An exploration of artistic forms of memory work that critically examine the limits both of archives and of nation states.

Archives are not only powerful tools of domination from above: they have also been used from below, as sites of resistance against erasure. Especially in postcolonial, postpartition and postwar contexts, contemporary artists doing memory work often navigate a tension between appropriating the position of the archivist as an emancipatory act and problematizing that very position from a transnational perspective. Rebecca Hanna John sheds light on this understudied aspect of the archival turn in art, showing how Akram Zaatari, Jumana Manna, and Farah Saleh critically engage with archives in order to tell stories of transnational connections, trajectories, and entanglements.

Autorentext
Rebecca Hanna John is an art historian specializing in postcolonial and transnational perspectives on art and culture. She studied art history, literature, and media studies at Universität Konstanz, Université Paris Diderot, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, receiving her PhD from Leuphana Universität Lüneburg as part of the DFG-funded graduate program Cultures of Critique.