Art as (Trans)Cultural Capital (Pub2), Thursday 24 April, 11:00-12:30
Oliver Wiant Rømer Holme, “Danish Social Art and Transcultural Exchange”
This paper examines the transcultural connections between the so-called “social art” current in Denmark and a broader international network of entangled socialist cultures during the interwar years. The publication of the book series Social Kunst (1930-32) reignited public debates on the (political) role of art in society, whilst simultaneously framing the aesthetic inclinations of the publisher Mondes Forlag and the Danish Monde-group.
The history of social art in Denmark has been documented by Danish scholars such as Hanne Abildgaard, Morten Thing, Olav Harsløf and Jette Lundbo Levy, who have contributed greatly to the field by situating these artistic impulses within the cultural and political climate of the period. Nevertheless, social art remains to be fully contextualized within a transcultural framework of socialist cultures.
Expanding on contemporary research on socialist cultures and transnationality by researchers like the Canadian literary scholar Anthony Glinoer and the Finnish historian Kasper Braskén, this paper underscores how journals, book publications, and organizations formed important infrastructures for facilitating transcultural exchange of class-based cultures, and how visual representations played a crucial part in this process. The paper introduces examples of exchange and collaboration between Denmark, Europe and North America, to illuminate how Danish artists and intellectuals took part in broader networks of transcultural, socialist cultures. Finally, the paper explores how Danish artists such as Aksel Jørgensen and Anton Hansen adapted many of the same artistic idioms as their European counterparts like Käthe Kollwitz and George Grosz to a local Danish context.
Elham Etemadi, “Tehran Auction: The Commodification of Art and the Shift in Cultural Values”
The Tehran Auction, established in 2012, represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of Iranian modern and contemporary art. By introducing the commercialization of art, the auction has redefined its meaning and societal role in Iran, primarily catering to wealthy Iranians due to international sanctions that have largely excluded foreign buyers. This shift challenges the traditional view of art as a “sacred” endeavor, highlighting the growing influence of capital in shaping cultural landscapes. Remarkably, the Tehran Auction rose to prominence during a period of severe international sanctions, systemic corruption, and economic hardship, with Iran experiencing a -5.8% growth rate in 2012. These conditions exacerbated societal inequalities, creating what some have described as a Dickensian era in Iran. Against this backdrop, art has increasingly aligned itself with luxury goods, serving as status symbols and fetishized objects accessible only to an elite few, for whom aesthetic value often takes a secondary role. Ownership of an artworks, especially by socially recognized figures, provides collectors with cultural prestige and social recognition, often outweighing the intrinsic artistic value of these pieces. This phenomenon mirrors the role of luxury clothing brands in Tehran, where material possessions signify social elevation.
This paper explores how the Tehran Auction embodies the commodification of Iranian art, analyzing its impact on cultural identity and the shifting societal role of art. It argues that the auction reflects broader tensions between traditional values and contemporary economic forces, positioning art as a tool for social mobility available only to a privileged few.
Elina Mikkilä, “From Bankers to (Lebens)Künstler: Rethinking Capital in the Art(sy) Communities of London and Berlin”
At a London reading, a quirky Millenial casually mentioned to me his transition from banking to running the pop-up gallery in question. Two weeks later, a Gen Z corporate worker invited me to his WhatsApp group for gallery-hopping tours, a side project to spice up his career. Contrasted by a middle-aged Mexican painter’s invitation to his opening in a peripheral location, these encounters exemplify a dynamic where art spaces serve as arenas for upwardly mobile professionals seeking cultural capital, while precarious artists grapple with the high costs of living and creating.
This presentation explores how London’s art scene reflects and reshapes the intersections of economic, symbolic and social capital. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the artistic field, I examine how economic and cultural capital – once seen as opposites – now interact and converge, raising questions about the role of visual art in mediating class hierarchies.
By contrasting London’s gallery culture with Berlin’s ‘Poor but Sexy’ legacy and drawing on Richard Florida’s concept of the ‘creative class,’ I illuminate the paradox of gentrification: how art-driven urban renewal risks displacing the very creatives it celebrates. I trace an intercultural comparison of artists’ and art consumers’ experiences combining autotheoretical storytelling and psychogeographical walking practices.
The presentation sheds light on how visual arts not only represent but actively transform class narratives, offering fresh perspectives on inclusion, precarity and the commodification of cultural spaces.
Social Documentary (Pub126), Thursday 24 April, 11:00-12:30
Inessa Kouteinikova, “Restoring Individual Dignity through Photography”
In 1871-72 the Scottish born photographer William Carrick was travelling in the remote parts of the Russian Empire, unmasking the Russian nation-building process through the new genre of social photography. The result was over 1000 glass negatives which he first showed in Western Europe, causing a turmoil at the London International Exhibition in 1876. Carrick’s gallery of the new social class – predominantly manual workers and low classes – brought heated debates about the kind of art, literature, music, theater, architecture that best embodies Russia’s social values after the liberation of the serfs and the reforms of Alexander II. Carrick’s photography encouraged understanding across social groups, creating a body of pro-modern depiction that transformed subjects with disparate rights into full-fledged citizens in albumin and gelatin.
This study looks into the heart of the late 19th century itinerant photography which demonstrates how sporadic efforts of affirmation of the social Russian class had helped to rise the status and elevate its representation, reducing the barriers of the socially-oriented photography. Carrick’s expedition was meant to reunite the workers photographically, freeing them from their anonymous state, speeded up promotion of a classed self-image. As a pioneer practitioner of the social classes, he had hardly predicted or planned the transition of his art into a popular genre. Carrick’s project was an emergency that demanded a complete historical, political and visual mobilization. In response to the phenomenon, the fellow-photographers put forward a system of comprehensive exhibitions devoted to the country’s low classes, unlike anything seen before.
