Humour and the Commodification of Suffering: Strategies of Cultural Resilience in Contemporary Art

The emphasis on precarity and conflict in contemporary art has meant that artists from sites of crisis are frequently framed as ‘local informants’, expected to perform cultural capital by narrating experiences of marginality and political conflict. This has meant that in contrast to the sphere of popular culture where marginalised groups are expected to engage humour to ‘perform’ their identity (eg POC, female, queer stand-up comedians), performances of ‘sincerity’, ‘authenticity’ and truth remain central to intercultural encounters in contemporary art. Framed by discussion of how humour in contemporary art differs to ‘everyday’ visual forms (memes, graffiti etc), this article considers how humour is used as a political strategy by artists from diverse sites of crisis: Greece, Palestine and Indigenous Australia. Analysing the work of artists Khaled Hourani, Richard Bell, and Kostis Stafylakis, it demonstrates how humour in contemporary art contributes to three forms of cultural resilience: ‘authenticity’, ‘enactment’, and ‘placemaking’.