Art has the power to push back against the violence of dehumanization of lives of those on the margins of visibility. Considering global interconnectedness that inform our daily lives and the interdependence of human beings, migration art-activism brings to focus the idea of sociopolitical equality as an ethical stance. Through diasporic aesthetics, refugee visual cultures, and migration arts, we can see that which has been concealed from public view, and to deliberate on the precariousness of lives at the margins.
Reflecting on specific artworks such as “Limbo” series (2021) by Parastou Forouhar, “Grandmother” and “Nostalgia Carpet” (2016) by Zahra Hasanabadi, “Absence” (2018) by Taraneh Hemami, and “Caravan Flag” (2015) by Guillermo Galindo, this writing asks difficult questions about agency, politics of representation, and the power /limits of solidarity. How to enact an ethical empathic connection with the lives, struggles, and losses of those who are subject to systemic marginalization, abandonment, and dehumanization, through works of art? In The Force of Non-Violence (2020), Judith Butler offers a critique of “individualism” that assumes social interdependency as a weakness, rather than a powerful strategy for struggle towards ethical living. Reflecting on how decisions about lives worthy of grieving are made, Butler makes an effective argument for an intentional act of “solidarity” that brings to light the life, loss, and suffering of the other, as a shared sense of resistance against systemic violence of inequalities informed by “racial phantasms” in politics of belonging (2020: 75-102).
Using postmigration as a focal point, I demonstrate how art provides a powerful platform to connect us with diverse and often ignored stories of displacement and memories of crossing borders (both in the geopolitical sense of the term, as well as the sociocultural invisible boundaries of belonging).