Diletta Haberl, “Visual Arts, Social Class, and the Via degli Abruzzi“
This proposal seeks to explore the intersection between visual arts, narrative, and social class through the accounts of XVIII and XIX century travellers along the Via degli Abruzzi, a lesser-known route in Italy compared to the more famous Grand Tour destinations.
These travellers, primarily born into wealthy families in Northern Europe, documented their journeys in both visual and written forms, offering unique insights into how their privileged social positions shaped their perceptions of art, architecture, and the socio-economic conditions they encountered.
Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz, for instance, was profoundly influenced by his intellectual and academic background. His travels in southern Italy, including the Abruzzi region, were shaped by both his social standing and his deep interest in history and art. Similarly, Ferdinand Gregorovius, who had access to extensive education and resources, was able to travel extensively across Italy. His writings, especially those focused on Italy, reflect his romanticized view of the country’s medieval landscapes, often depicting them as untouched by modernity.
This proposal will investigate how these visual and written representations of the region convey the dynamics of social class, using the Via degli Abruzzi as a starting point for exploring the interactions between art, narrative, and social structures.
The aim is to understand how the works of these travellers influenced the perception of social differences, defining and redefining concepts of identity and belonging in relation to specific historical and cultural contexts.
Amelie Ochs, “Where We Stand: Narratives of Social Documentary Photography and Visual Regimes of Class”
The cover of bell hooks‘ Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000) confronts us with a
shameful situation: besides the author’s name and title, it shows a photograph by Builder
Levy from 1970. A girl in a nightgown is placed in the center of the picture, in the middle
of a sparsely furnished domestic environment (with a washstand, cardboard box,
garbage can, stained wall). She is bending her head to avoid the focus of the camera
and thus the beholder’s gaze. She seems to be ashamed, is the shamed one. However,
the insight into the domestic scene not only makes us uncomfortably aware of the girl’s
class standpoint. Rather the visual regime makes our own standpoint evident. It is a
shared and split social standpoint, structured by class relations: the girl on the one side
and us (academic) readers on the other. The fact that we are part of this visual regime is
made clear to us by the way it is staged, addressing us by the collective singular (we) in
the title.
The photograph from a series of social documentary photography illustrates bell hooks’
autobiographical reflection on class relations from an intersectional perspective – a key
reference in current debates on classism. Starting from this, the paper aims to examine
narratives of social documentary photography and, connected to this, analyze visual
regimes of class. Taking into account both, hook’s own reflections on visual relations in
photography and her own experiences of social class, the paper wants to develop a
class-conscious approach to images of class in art historical research.
Mirela Shella & Edlira Gugu, “Autofiction: Forms and Features in Albanian Literature”
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature for writer Annie Ernaux proves that forms of writing that were once marginal have taken an important place in world literature. The number of such works has also increased in Albanian literature in recent decades. This paper aims to build a panorama of works and writers who narrate their lives and try to make a social reflection of Albania in different historical periods. In the works of writers Petro Marko, Kasëm Trebeshina, and Rita Petro, it is noticeable that the authors try to bring to the readers the effects produced by the communist dictatorship that destroyed the bourgeois class as well as the effects produced by the change in the political system, i.e., the transition from the working class to the bourgeois one.
On the other hand, in this paper, we will try to argue why the works “Interview with Yourself,” “Dry Laurels,” and “Born Backwards” cannot be seen only as narratives about oneself and personal social ups and downs, but also as narratives about Albanian society. Since at the limits of collective memory, there is a space freed from collective conditioning where our personality can be expressed, it is clear that this is precisely where our memory functions, which builds individual history. Of course, this depends on the collective and can be interpreted as the result of the overlap and interaction between the experiences of individuals. Therefore, we will argue that these autobiographical works can also be considered autosociobiographic.
Aristocracy and the Other (Edu155), Thursday 24 April, 11:00-12:30
Malena Rotter, ““The Most Extraordinary Dwarf that Ever was Seen”. Questioning Social Advancement and Agency at the 18th-Century Court”
The short quote from Joseph Boruwlaski’s (1739–1837) autobiography published in 1788
resumes on Nicolas Ferry (1741–1764), called Bébé, court dwarf of king Stanislaw I at the
court of Lunéville. The short-statured son of a farmer’s couple was brought to the court
at the age of five and spent his entire life there. The king was in great favour of him and
Bébé became a permanent and close member of the court and its habits. He was
dressed up in the finest clothing, was riding a scale up carriage with goats and received
a little house, which was placed in the palace. Some of the objects particularly made for
Nicolas are still preserved and today exhibited at the museum in Nancy. His role changes
between being part of the court (family) and being the jester. While on one hand, his
shortness gave him access to a new social status, on the other, he stayed a curiosity and
was on display for amusement.
Nicolas was depicted not only in painting but also in numerous wax figures, which found
their way into different European collections. A specimen in Kassel is already documented 1767, showing that Bébé was already known outside of France shortly after his death in 1764 – or even before. The medium ‘wax’ contains both a royal iconography and
the »objectness«, which satisfy a certain wish for possession and participation in a current fashion. Thus, my focus is firstly, on the possible social advancement and secondly,
on the visual consequences or dimensions.
Hannah Semsarha, “Clashing Classes? The Joint Depiction of Artists and Commissioners in Renaissance Art”
This talk examines the joint depiction of artists and commissioners in Renaissance art, exploring its role as a visual narrative that both reflects and actively shapes social hierarchies and class dynamics. The presentation focuses on the largely overlooked phenomenon of paired portrayals of artists and commissioners in late 15th- and early 16th-century altarpieces, particularly in what is now Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Around 1500, most European artists belonged to the artisan or urban middle class. Compared to members of the nobility, clergy, and upper-middle-class—groups with which the commissioners were typically associated—they generally had fewer privileges and agency. A significant elevation of the artist’s profession began in the 15th century, originating in Italian art theory, and spread to the northern Alpine region in the 16th century. This change in social status is reflected in the painting through the increasingly equal depiction of artist and commissioner.
