ABSTRACT

In the past few years, and especially since the start of the ‘refugee crisis’, a number of research, NGO, and policy initiatives have channelled resources to representing refugees through artistic endeavours. The underlying assumption in such projects is that art offers refugees a significant avenue to tell their story and acquire a ‘voice’ that is otherwise restricted in contexts of limited rights. In this article we aim to complicate some of the straight-forward assumptions underlying the connections between art and the representation of displacement and loss through ethnographic research conducted with professional Syrian artists in Istanbul. With an emphasis on ‘refugee art’, such artistic projects force artists to conform and identify with this category, silencing more complex processes of identification and subjectivity, communal historical continuities and personal loss, as well as artistic aspirations and expressions. The article demonstrates that the aestheticisation of displacement and loss produces an ‘unspeakability’ (Weller, Robert. 2017. “Salvaging Silence: Exile, Death, and the Anthropology of the Unknowable.” Anthropology of this Century 19 [Online publication]. Accessed June 6, 2019. http://aotcpress.com/articles/salvaging-silence/) of personal experience and trauma, and, in some cases, a permanent withdrawal from artistic production. As much as artists experience this as a form of imposed silencing, they also articulate their withdrawal as a tactic of agentive creativity. We, therefore, argue that unlike in the modern art practices described by Sontag (1983 [1982]. “The Aesthetics of Silence.” In A Susan Sontag Reader, 187–188. Harmondsworth: Penguin), this ‘permanent silence’ is not an elitist, individualistic and dehistoricizing strategy. This context of conflict and protracted displacement reveals multifarious silences that are both results of unequal politics of representation but also tactics of reclaiming identity and artistic integrity, and of maintaining continuities between past, present and future.

摘要

在过去的几年里，特别是自“难民危机”开始以来，一些研究、非政府组织和政策举措已经通过艺术努力将资源用于代表难民。这些项目的基本假设是，艺术为难民提供了一个重要的途径来讲述他们的故事并获得“声音”，否则在有限权利的背景下会受到限制。在这篇文章中，我们旨在通过与伊斯坦布尔的专业叙利亚艺术家进行的人种学研究，使艺术与流离失所和损失的表现之间的联系背后的一些直接假设复杂化。强调“难民艺术”，这样的艺术项目迫使艺术家顺应和认同这一类别，沉默更复杂的认同和主观性过程，公共历史的连续性和个人的损失，以及艺术抱负和表达。这篇文章表明，置换和损失的审美化产生了一种“不可言说”（Weller, Robert。2017。“拯救沉默：流放、死亡和未知的人类学。”本世纪人类学 19 [在线出版物]。2019 年 6 月 6 日访问。http://aotcpress.com/articles/salvaging-silence/）个人经历和创伤，在某些情况下，永久退出艺术创作。尽管艺术家将其视为一种强加的沉默形式，但他们也将自己的退出表达为一种代理创造力的策略。因此，我们认为这与桑塔格 (1983 [1982]) 所描述的现代艺术实践不同。“沉默的美学”。在苏珊·桑塔格的读者中, 187–188。Harmondsworth：企鹅），这种“永久沉默”不是精英主义、个人主义和去历史化的策略。这种冲突和长期流离失所的背景揭示了各种各样的沉默，这既是不平等的表现政治的结果，也是重新获得身份和艺术完整性的策略，以及保持过去、现在和未来之间的连续性的策略。