Conference: The Politics and Aesthetics of Migration

October 7, 2022, 12 to 6pm, EST. Columbia University, New York; Schermerhorn Hall, room 807. Register here / Zoom Webinar registration here.

The conference explores the entanglements between artistic expression and the movement of people, ideas, and capital across the globe in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The identity and experience of migrants have changed dramatically in recent decades. Today, more people are on the move, their destinations are more uncertain, and their journeys are more complex than ever before. “The Politics and Aesthetics of Migration” addresses art’s relationship to these forms of movement. Drawing on a wide range of debates in several disciplines, it explores current trends in artistic and cultural analysis, reexamines the connection between the stranger and the migrant, and questions the forces which have organized economic globalization.

The realities of migration have transformed the arts in several ways. First, they have de-linked art history from the nation-state and troubled the often-fraught relationship between artistic expression and national infrastructures. Second, they have allowed recalibrating of the relationship between center and periphery, metropole and colony. Finally, they have questioned how the particular experiences captured in artworks critically engage the undergirding structural conditions. “The Politics and Aesthetics of Migration” explores how these movements have reshaped art and culture in recent decades and have contributed to shaping identities and their publics.

We have structured the conference into two panels with three speakers each to address these questions. The speakers have varied regional expertise. The conference will take place on October 7, 2022, hosted and sponsored by the Department of Art History & Archaeology at Columbia University and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

Panel 1: Realism in the Balance 12pm EST
Pedro R. Erber (Waseda University), Sanjukta Sunderason (University of Amsterdam), Niko Vicario (Amherst College). Moderator: Pujan Karambeigi.

Panel 2: Revisualizing Diaspora 3pm EST
Omar Berrada (The Cooper Union), Natalia Brizuela (University of California, Berkeley), Jennifer González (UC Santa Cruz), Moderator: Laura Tibi.