However, the joint depiction not only documents the social advancement of the artist around 1500 but also actively contributed to it. By adopting specific roles within specific iconographies, artists ennobled themselves–and this is crucial– in relation to the commissioner. By appearing alongside their commissioners in the image and shaping their self-portraits in relation to those of the commissioners, artists asserted and elevated their social status. Their joint and publicly visible presence within the artwork significantly contributed to the acceptance and consolidation of the artists‘ newly claimed position within society. Therefore, the joint depiction of artist and commissioner in the Renaissance not only reflects and documents the ennoblement of the artist in the image, but also serves as an effective instrument for facilitating that very social ascent. Selected case studies of joint depictions will demonstrate how actors entered into relationships with one another and negotiated their position within society through the image as a medium of social transformation.
Mengfei Pan, “Warrior Class and Production of Art in the Early Meiji Japan (1868-1912)”
This paper examines a historical case in Japan to explore how the samurai class shaped the art environment and expressions during the early Meiji period (1868–1912). The political transformation of 1868 marked a significant shift in authority from the Tokugawa Bakufu to the Meiji government, with profound social and cultural implications. As feudal lords and their samurai retainers withdrew from Edo, the de facto capital established by the Tokugawa government in 1603, professional painters and craftsmen who had served them faced a sharp decline in commissions and income.
By focusing on the “samurai” class, this paper argues that, rather than experiencing a rupture that exploited the former warriors’ privileges, there was a cultural lag (Swidler 1986) that sustained the proficiency of Edo artistic conventions and fostered the emergence of a new patronage class—the royalist bureaucrats—aligned with samurai tastes. Through examining the art/craft makers’ access to art education, their artistic expressions, and the roles of new patrons, this paper outlines how social class was a crucial factor in shaping the art scene during the first two decades of the Meiji period. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction (1993), it also argues that the cultural tastes of the predominant samurai class functioned as a strategy for reproducing and consolidating social class in the new era.
Yhteiskuntaluokka kirjallisuudessa [Social Class in Literature] (Pub2), Thursday 24 April, 14:00-15:30
Joel Suontama, “Yhteiskuntaluokka Harry Salmenniemen novelleissa”
Tarkastelen esitelmässäni nykykirjailija Harry Salmenniemen (s. 1983) kokeellisia novelleja yhteiskuntaluokan ruumiillisuuden näkökulmasta. Pohdin ja analysoin sitä, miten yhteiskuntaluokka sosiaalisena asemana piirtyy esiin kokeellisen nykynovellistiikan ruumiillisuuden ja kulutuksen kuvauksissa. Lisäksi tarkastelen, millaisia keskiluokkaisia elämäntyylejä aineiston ruumiillisuuden kuvauksissa muodostuu. Lähestyn yhteiskuntaluokkaa, ruumiillisuutta ja elämäntyyliä Salmenniemen novelleissa ranskalaissosiologi Pierre Bourdieun ja brittisosiologi Beverley Skeggsin jalanjäljissä.
Pohdin keväällä 2024 valmistuneessa kirjallisuustieteen pro gradu -tutkielmassani, kuinka moniselitteisenä ja -tulkintaisena yhteiskuntaluokka Salmenniemen novellien ruumiillisuuden kuvauksissa esiintyy. Novelleissa ei korostu yhteiskunnallisuus tai poliittisuus, joten ne eroavat perinteisistä luokan tutkimuskohteista taiteentutkimuksessa.
Käsittelenkin esitelmässä sitä, että luokka on novelleissa merkittävä mutta pääasiassa pinnanalainen temaattinen elementti, jota kaunokirjallisesti monitulkintaiset novellit lähestyvät usein erilaisin huumorin keinoin. Keskeisiä huumorin muotoja ovat parodia ja ironia, jotka korostuvat sekä novellien muodon että sisällön tasoilla. Huumori kietoutuu luokan kokemuksiin ja kuvauksiin monin tavoin.
Yhteiskuntaluokka limittyy Salmenniemen novellikokoelmissa – kaunokirjallisissa teoksissa – myös kuvataiteeseen. Teokset sisältävät runsasta kielellistä kuvallisuutta ja kuvataidemaailman kuvauksia. Lisäksi luokka kiinnittyy myös konkreettisesti kuvataiteeseen: teokset sisältävät monimediaisia novelleja, joissa italialaisten renessanssimaalareiden klassikkoteoksia tulkitaan vulgaarin yhteiskunnallisella otteella.
Lähestyn siis Salmenniemen novelleja monitaiteisesta näkökulmasta. Tätä monitaiteellisuutta kehystää yhteiskuntaluokan ääneen lausumaton merkitys, joka käy ilmi esimerkiksi novellien henkilöhahmojen kulutusvalinnoissa, elämänkokemuksissa ja puhetavoissa. Nähdäkseni onkin tärkeää nostaa luokka esiin taideteoksissa, joissa se piiloutuu silmien eteen.
