Book Description
In an age of "ethnic cleansing" and forced migration, of contested borders and nations in turmoil, how have issues of place and identity, and of belonging and exclusion, been represented in visual culture? In Terra Infirma, Irit Rogoff uses the work of international contemporary artists to explore how art in the twentieth century has confronted and challenged issues of identity and belonging. Rogoff's dazzling and richly-illustrated study considers painting, installation art, film and video by a wide range of artists including Charlotte Salomon, Ana Mendieta, Joshua Neustein, Yehoshua Glotman, Mona Hatoum, Hans Haacke, Ashley Bickerton, Alfredo Jaar and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Structuring her argument around themes of luggage, mapping, borders and bodies, Rogoff explores how these artists have confronted twentieth century phenomena such as the horror of the Holocaust, the experience of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Balkan wars, and the policing of the U.S.-Mexican border. In the process, Terra Infirma reveals the complexity of contemporary art's engagement with issues of place and identity and the immense variety of alternative strategies through which we can reconsider our relationship with the spaces we inhabit.


About the Author
Irit Rogoff is Chair of Art History and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. She is the editor of The Divided Heritage: Themes and Problems in German Modernism (1991) and co-editor of Museum Culture: Histories, Theories, Spectacles (1994).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In an age of "ethnic cleansing" and forced migration, of contested borders and nations in turmoil, how have issues of place and identity, and of belonging and exclusion, been represented in visual culture? In Terra Infirma, Irit Rogoff uses the work of international contemporary artists to explore how art in the twentieth century has confronted and challenged issues of identity and belonging.

Rogoff's dazzling and richly-illustrated study considers painting, installation art, film and video by a wide range of artists including Charlotte Salomon, Ana Mendieta, Joshua Neustein, Yehoshua Glotman, Mona Hatoum, Hans Haacke, Ashley Bickerton, Alfredo Jaar and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Structuring her argument around themes of luggage, mapping, borders and bodies, Rogoff explores how these artists have confronted twentieth century phenomena such as the horror of the Holocaust, the experience of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Balkan wars, and the policing of the U.S.-Mexican border. In the process, Terra Infirma reveals the complexity of contemporary art's engagement with issues of place and identity and the immense variety of alternative strategies through which we can reconsider our relationship with the spaces we inhabit.