Understanding Displacement Aesthetics: History, Art and Museums

Understanding Displacement Aesthetics examines how visual culture, art practice and art museums have shaped ideas about forced displacement and refugees in the 20th and 21st centuries. The book analyses the refugee as a cultural figure, and highlights displaced artists in contemporary contexts. The new concept of displacement aesthetics demonstrates the entanglement of representation, lived experience, and institutions. Offering a major intervention into the fields of cultural history, art history, and museum studies, Understanding Displacement Aesthetics identifies four areas for consideration: visual tropes of refugeedom; language and identity; institutional and artistic responses to displacement; and lived experiences of artists with backgrounds of displacement.