Patterns of Trauma: Lebanese Women Artists and the Aesthetics of Abstraction in times of War
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: Languages Cultures Art History & Music
Abstract
How do Lebanese women artists represent their experiences of the Civil War (1975-1990)? How can their artworks function as a form of testimony to the lived experience of violent conflict? To what degree can abstract aesthetics visualise collective trauma, and a fractured identity and belonging? This project aims to answer these questions through analysis of the artworks of five Lebanese women artists, active in Lebanon and the diaspora. It uncovers the connection between trauma, postcolonial struggle, class and gender in the aesthetic production of a country whose national identity and social and cultural institutions were devastated by a war rooted in the legacies of colonialism and tensions between different religious sects.
Academic interest is growing in Arab modernism and calligraphic abstraction, for example, 'Abstraction From the Arab World' (Takesh, 2020), 'Modern Art in the Arab World' (Shabout et al., 2018), and the exhibition 'Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70' (Whitechapel, 2023). However, current analysis of Lebanese women artists' abstraction is reductive.
Their work is either reduced to preconceived notions of Islamic art/heritage or seen as a form of abstraction taken from global modernism. Both interpretations divorce their art from war and trauma. Yet, research outside of the Lebanese context suggests that abstraction can be linked to personal trauma following postcolonialism and historical events (Terracciano, 2014). My project will transform approaches to the artistic practice of these women by analysing their work through the framework of heritage, testimony and trauma. It will contribute to the growth of intersectional research and the decolonisation of Eurocentric narratives prevalent in art history (Price, 2020). It will expand the body of work on testimony, exile, and migration from a unique and understudied perspective: diasporas in Arab histories, culture, and homeland.
Five women artists form the focus of the research: Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Dorothy Kazemi, and Juliana Seraphim. Women were doubly susceptible to trauma during the Civil War through religious and lawful segregation. I analyse selected artworks as trauma testimonies created by these artists in the 1970s and their reception in Lebanon using unpublished archival documents (see below). The decade was marked by the postcolonial Arab struggle and the Civil War. The project aims to explore how the artworks capture growing tensions before and after this catalytic moment. I ask what 'places' and 'spaces' these artists occupied in their home countries and internationally. What was the response to their work? To what extent did exile and diaspora influence their practice?
Through an intersectional approach, including class and gender, the project will engender new interpretations of their formally abstract visual language in relation to the visualisation of trauma. Visual analysis (with heritage, identity and gender) will be the core of my project, supplemented by discourse analysis, artist interviews, and archival research in Lebanon, Denmark and California. The theoretical framework will be informed by postcolonial theory (e.g., Sajed, 2022; Lazali, 2019; Mignolo, 2018), approaches exploring culture as a form of testimony (e.g., Jones, 2019), and trauma theory (e.g., Hayek, 2015; Hirsch, 2012).
Academic interest is growing in Arab modernism and calligraphic abstraction, for example, 'Abstraction From the Arab World' (Takesh, 2020), 'Modern Art in the Arab World' (Shabout et al., 2018), and the exhibition 'Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70' (Whitechapel, 2023). However, current analysis of Lebanese women artists' abstraction is reductive.
Their work is either reduced to preconceived notions of Islamic art/heritage or seen as a form of abstraction taken from global modernism. Both interpretations divorce their art from war and trauma. Yet, research outside of the Lebanese context suggests that abstraction can be linked to personal trauma following postcolonialism and historical events (Terracciano, 2014). My project will transform approaches to the artistic practice of these women by analysing their work through the framework of heritage, testimony and trauma. It will contribute to the growth of intersectional research and the decolonisation of Eurocentric narratives prevalent in art history (Price, 2020). It will expand the body of work on testimony, exile, and migration from a unique and understudied perspective: diasporas in Arab histories, culture, and homeland.
Five women artists form the focus of the research: Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Dorothy Kazemi, and Juliana Seraphim. Women were doubly susceptible to trauma during the Civil War through religious and lawful segregation. I analyse selected artworks as trauma testimonies created by these artists in the 1970s and their reception in Lebanon using unpublished archival documents (see below). The decade was marked by the postcolonial Arab struggle and the Civil War. The project aims to explore how the artworks capture growing tensions before and after this catalytic moment. I ask what 'places' and 'spaces' these artists occupied in their home countries and internationally. What was the response to their work? To what extent did exile and diaspora influence their practice?
Through an intersectional approach, including class and gender, the project will engender new interpretations of their formally abstract visual language in relation to the visualisation of trauma. Visual analysis (with heritage, identity and gender) will be the core of my project, supplemented by discourse analysis, artist interviews, and archival research in Lebanon, Denmark and California. The theoretical framework will be informed by postcolonial theory (e.g., Sajed, 2022; Lazali, 2019; Mignolo, 2018), approaches exploring culture as a form of testimony (e.g., Jones, 2019), and trauma theory (e.g., Hayek, 2015; Hirsch, 2012).
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Danielle Krikorian (Student) |