ABSTRACT
Nicodemus’s work presents an opportunity to explore the ways in which trauma as a subject of contemporary art and its relationship to notions of diaspora emerge as a series of complex narratives and visual, discursive and political imaginings. This chapter explores how Nicodemus in Beyond Depiction has engaged the audience in a dialogue concerning the nature and importance of ‘listening’ as structural and interpretive responses and processes in the production of her work. In Nicodemus’s concept of testimony, the entering of the experience of trauma into the public sphere is not contained simply by the processes of documentation, but by engaging the viewer in the activation of cultural memory. Nicodemus’s work is set apart from that of many contemporary artists who deal with notions of trauma.
