ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how young artists in Jordan negotiate a relationship between their art and wider society. Artists in Amman have long expressed a sense of social alienation, impacting both their art, which they feel rarely reaches wider society, and their selves, felt as not fitting in to the dominant social mores of the conservative city. My attention traces how these artists negotiate their relationships to society and, further, how this impacts their senses of belonging or exclusion, their perceptions of artistic community, and their senses of self. Artists have experimented with a variety of initiatives aimed at connecting artistic practice to the wider city, experimenting both with confrontational stances, aimed at demonstrating the value of art, and more dialogic practices wherein artists seek to work with the public. In this, artists develop their selves as mediating figures that negotiate between the structural position of an autonomous, socially liberal art world and the conservative, wider city.