Suvi Seppälä, “Taideteos yhteiskunnallisen aseman kuvauksen välineenä Donna Tarttin teoksessa Tikli (The Goldfinch)”
Tunnetun yhdysvaltalaisen nykykirjailijan Donna Tarttin vuonna 2013 ilmestyneessä Tikli-romaanissa (englanniksi The Goldfinch) kuvataide ja kerronta kietoutuvat toisiinsa oleellisesti, sillä teoksen temaattisessa keskiössä sekä myös kansikuvana on Rembrandt van Rijnin oppilaana toimineen Carel Fabritiuksen Tikli-maalaus (hollanniksi Het puttertje). Vuonna 1654 valmistunut Fabritiuksen maalaus edustaa Hollannin taiteen kultakauden maalaustaidetta. Esitelmässäni tarkastelen, miksi romaaniin on valikoitunut juuri kyseinen maalaus ja sen merkitystä henkilöhahmoille. Selvitän, miten maalauksen valinta liittyy henkilöhahmojen asemaan yhteiskunnassa, ja paljastaako erityisesti päähenkilön tunnekokemukset ja kerronnalliset valinnat liittyen maalaukseen jotain luokka-asemasta. Tarkastelen Tarttin teosta muun muassa ekfrasis-tutkimuksen tarjoamien näkökulmien kautta. Ekfrasis-termi viittaa yleensä fiktiivisen tai olemassa olevan kuvallisen esityksen sanallistamiseen. Lisäksi lähestyn kysymystä ranskalaisen sosiologin Pierre Bourdieun luoman ajatuksen yhteiskuntaluokan ja makutottumuksen välisen yhteyden kautta, ja miten se määrittää taideteosta romaanissa. Pohdin myös, miten kyseisen maalauksen valinta rajoittaa sitä, kenen äänet pääsevät kuuluviin ja millaista osallisuutta valinta luo. Romaani ei tarkastele maalausta pelkästään esteettisten ja taiteellisten arvojen kautta, vaan myös materiaalisena objektina ja taloudellisesti arvokkaana esineenä sekä taiderikollisuuden välineenä. Yhteiskunnalliset eri tasot ja arvot tulevat esiin myös tällaisen valinnan kautta teoksessa. Esitelmäni tavoitteena on siis syventyä siihen, miten kertomukset voivat käsitellä kuvataiteita ja tuoda niiden kautta näkyviin yhteiskunnalliseen asemaan liittyviä kysymyksiä ja problematiikkaa.
Eila Rantonen, “Lakkojen kuvauksia kirjallisuudessa”
Käsittelen esityksessäni, miten lakkoliikehdintää dramatisoidaan kirjallisuudessa ja esitetään taiteellisesti puhuttelevalla tavalla. Keskityn siihen, mitä poeettisia ja retorisia keinoja käytetään työelämän konfliktien fiktiivisissä kuvauksissa. Pohdin yhteisön esitystapoja, kuten kollektiivisen ja moniäänisen kerronnan merkityksiä dramaattisten tapahtumien elävöittämisessä sekä dokumentaarisen aineksen ja fiktion yhdistelyä. Fiktiiviset esimerkkini keskittyvät eurooppalaisen lähihistorian lakkojen kuvauksiin (Suomi, Britannia), yhteiskunnalliseen realismiin ja sitä uudistaviin esitystapoihin. Lisäksi havainnollistan aihepiirin juuria 1800-luvun naturalismin suuntauksessa. Esittelen myös joitakin esimerkkejä yhteisöjen esittämisen visuaalisista konventioista, kuten maalaustaiteen tavoista kuvata työväestön yksilöllistä ja yhteisöllistä vastarintaa.
Engagement (Pub126), Thursday 24 April, 14:00-15:30
Željka Miklošević and Patricia Počanić, “Digital Narratives – Reshaping or Reinforcing the Social System of the Art Museum?”
Art museums have been described as spaces where visitors, separated from their everyday experience, go through social transformation, cultural identity building or spiritual enlightenment. Their specific narrative structures (have) rendered them (in)accessible to particular social groups, which cultural democratisation policies have attempted to change since after WWII. Although incentives to increase access have resulted in the inclusion of diverse communities, mostly those based on ethnic or gender identities, or disabilities, research shows that art museums are still rarely visited by people of lower socioeconomic status. A possible path to inclusion and equity has been seen to lie in storytelling and digital technologies as ways of generating interest and engagement.
The focus of the paper is digital stories created by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (KHM Stories app) to facilitate local visitors’ engagement with the permanent exhibition – a traditional display of historic art. These art-based narratives are explored in relation to the issues of class representation and participation in culture, specifically of the Southeast European immigrant communities. Drawing on social semiotics the paper analyses the discourses of the stories, particularly Glamour and Grind which comprises overt references to social classes. The dominant interpretative and representation approaches defining the discourses are discussed in connection with cultural consumption and cultural production by addressing the notions of museum relevance, transformative action, and class-based experience. The results are also interpreted with regards to possible content- and experience-creation that can in various ways tackle the issues of classes in this and similar art museums.
Seda Pesen, “Trusting One’s Own Gaze. How an Excluded Class Came to Voice”
The philosopher Immanuel Kant defined aesthetic judgments as highly conditional: they must be disinterested and detached from subjective feelings to be pure, and therefore valid, aesthetic judgments—any deviation from this standard was deemed “barbaric.” This devaluation reveals how strongly canonical aesthetic theory has been shaped by social exclusions tied to gender, class, and race. Contemporary critiques, such as Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction, expose these structures and raise the question of how aesthetics can be thought of intersectionally.
