The locations of memory: Migration and transnational cultural memory as challenges for art history

In the contemporary world, a considerable number of artists are on the move, due to the triple processes of globalization, decolonization and migration. Migrant artists, and also cosmopolitan artists that travel widely, are transnational cultural workers with ties to several places. As ‘bridging persons’, migrant artists have more than one sense of home, and they play a seminal role in the translation between cultures, and in the transformations between the local and the global. However, the multiple cultural references in their works also raise the difficult question of the provenance of their art. This article addresses the issue of how transnational cultural memory is articulated in works by migrant artists, as well as how to access it analytically. After outlining the general issues concerning the impact of migration on contemporary art, the article explores the usefulness of three conceptual frameworks: hybridity (Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall); migratory aesthetics (Mieke Bal); and the notion of the work of art as a migrant’s event (Syed Manzurul Islam). Taking British Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum as my example, it is my contention that her exhibition ‘Interior Landscape’ (Venice, 2009) constitutes a migrant’s event.