In the summer of 2022 when the artworld was awaiting the opening of the international art exhibition Documenta 15 in Germany a scandal broke out over accusations of antisemitism. These accusations referred mainly to artefacts produced by Arab, specifically Palestinian artists. While artefacts circulate in the global art economy from sites of production, exhibition, and sale to collection, they often change meaning along the process. The meaning that was ascribed to these works, however, were one-sided interpretations offered by members of the German government, right-wing German media, and the Jewish Council in Germany.  While art is often lauded as transcending cultural differences and political borders as well as enabling emancipatory politics, the Documenta debate revealed “the national frame” (Karaca 2021) of the art world in Germany troubled by contemporary Palestinian artefacts.  By claiming these artworks as artefacts, I argue that they inherit certain traditions, forms of knowledge and life. Relatedly, I argue that these are “artefacts of survival,” and embody and speak of the diasporic condition of crafting life after and amidst ongoing wars, dispossession, and destruction. 

This talk will explore how “artefacts of survival” navigate nationally organized art and cultural contexts. How are aretfacts included, interrupted, and enabled in spaces organized by the national frame? This talk will explore these questions by engaging the works of three contemporary artists such as Mohammad Al-Hawajri (Gaza/Palestine), Hanaa  Malallah (Iraq/UK) and Faissal El-Malak (Palestine/Canada). All three artists have been prompted by the political violence of war, refuge and diasporic existence and have been responding by producing artworks that align themselves with a longer cultural and artistic tradition. 

Biography:

Dr. Sultan Doughan is Lecturer in the department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the Convenor of the MA Programme Anthropology & Museum Practice, where she trains students to become culturally and theoretically versed anthropologists in the field of Museum & Heritage Studies. Doughan’s own research is guided by questions about political violence, social memory, and the practice of citizenship.  She holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Freie Universitat Berlin, where she graduated in 2009 with a dissertation on the visual representation of the Lebanese Civil War in the Atlas Group Archive. She obtained a PhD in 2018 from the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation engaged questions of citizenship, tolerance, and memory for Middle Easterners, specifically Turks and Palestinians in Germany. She inquired how citizenship and belonging in Germany rest upon the Holocaust memory with grave consequences for accessing basic rights for Middle Easterners. She is currently working on her first book ‘Converting Citizens: German Secularism and the Politics of Holocaust Memory’ Her most recent publications include:  “How Germany’s Memory Culture Censors Palestinians” with Hanan Toukan, Jacobin 2022 (https://jacobin.com/2022/07/germany-israel-palestine-antisemitism-art-documenta), ‘Still Questioned: How the Figure of the Jew is Reconfigured out of the “Muslim Problem” with Hannah Tzuberi, Marginalia 2022, https://themarginaliareview.com/still-questioned/ and “Desiring Memorials: Jews, Muslims, and the Human of Citizenship,” The Annual Review of Sociology of Religion, 2022 https://brill.com/display/book/9789004514331/BP000004.xml?language=en .