ABSTRACT
While language is frequently cited as a primary challenge facing displaced peoples, the significance of language to contemporary art practice engaged with displacement remains largely overlooked. The aim of this chapter is twofold: firstly, it seeks to demonstrate the need for a greater appreciation of the impact of language on contemporary art training, exhibition and industry practices. Secondly, it assesses how artistic praxes engaged with language offer novel forms of cultural resilience in contexts of forced displacement. The chapter begins with a discussion about how the language of displacement impacts upon Greece, Palestine and Australia. It proceeds to provide an outline of the relationship between language, globalisation, displacement and major shifts in contemporary art history and theory. The focus of discussion then goes on to analyse the work of Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Shuruq Harb and SJ Norman, assessing how the use of language in their work contributes to cultural resilience by mediating the issues of identification, connection to place, and cultural erasure resulting from settler-colonialism.