In my presentation, I will focus on the research of the largely overlooked art historian Gabriele Sprigath, who reimagined aesthetic judgments as a moment of revolutionary self-empowerment for those who had been excluded before. In her publication Bilder anschauen, den eigenen Augen trauen (“Looking at Pictures, Trusting One’s Own Eyes”), she presents her empirical research conducted during the IG Metall trade union exhibition Arbeiter in der Kunst (“Workers in Art,” 1976), where she accompanied factory workers in their perception of and engagement with paintings. Departing from the positivist tradition of art history—which neglected subjective reception in the name of scientific rigor—Sprigath developed the method of Bildergespräche (“picture discussions”). As a guided conversation, this approach led participants from “spontaneous seeing” to “conscious seeing,” enabling them to form aesthetic judgments grounded in their subjective perception. Building on the discussion of the gap in aesthetic theory, I will argue that Sprigath’s approach embodies the very potential she aimed to unleash in the workers, providing a critical pathway toward a more intersectional aesthetic theory.
Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja, “Citizens’ Subjective Understanding and Visitors’ Objective Perceptions of the Finnish (In)Tangible Hierarchical Social Classes: Helsinki 24h on the Hernesaari Art Wall”
Helsinki is a Finnish political, educational, financial, and cultural hub. The British “Monocle” (2011) and the American “Time” (2021) named Helsinki as the world’s livable city. Consequently, a housing project narrated the city through visuals. The 24 images on the Hernesaari Art Wall depict Helsinki from dawn until dusk with each hour’s city landscape. Successive scenes with Helsinki themes extend to a walking trail to welcome urban nature. Variety and diversity are the city’s assets. Citizens enjoy fresh viewpoints of their hometown as iconic, while visitors’ arbitrary interpretations are based on their home culture.
Lotman claimed that the city is a spatial manifestation of the semiosphere, whose growth is influenced by historical circumstances (social/geopolitical/cultural) and impacts future development in the different spheres of human civilization. The city becomes a movable external boundary of the urban semiosphere.
Questions arise about Helsinki’s semiosphere, including metaphorical comparisons between a city and related objects as a model for universal space. Helsinki’s actual-virtual systems operate to interact with this. By interpreting various representations of time and spaces in the entangled townscape, semiotically charged strolling signifies the social construction of meaning, envisioning the life world of experience through objects. By seeking to incorporate visual, material, and discursive registers, strolling enriches the narrative text-based examination of “urban Helsinki.”
My paper discusses the iconic-arbitrary Helsinki 24h from citizens’ subjective understanding and visitors’ objective perceptions of Finnish society’s (in)tangible hierarchical classes. As an insider-outsider of Finland, my empathetic-neutral-critical eyes justify the categorisation of Helsinki based on Lotman’s centre-periphery concept.
Sami Siegelbaum, “Underclass Performance in New York circa 1980: David Hammons, Tehching Hsieh, and Pope.L”
My paper analyzes the street performances of David Hammons, Tehching Hsieh, and Pope.L in New York City circa 1980. I argue that by mimicking the daily activities of the city’s poor and homeless residents, these works traced an emergent line between art and non-art that was redrawn by fundamental shifts in the process of capital accumulation at the time. These shifts were experienced socially in New York, and elsewhere in the United States, as the growth of what was dubbed the “underclass.” I consider theories of the “underclass” in relation to Marx’s notion of the “surplus population” to understand the ways these performances blended into the everyday street life of those no longer necessary to the economy. Ultimately, I conclude that the artistic status and value of these works relied on altered configurations of race and class that emerged in the wake of capital’s retreat from industry.
Postcolonial Responses and Repercussions (Edu155), Thursday 24 April, 14:00-15:30
Fiona Roberts, “Weaving Time”
This presentation will explore my Fine Art practice-led research into working-class women in 20th-century Dundee. It addresses colonialism, gender, class, imperialism, and Empire, specifically examining the Dundee women mill workers involved in the jute trade between Dundee and Kolkata.
Historical records offer glimpses of these women through factory records, museum archives, and reports of clashes with authorities. Less is heard from the voices of the largely unreported women who made up 75% of the workforce in the jute factories giving Dundee the name ‘She Town’.
I question conventional storytelling methods whilst intersecting with my familial history through an iterative process of research and experimental making.
Adopting the role of witness through an autoethnographic process and replacing self with observer, I blur the lines between emic, an insider’s perspective, and etic, an outsider’s perspective, to inhabit a space between those who speak and those who are spoken about.
I explore the concept of the third space encounter through a hauntological perspective which refers to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost. I will explore how these women’s voices and experiences persist in the cultural memory, like ghosts haunting the present. By investigating these women’s lost futures and potential, I will reflect on the contextual gap in stories about Dundee’s working-class women as a way of calling our attention to how we live today with the legacy of colonialism.
Ranjana Saha, “‘Ideal’ Mothers and ‘Best’ Babies: ‘Scientific’ Mothering and Child Healthcare Advice in Colonial India”
Despite few significant scholarly references, however, there remains lacunae in scholarship on the ideas and material culture of ‘scientific’ motherhood, also promoted as mothercraft, in British India and its broader connections with Britain and its empire. By primarily using a wide range of visual and textual source materials from baby food advertisements to baby week exhibition reports as an anchor, this research paper seeks to bring to light the making of the ideas and materialities of ‘clean’ midwifery and ‘scientific’ motherhood in British India. ‘Scientific’ motherhood, primarily regular childcare with discipline and precision, was considered indispensable to the rejuvenation of community, ‘racial’ and national health and virility. In a colonial setting like India, medicalised guidance about maternal and child welfare was often presented as objective suggestions and underscored by a civilisational gap and time lag between the coloniser and the colonised. This paper aims to decolonise the colonising cult of ‘scientific’ motherhood to highlight that western medicine was not always about objectifying the colonised. It, therefore, focuses on medical discourse as a significant medium for identity formation of the colonised, particularly as the middle class attempted ‘to write itself into history’ through knowledge exchange, collaboration and resistance. It emphasises that British and Indian doctors, alongside men and women from different walks of life, negotiated and redefined the cross-cultural tensions between mothercraft, colonialism and nationalism. It draws on historical approaches and transnational comparisons to explore the making of ‘ideal’ mothers and ‘best’ babies, at the intersections of ‘race’, class, caste, community and age, between the porous boundaries of the private and the public.
