Abstract
My paper explores the role of textiles and cardboard in migratory contexts and the strategies of exchange by which they are mediated through art and the gallery system. Textiles, produced in sweatshops in developing countries, and cardboard as packaging material, circulate in large quantities across borders. They bear the imprints of human migration, provide shelter, act as “extra skin,” markers of identity and belonging, revealing how their relationships are mutually constitutive. The paper investigates works that employ these materials and involve the migrants as well. As social interstices, these interventions address how discarded objects generate social agency. Indonesian Tintin Wulia’s Trade/ Trace/ Transit (2014) engages Filipina migrant women who collect and recycle waste cardboard to build “homes.” Mexican artist Pia Camil embraces the barter tradition of street markets to collect second-hand t-shirts made in Mexico for US consumption that filter back to Mexico through illegal trade, or she exchanges t-shirts with immigrants living in the US to create participatory large-scale pieces. Danish artist E. B. Itso collected discarded clothing that refugees shed once reaching the shore in Italy in 2015 and cardboards used by prisoners as a means of escape. Dealing with things and people in transition and transformation, these projects can be associated with Giorgio Agamben’s notion of bare life, yet they are also supported by the institutional framework of the gallery system. Besides the social agency of objects, the paper explores the role artistic negotiation and forms of mediation play in the migratory interaction of objects and people.
Presenters
Edit TothProfessor of Instruction, Art and Art History, University of Texas San Antonio, Texas, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Social Practice, Social Interstice, Migration, Trade
