Diaspora and Visual Culture

Diaspora and Visual Culture
by Nicholas Mirzoeff Editor

Synopsis

This text marks the importance of diaspora as a means of understanding the new modes of postnational identity. In examining the visual culture of the classic African and Jewish diasporas, contributors address different aspects of the multiple viewpoints inherent in diasporic cultures. Two introductory essays by Stuart Hall and the painter R.B. Kitaj highlight the intersections of diaspora and cultural identity. The subsequent essays examine individual instances of diaspora as diverse as homosexuality in the Dreyfus Affair, the Caribbean-Jewish Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, Yoruba diaspora art and performance in Brazil and New York, identity in the art of African-American women in the 19th and 20th centuries, the formation of American, European and Israeli artistic identity and the possibility that queer culture is diasporic.