at the center of intergenerational debates on the role of art in society. Central to these cultural debates is a steady stream of support from North American and European funding organizations—resources that only increased with the start of the Arab uprisings in the early 2010s. The Politics of Art offers an unprecedented look into the entanglement of art and international politics in Beirut, Ramallah, and Amman to understand the aesthetics of material production within liberal economies. Hanan Toukan outlines the political and social functions of transnationally connected and internationally funded arts organizations and initiatives, and reveals how the production of art within global frameworks can contribute to hegemonic structures even as it is critiquing them—or how it can be counterhegemonic even when it first appears not to be. In so doing, Toukan proposes not only a new way of reading contemporary art practices as they situate themselves globally, but also a new way of reading the domestic politics of the region from the vantage point of art.

The Political Power of Visual Art

The Political Power of Visual Art
Author: Daniel Herwitz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2021-04-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350182400

Visual art has a ubiquitous political cast today. But which politics? Daniel Herwitz seeks clarity on the various things meant by politics, and how we can evaluate their presumptions or aspirations in contemporary art. Drawing on the work of William Kentridge, drenched in violence, race, and power, and the artworld immolations of Banksy, Herwitz's examples range from the NEA 4 and the question of offense-as-dissent, to the community driven work of George Gittoes, the identity politics of contemporary American art and (for contrast with the power of visual media) literature written in dialogue with truth commissions. He is interested in understanding art practices today in the light of two opposing inheritances: the avant-gardes and their politicization of the experimental art object, and 18th-century aesthetics, preaching the autonomy of the art object, which he interprets as the cultural compliment to modern liberalism. His historically-informed approach reveals how crucial this pair of legacies is to reading the tensions in voice and character of art today. Driven by questions about the capacity of the visual medium to speak politically or acquire political agency, this book is for anyone working in aesthetics or the art world concerned with the fate of cultural politics in a world spinning out of control, yet within reach of emancipation.