Diasporic art as narrative: The creative construction of self, memory, and place

This paper is concerned with an exploration of how diasporic art creatively constructs a sense of self, memory and place for both artists and viewers, for migrants as well as the communities they come from and arrive into. It conceptualises art, diasporic art in particular, as a form of narrative and by this it does not take away anything from the figurative quality of artistic depictions but adds to them a key narrative format. Artworks are stories, stories that include the self and are meant to be told to present and imagined audiences. This is all the more interesting in the case of diasporic art whose stories often represent authors in an effort to draw on connections with their place of origin in order to create new connections with members of host communities. This kind of symbolic labour is necessarily one that involves both creativity and memory in an act of communication, of storytelling. To illuminate some of the processes specific to this act of communication we use the case study of a celebrated artist of Iranian origin currently living and working in London. Her works combines text and images (in the form of linocut, photography, collage, etc.) lending support to a research perspectives that considers the verbal and the visual as deeply interconnected. In this presentation we will focus on one particular project in which traditional Iranian sayings are depicted by the artist in series of collages meant to create a bridge between her Eastern legacy and Western audiences, to simulate the creative construction of meaning and problematisation of self and place by revealing similarities and differences in the ways in which we talk about and see the world. Conclusions are drawn regarding the value of theorising art as a narrative for our understanding of selfhood, migration, and memory.