Tavares, Amanda (2022) (Re)envisioning the Mediterranean: unlearning and imagining through contemporary art. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
Abstract
In the last two decades, the Mediterranean has received significant attention in the media and scholarship due to the so-called ‘migration crisis’, and this has prompted several critical debates about the ethics and impacts of image-making and knowledge production. This thesis contributes to this discussion by providing a thematic, material and historically grounded analysis of eight contemporary artworks about the Mediterranean by women artists. Seen together and in relation to each other for the first time, these projects propose modes of thinking about and with the sea that focus on process, tentativeness, empathy and responsibility.
To do this, I establish an interdependent methodology of unlearning and imagining based on the philosophical work of Édouard Glissant and the ontological studies by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. Looking at how they explore conceptual notions such as radical difference, worldmaking, borders, place, movement, history, memory and resistance, I develop a way of engaging with material and mental images that simultaneously acknowledges structural absences and invisible potentialities. I demonstrate the importance of problematising the ways in which the violent categories of imperialism and universalism were built and applied, but also of reactivating spaces where hopeful resistances and systematic dismantling have happened and can happen.
Examining the conceptual and formal strategies employed by the selected artists, and in particular their interdisciplinary, transcultural and multimediatic creative approaches, this thesis navigates between critically evaluating the past and projecting utopias forward. In doing so, it highlights imperialism’s failure to complete its project of destruction and demonstrates the importance of conceiving knowledge production as an always unfinished, ever-evolving practice. It also heavily emphasises that art is a key arena in the (de)construction of collective imaginaires, and that it should be approached not only as a representation of thought but as a modality of thinking.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Watt, Sophie and Small, Audrey |
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Keywords: | contemporary art, Mediterranean Sea, imperialism, unlearning, imagination, representation, knowledge production, image-making, resistance |
Awarding institution: | University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > French (Sheffield) |
Academic unit: | School of Languages and Cultures |
Depositing User: | Amanda Tavares |
Date Deposited: | 03 May 2023 12:48 |
Last Modified: | 03 May 2023 12:48 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:32718 |
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