Art and the Politics of Visibility

Zeena Feldman is Lecturer in Digital Culture in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. She publishes on the relationship between social media and everyday life.

How does cultural context affect the interpretation of art? What makes artists' work transnational or national in character, and how will their visibility be impacted by either label? Art and the Politics of Visibility questions these dynamics, asking how the dissemination of visual culture on a global scale affects art and its institutions. Taking Shanghai-based artist Yang Fudong's practice as a point of departure, this volume focuses on how politically charged images produced in contemporary art, cinema, literature, news media and fashion become widely consumed or marginalised. Through case studies of artists including Titus Kaphar, Sara Maple, Shirin Neshat, J.M. Coetzee, Barbara Walker and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the book illuminates the relationship between visibility, politics and identity in contemporary visual culture.

In an era of unprecedented global mobility, artists face unique challenges.

List of FiguresList of ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Why Visibility MattersZeena Feldman (City University London)Chapter 1 Chinese Artist Films in the Transnational Art World: Yang Fudong and the Politics of PrecarityChris Berry (Goldsmiths)Chapter 2 The Blind Spots of Representation: The Difficulty of ReadingJuliet Steyn (City University London)Chapter 3 Defiant Embodiments and the Gender Geopolitics of SeeingMarianne Franklin (Goldsmiths)Chapter 4 (In)Visibility as Resistance: Performing the Right to Disappear in J. M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K Patrick Hanafin Chapter 5 Valences of Subjectivity: The Politics of Personal Narrative in Video ArtRachel Garfield (video artist)Chapter 6 Hauntology and Hospitality in the Films of Apichatpong WeerasethakulJanet Harbord (Queen Mary)Exhibitions on the Move: Biennales, Borderlines, andPolitics of ItinerancyAnthony Gardner (University of Melbourne)Chapter 4 Visible Veil Dressing and the Gender Geopolitics of'What (Not) to Wear'Marianne Franklin (Goldsmiths)Chapter 5 Textures of Displacement: Local Sites, Global StuffPhilip Crang (Royal Holloway)Chapter 6 The Horse, the Stranger and the Therapist:Media and Estrangement in the Age of New VisibilityShani Orgad (London School of Economics)Chapter 7 Ethics and Visual CultureZeena Feldman (City University London)Bibliography Index