Understanding Displacement Aesthetics: History, Art and Museums (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781526181480)

Since the Second World War and the formalisation of the international refugee regime, forced displacement has been marked by a set of aesthetic, practical, and institutional concerns. Understanding Displacement Aesthetics examines how visual culture and art practice constructs and challenges ideas about forced displacement and refugees. The novel framework for 'displacement aesthetics' moves beyond conventional understandings of aesthetics as merely representational, demonstrating the entanglement of visual culture, art practices, and forced displacement in postmigrant contexts. Bringing together the fields of cultural history, art history, and curatorial 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. Through archival research, visual culture and art, interviews, and collaborative curatorship, Understanding Displacement Aesthetics offers new insight into overcoming the limitations that contexts of displacement can present for artists, art galleries and institutions addressing refugeedom and its legacies.

Author: Ana Carden-Coyne, Charles Green, Chrisoula Lionis
ISBN-10: 1526181487
ISBN-13: 9781526181480
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/06/2026
Pages: 280
Format: Hardcover