Vivian Braga dos Santos, “The Mud on the Other Side of the Wall. Class, Race and Spaces in Colonialism Capitalism Age of Art in Brazil” [CANCELLED]
Based on the study of the project “Lembrança de Nhô Tim” (2016-2018) by the Brazilian Tiago Gualberto, I propose to explore how some worlds of art has contribute over the
years to intensifying social stratification in Brazil. The artistic project can be defined as a series of public interventions carried out in the city of Igarapé, in Minas Gerais, with the support of the community of the Resplendor neighborhood, an impoverished region close to the renowned Inhotim Contemporary Art Centre. Through a contrast between (1) the community life of Resplendor and the memories surrounding the region transformed by the extraction of ore, the construction of the art center and the exploitation of minorities and the environment undertaken – elements presented by the artistic project -, and (2) Inhotim as an image of power and a metonymy of the alliance between colonialism, capitalism and the art market, this paper discuss the social and institutional critique of Gualberto’s artwork. It allows us, in the midst of a global movement understood as the
“democratization of the arts”, to think about the layers of relationship between class, race,
colonialism and liberalism in the history of art. As introduced by Hito Steyerl and Okwui Enzewor, this movement is essential for investigating the paradox of contemporary art as a machine of capitalism that could present itself as a place of social criticism, but it is also an agent for accentuating social differences, and even exploiting them.
Kalinca Costa Söderlund, “Modernismo Versus the Academy in Brazil: A Case on Cultural Iconoclasticism as Political Emancipation of Minorities and Discriminated Social Classes”
Historiographical narrative on Brazilian modernismo in the 1920s has predominantly seen it as both an expression of cosmopolitanism, and as a claim for originality and independence from European-centred conceptualizations of avant-gardism. Departing from these research strands, this paper focuses on modernismo’s national repercussions, analysing the dominant class-based views on high culture of that time. It explores how, locally – and at the crossroad where class meets the ethnic stratification and ideological constructs typical of post-colonial realities – modernismo represented a rupture from the academic past and challenged the views of the academicists on the ‘popular’; often shaped by eugenic policies which discriminated the lower classes and their ethno-racial constitution. It analyses how modernismo’s refusal to describe social minorities as uncivilised and inferior generated outrage and contempt within the culturally and politically conservative elite.
This to argue that the modernistas negated the retrograde perspective of ethnic/class prejudice not only transgressing academic styles, but also by deliberately portraying every and each ‘other’ of the Brazilian establishment with an emancipatory stance. Intellectuals and the upper class prone to academic art were outraged by this politically iconoclastic approach, finding the counter-hegemonic content of the canvases more unsettling
than their strokes in expressionist and post-cubist fashions. By doing so, the paper will tackle how modernismo disrupted the elite’s status quo reflected in the academy and its traditionalist views; and how it did it through a political re-evaluation, rather than a mere representation, of national minorities, hence of the so-called ‘lowest classes’.
Art for Social Critique and Change (Pub2), Thursday 24 April, 15:45-17:15
Arya Priyadarshini, “Drawing the Unseen: Trauma and the Invisibility of Class in Zeina Abirached’s Graphic Narratives on the Lebanese Civil War”
This paper explores the themes of visibility and invisibility in Zeina Abirached’s graphic memoirs, A Game for Swallows and I Remember Beirut, focusing on the experiences of war-torn Lebanese communities marginalized both politically and socio-economically. Through monochromatic imagery and a fragmented narrative structure, Abirached’s works make visible the silent, everyday anxieties of individuals navigating conflict zones, portraying the psychological weight of survival in constrained spaces. These narratives do not simply depict life in a war zone; they reveal the emotional labor involved in maintaining normalcy under siege, rendering the often-invisible burdens of trauma and displacement visible to the reader.
Central to this analysis is the concept of social class as a lived experience within these narratives, one that subtly surfaces in the physical and emotional limitations imposed on working-class families. While the memoirs primarily articulate the trauma of war, they also shed light on how class-based precarity shapes individuals’ capacities for safety, agency, and recovery. Through images of barricaded windows, clustered living spaces, and makeshift shelters, Abirached’s art captures the overlooked spatial and socio-economic constraints that circumscribe lives during conflict.
In positioning trauma within these spaces of precarity, the study argues that graphic memoirs hold a distinctive power to challenge traditional boundaries of visibility. By visually articulating the lived realities of marginalized communities, Abirached’s work offers a counternarrative to dominant portrayals of war, foregrounding art’s role in amplifying unseen lives and unspoken histories. This paper thus contributes to discourse on the intersections of class, visibility, and trauma, positing graphic art as a potent medium for social critique and transformation.
Paula Friedericke Hartmann, “The Art of Remembering: Graphic Novels as Mirrors of Past and Present Trauma and Identity”
The eyewitnesses of Second World War are disappearing, leaving the task of remembrance increasingly to the descendants of both victims and perpetrators (Erll, 2011, p 3; Hirsch, 2012, p. 112). They have a responsibility to continue to document and address the crimes, so that the memory does not fade or become relativized. This task of remembrance is not only a moral obligation but also a social one, as the perception and processing of historical crimes is deeply shaped by social classes and structures. In a world where inequalities persist and are often exacerbated by historical trauma, it is crucial that these memories are not only transmitted on but also critically reflected upon.
Graphic novels offer a unique potential in this context, as they combine visual and narrative
elements to represent the diversity of experiences and social dynamics, as well as historical and contemporary challenges (cf. Wrobel, 2015, p. 9). They provide an avenue to address gaps in the processing and remembrance of history, while critically questioning historical and social realities.
