Professor Saloni Mathur presents “Baggage Claims: Contemporary Art’s Migration Imaginary” at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore

Source: https://arthistory.ucla.edu/news/professor-saloni-mathur-presents-baggage-claims-contemporary-arts-migration-imaginary-at-the-nanyang-technological-university-singapore/ Parent: https://arthistory.ucla.edu

Professor Saloni Mathur will be delivering a lecture entitled “Baggage Claims: Contemporary Art’s Migration Imaginary” for the NTU Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities Series on March 20th at 4:30pm (1:30am PST). 

The relation between belonging and belongings – the actual physical property carried by migrants on their journeys – in the multi-media field of contemporary art has a long tradition of material practice.  It can be seen to begin with the modernist trope of the “suitcase” or “valise” as it emerged within the European tradition of the historical avant-garde.  My presentation will show how artists today, especially from the global South, deploy material and pictorial strategies that both build upon and abandon the nostalgic terms of these “suitcase stories” in ways that evoke more precarious and perilous pathways for the migrant in the 21st century.  By connecting these insights to the forms of labor historically attached to baggage, to the racialized figures, for example, of the “Coolie” or “the Pullman Porter,” I propose to consider a broader dialectic between possessions and dispossessionin the field of the visual arts.

The event will take place at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore, but will also be live streamed on Youtube for all to watch. For more information, please click here.

To watch online, please click here.