Feminist Refugee Epistemology Reading Displacement in Vietnamese and Syrian Refugee Art

• Published in: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 587 - 615
• Main Authors: Espiritu, Y[m] Lê, Duong, Lan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago The University of Chicago Press 01-03-2018; University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago, acting through its Press
• Subjects: Art history; Artists; Cartography; Emotions; Epistemology; Females; Feminism; Innovations; Knowledge; Mapping; Refugees; Social reproduction; Southeast Asian cultural groups; Transnationalism; Visual artists; Women; Vietnam; Syria
• ISSN: 0097-9740; 1545-6943
• DOI: 10.1086/695300

Applying a transnational feminist lens to refugee studies, we introduce the concept of feminist refugee epistemology, which posits that gendered displacement is not only about social disorder and interruption but also about social reproduction and innovation. Fusing the critical with the creative, we conceptualize refugee artwork as a critical practice that allows for new forms of knowledge that would otherwise not be produced or shared. In this article, we analyze the artworks of Vietnamese and Syrian women artists—Trinh Mai Thach, Nisrine Boukhari, Tiffany Chung, and Foundland (Ghalia Elsrakbi and Lauren Alexander)—whose installations and paintings capture the fluidity and dynamism of time and space and connect contemporary displacement from Vietnam and Syria to Western interventions in the regions. Grouping the artworks by two themes—epistolary forms of art and cartography as epistemic mapping—we show how the pieces formulate a radical re-viewing of refugees as producers of knowledge and potent figures of critique. Collectively, their works prompt a reading of refugee interiority as a feminist, not feminized, space, and the figure of the refugee/artist as knowledge producer, not as informant. We conclude that these feminist refugee artworks amplify the need to bring a visual art component to history—to engage other realms such as feelings and emotions in our search for the stories and lives that are not publicized but are nevertheless there.