In the planned presentation, I will analyze the Swedish graphic novel Ihågkom oss till liv. In this work, the artist Joanna Rubin Dranger not only deals with her family’s traumatic past, but also questions social structures and collective memory in Sweden. I will examine how the impact of Second World War on different social classes and generations is portrayed, and how the interplay of image and text is used to provoke reflections on social hierarchies, processes of memory and the lasting effects of war. Central to this is the question of how these techniques illustrate the interplay between individual memory and collective history.
Finally, I will discuss the extent to which visual narratives can stimulate societal discussions,
transform perceptions of social class, identity, and memory, and explore the possibilities and challenges of representing historical trauma for “postmemory” generations.
Josh Schwartz, ““Social Fantasy:” American Illustration and Social Class, 1880-1920”
Open two illustrated American magazines – one from the 1880s, and one from twenty years later – and you will find two different kinds of stories. In the first, rigid archetypes of gender, ethnicity, and most of all class, with – as Joshua Brown argues – each social group depicted plainly and obviously, the borders and distinctions clear. Two decades later, and the pictures are entirely different: flying machines, mischievous children, gleaming cities, and most of all men and women seemingly bereft of clear demarcations of social status. It seems like a wild and abrupt change, but it is no accident.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, commercial illustration was at the center of the transformation of the American class system. Whereas previously it had worked to delineate class boundaries, during the Progressive Era, illustration allowed members of the rising middle class to reimagine their social status in such a way that made the elision of class (rather than distinction) a core part of middle-class identity. In my presentation, I will argue that commercial artwork – like the sort found on countless magazine covers and in centerfolds – did not merely reflect an ongoing change in how Americans conceptualized (and avoided discussion of) class, but instead shaped its contours. I argue that American illustrators (themselves often members of the expanding white-collar workforce) helped to create what I call a “social fantasy” in their artworks that was representative of both a narrative aesthetic style, and a project of social legitimization for novel behaviors and norms.
Driss Faddouli, ” Narrativizing Social Class in Morocco: An Investigation of the Visual Aesthetics of Social and Emotional Precarity in Online Cartoons”
This paper engages the productive possibilities of investigating the visual phenomenology of social class as it manifests itself online in the everyday experiences, opportunities, and limitations of a large population of young Moroccan precariat. It posits that the production and dissemination of networked visual narratives of social grievances within Moroccan online spaces constitute a stronger form of visual aesthetics of social class. In particular, the paper argues that the different cartoons, comics, and image macros of social and emotional precarity display a rigorous online praxis that seems to invoke a deeper critical agency and call for specific modes of consciousness, structures of feeling, and “modalities of action”. By virtue of such a networked reflexivity, the Moroccan precariat can therefore effectively interrogate dominant social class practices, generate subversive meanings, invest in certain structures of feeling, and sustain affinities among marginalized subjectivities in order to stage invisible social hierarchies and speak to power imbalances. As such, the paper is conceptually situated within the critical theories of everyday life and the cultural politics of emotion as they analytically serve as an entry-point for examining the in-depth of this visual aesthetics of social class. Given this, the paper initially starts with a brief introduction on the networked dynamics of Moroccan online users, then moves on to analyze and examine the visual aesthetics of the narratives of social injustice, and finally puts in perspective the wider implicative aspects of the visual dialectics of social class in Morocco.
Work and Labour (Pub126), Thursday 24 April, 15:45-17:15
Sarah Horton, “Sifting for Pips and Stalks”
I make art about class and the workplace through a lens of repetition, repeat pattern and discipline. Making site-specific artworks I’ve repeated the motif of a cloud in an industrial laundry and used soft sculpture to interrupt the corporate lobby of a FTSE100 global finance company. Based on complex relations between work and home, I’ve made numerous parasitical interventions to the ubiquitous office chair, bringing familial and domestic references in direct conversation with the formality of the office.
I find Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ (1979) valuable in describing the way class is embodied in choices we make about food, clothes, decoration, etc. This direct connection between the body and class provides a useful way of linking the material agency of my artworks with the occupants of the workplace. Contemporary notions of alienation by Franco Berardi are brought alongside Rosalyn Deutsche’s (1996) appeal to artists to use site-related practices to challenge social conditions and power relations evident within a site.
Thus, these site-specific works speak symbolically and critically about class as evidenced in the material and fabric of various workplaces including, through self-reflection, the labour of the artist herself.
Recalling my student summer jobs in a Christmas pudding factory I’ve recently been making highly repetitive drawings where I paint parallel lines on 15metre scroll-like rolls of paper for hours at a time until the rolls are covered. Adhering to strict conditions with pre-defined processes and quotas, collectively these works ask ‘what of the artist’s profession – what class is she’?
Somayeh Rashvand, “Precarious Smiles: The Invisible Labour of Diasporic Craftswomen in Contemporary Art Production”
This study examines the often-overlooked contributions of diasporic art workers in the fabrication of large-scale contemporary art projects, emphasizing the gendered and precarious nature of their labour. Drawing on my personal experience of three years working as part of a fabrication team creating mosaic murals for renowned visual artists in an art and design company in Montreal, I explore how these works—installed in public spaces across the U.S. and Canada—hide the systemic undervaluation of diasporic artisanal labour within contemporary public art. Central to this study is a series of selfies I took while working under physically demanding, emotionally exhausting, and underpaid conditions. Shared with my family, these images present a performance of fake happiness that conceals the emotional and physical toll of my labour as a diasporic craftswoman. This study begins with Guy Standing’s notion of the “precariat” to frame the economic insecurity, unstable employment, and vulnerability experienced by diasporic craftswomen. I then draw on Chantal Jacquet’s “transclass” theory to explore how migration disrupts class identities, forcing immigrant workers into precarious roles despite their skills and aspirations for upward mobility. Building on these frameworks, I demonstrate how structural inequalities sustain contemporary art markets through the undervalued labour of immigrant artisans. Furthermore, I draw on affect theory to highlight the emotional and relational dimensions of precarious art labour. This study contributes to critical conversations about gender, labour, and the contemporary art market. It offers insights into how to reimagine visibility—not as a marker of empowerment but as a means of revealing systemic inequalities and amplifying marginalized voices in contemporary art narratives.
