About the Book
Weaving together first-person narratives of art practice, analytical accounts, and ethnographic research by artists and scholars in art history, theater, new media, music, and anthropology, this volume offers an overview of the wide range of conditions, processes, and motivations for art-making among asylum seekers in view of Israel’s continued legal obfuscation of the refugee status process.
With attention to the theorization of artistic production as a form of active, effective citizenship, it decentres these discourses to account for illiberal political contexts, geopolitical border zones and new disciplinary orientations, considering art-making in contexts of danger and incarceration. This carefully curated collection seeks to highlight the place of African asylum seekers in a increasingly illiberal, nationalist Israel, and the role of art as a resistant, affirming, and life-sustaining practice.
A study of the social, political and aesthetic considerations that asylum-seeking artists bring to their practice, Art Practice and Asylum in Israel will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in migration and diaspora, art activism and refugee studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Art as a Form of Asylum Seeking in Israel; Part I: Sands; 1. Homemaking Through Artmaking: The Concepts of “Home” Among Eritrean Asylum-Seeking Artists in Israel; 2. Art and Activism: An Interview; 3. Imagining and Creating a Shared Home: Theatre with Asylum Seekers and Israeli Citizens; 4. Writing for Dear Life: The Art, Literature and I; 5. Art as Sudden Knowledge; Part II: Cities; 6. The Transgressive Art of Walking; 7. Keep Fighting: Photography in the Eritrean Community in Israel; 8A. The Art of Crafting Freedom: Kuchinate, Asylum-Seeking Women, and Resilience through the Arts; 8B. Sisters in Art, Strength in Community: The Inspiring Journey of Two Artists through Kuchinate, African Refugee Women’s Collective; 9. The Rhythm of New Life: Music as Asylum in Tel Aviv’s Congolese Community; 10. The Power of Song; Part III: Homes; 11. New Place, New Meanings: The Role of Traditional Hairstyles among Forced Migrant Women; 12. Self-Documentation as an Expression of Forced Migrants’ Voices and “Home-Making”; 13. Light and Shade: Painting Black Womanhood in Exile; 14. Finding Your Words; Afterwards: At Home in Art
About the Author :
Ofer Gazit is an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. Gazit teaches and writes about migration, borders, and mobility in the US and the Caribbean from a musical perspective, contributing to publications in sound and media studies, ethnomusicology, and jazz studies.
Hamutal Sadan is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on the art of asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa living in Israel. She completed the two-year research program Graffiti Art in Prison (GAP) (2021-2023). As an activist curator, she has been producing artistic and cultural events and exhibitions since 2017, showcasing the art of asylum-seeking artists in order to foster connections between the refugee community and the Israeli public, as part of her work at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants (NGO). In 2019, she launched the Facebook community, Art of Refugees in Israel, as a platform for refugee artists to share their art, gain exposure, and discover new opportunities.
Sarah Hankins is Assistant Professor of Sound Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research explores auditory and performative processes of subject formation in contexts of globalized modernity, with special focus on Israel and the African diaspora. Trained as an ethnomusicologist, Dr. Hankins seeks to integrate ethnographic and historiographic methods with critical approaches in Black studies, queer theory, media and technology studies, psychoanalysis and theology. Her work has been published in Black Music Research Journal, Women and Music, and Signs, among other refereed journals. Hankins is a producer of electronic and noise music, and is a postulant for priesthood in the Episcopal Church.
Review :
"Art is a powerful source of resistance, recognition, and active engagement. For black racialized refugees, such as the women and men in Home in the making, it is also a way to make home anew, against past displacement, present marginalization, and future uncertainty. This valuable collection of studies, stories and witnesses of refugee art-making opens a window of resilience and hope into a "national house" that is haunted by the memories of unique past tragedies, and by the everyday reflections of unique present ones. Drawing on passionate research with African people, the book is an inspiration to rediscover the power of art and the longing for home in Israel/Palestine, and beyond."
Paolo Boccagni, Full Professor of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy
