Material worlds: Domestic objects and the question of auto/biography in contemporary art

Zarza García Arena, Clara

Publication:
Material worlds: Domestic objects and the question of auto/biography in contemporary art

dc.contributor.author	Zarza García Arena, Clara
dc.contributor.ror	https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.date.accessioned	2025-02-19T12:48:34Z
dc.date.available	2025-02-19T12:48:34Z
dc.date.issued	2019
dc.description.abstract	At the turn of the twenty-first century, due to the expansion of postcolonial consciousness, artists identified as “non-western” gained a new visibility in the Euro-American art world that was far from unproblematic. Installations and multimedia practices revolving around domestic space and daily objects were internationally celebrated as a novel source for reflections on the notion of home. Based on the assumption that artists’ lived experiences of migration, separation, or loss made their use of the domestic inherently transgressive, these disparate works were framed as autobiographical or self-representational. With this, the institutional landscape seemed to undergo a total transformation in reevaluating the use of personal materials in art practices. Dismissed as confessional or narcissistic when articulated as a key critical strategy by feminist Euro-American artists just a decade earlier, it was precisely this personal and domestic quality that seemed to be seen as valuable and relevant in the context of an art world with newfound pretensions of inclusion and globalisation. Focusing on Ishiuchi Miyako's work Mother’s 2000-2005: Traces of the Future as a case study, I argue that the reasons behind this notable shift were twofold: first, the shift in artistic language, from the political explicitness of earlier feminist artworks to the use of material subtlety and conceptual ambivalence, allowed for these works to travel well from national to international exhibitions; at the same time, the use of personal and domestic objects seemed to justify their framing through biographical narratives that, in turn, served to comfortably categorise them, while also offering grounds for viewer engagement.
dc.description.peerreviewed	yes
dc.description.status	Published
dc.format	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Zarza, C. (2023). Material worlds: Domestic objects and the question of auto/biography in contemporary art. Image & Text, (37), 1-23.
dc.identifier.issn	2617-3255
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3593
dc.journal.title	Image & Text
dc.language.iso	en
dc.page.total	23
dc.publisher	School of the art University of pretoria
dc.relation.department	Design
dc.relation.entity	IE University
dc.relation.school	IE School of Architecture & Desing
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.accessRights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en
dc.subject.keyword	Home,
dc.subject.keyword	Feminist Art
dc.subject.keyword	Global Art World
dc.subject.keyword	Possessions
dc.subject.keyword	Autobiography
dc.subject.keyword	Ishiuchi Miyako
dc.title	Material worlds: Domestic objects and the question of auto/biography in contemporary art
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.version.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.volume.number	37
dspace.entity.type	Publication
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relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	51fa0702-c110-4d8d-b6ee-931a0a6d3df8