Nicola Foster, ” ‘Work’ and ‘Labour’ as ‘Art’ and ‘Maintenance’: The Work of Ukeles”
The work of the artist Mierle Ladman Ukeles (1939-) is not widely discussed in the context of art history but when it is, the discussions tend to focus on her work either from the perspective of feminism or environmentalism, at times as institutional critique. In what follows I propose a different perspective, that of the distinction between ‘work’ and ‘labour’ articulated in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition. Arendt suggests that ‘work’ is/was generally understood as a productive processes while ‘labour’ is/was understood as the unproductive work of care. Arendt notes that historically the former applied to the work of the craftsman/artist who produced valued ‘works’ while ‘labouring’ was the task of slaves ‘and tame animals with their bodies minister to the necessities of life’. The one produces culture the other maintains life. The one is highly valued, the other is not.
In 1969 Ukeles wrote ‘Maintenance Art Manifesto’ and published in Artforum in 1971. It formed the basis of her 1973 performance/exhibition at the Atheneum in Hartford. It famously claimed:
I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. (Random order). I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separately) I “do” Art. Now, I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art.
The paper will explore Ukeles’ works which questions the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘maintenance’ in the context of Arendt and Groys discussion of ‘care’ and apply it not only historically, but also to current debates on labour and work. It will do so by addressing the role of representation in constructing and critiquing social class, embodiment, race, gender, age, and the invisibility of the visuals as well as new debates over the use of digital technology.
Shaping the City (Edu155), Thursday 24 April, 15:45-17:15
Selma Ćatović Hughes, “Threads of Memory: Visual Narratives as (Re)Construction of Tangible and Elusive Collective Memory”
This paper illustrates a multimodal analysis of memory sediments to enhance authenticity of individual episodic memory towards shaping the collective narratives. The theoretical
framework explores Assmann’s “the closing or opening of historical archives” in a way of easy public accessibility as an important transformative factor towards reinforcing collective memory. This collection of visual storytelling aims to analyze ruptures between the past and present in the context of Pierre Nora’s lieux de memoire where historical, cultural, and political traces continue to permeate the site of traumatic memory.
Composite memory of experiences resonates with the topography of our identity, establishing osmosis between the past and the present. The process of revealing tangible and elusive boundaries constructs a journey, intertwined with personal reflections and evolved into a set of renewed memories. The autobiographical accounts represent a twofold transformation of lived life: first, the figuration into memory of experiences and sensations, and then the transmutation of that memory into a coherent narrative. Mental flexibility to recombine fragments of memory leads to an analytical and conceptual process of abstraction of visual language, lingering fragments and threads of previous recognition.
Traumatic memories materializing the uncanny absence of past memoryscapes and erasure of its traces are concealed within a liminal space of present. Mapping history, liminality of tangible storytelling and intangible remembrance transfigures cultural, political and social fragments into tactile memory. Traces of interpretation render the threshold between place and body and act as a perceptual threshold, replenished as embodied memory.
Carolina Pecker Madeo, “Visual Narratives in Struggles for Justice and Good Living”
This study examines the aesthetic and political dimensions of Zapatismo as a source of inspiration, particularly in contexts of dispossession and exclusion, highlighting the intersections between visual practices, individual struggles, and broader social movements. Zapatista aesthetics contest hegemonic structures and challenge neoliberal imaginaries by combining Maya symbols with revolutionary iconography, such as prominent figures from the Mexican Revolution. These elements propose alternatives to colonial narratives and represent a way in which a collective identity and agency can be constructed.
Based on ethnographic collaboration with a Tseltal community in Chiapas-Mexico, this research tells the experiences of families displaced by political violence. It focuses on how they employ zapatista aesthetics to assert dignity and build narratives of resistance and hope. Through murals and digital images, they reclaim spaces that nurture collective agency and re-imagine futures shaped by justice, solidarity, and lekil-kuxlejal, a Maya-Tseltal concept encompassing “good living” and a dignified life in harmony.
Ana Iwataki, “Transpacific Artists in Los Angeles: Learning from 1984, Looking to 2028”
In this paper, I examine transpacific artists and their negotiations with new flows of capital
and culture at the height of Los Angeles’s “world city” aspirations. I focus on the changes to the everyday lives of these artists as public and private resources for culture were rapidly
redistributed during the 1980s, with attention to Japanese investment in Downtown Los Angeles during the “bubble period” and the 1984 Olympics and Olympics Art Festival. I propose that better understanding the fraught nature of these cultural-spatial politics will offer critical lessons for contemporary transpacific arts and culture workers.
In the Asian American Movement and the academic discipline it engendered, art and art
history were largely considered “as an elite, even elitist, realm, one that did not touch the lives of, and was irrelevant to, the laboring masses, the subject of much early Asian American historical imagination.” This is one of many strategies that seek to displace art and culture from the realm of the everyday, thus neutralizing their radical potential.
I engage a cultural studies framework to ask: Who is the Asian American creative class and
how do they function in the nexus of culture and power shaping the city? What new forms of cultural production are needed in light of anti-gentrification organizing focused on artwashing and the impending 2028 Olympics?