Contemporary Art and the Politics of Belonging : Towards a Longing for Home through the Moving Image

This book theorizes the visual language through which the relationship between home and place is formed and unformed, and proposes longing as a conceptual framework for generating sites of collective belonging across difference.

This book theorizes the visual language through which the relationship between home and place is formed and unformed, and proposes longing as a conceptual framework for generating sites of collective belonging across difference. Through close readings of contemporary moving image artworks, including the works of Richard Fung, John Di Stefano, Nazgol Ansarinia, Larissa Sansour, and Nuotama Bodomo, the author bridges feminist, postcolonial, and queer debates with theories of space and time. It examines the colonial underpinnings of ‘the global’ alongside the universalist worlding of the contemporary, highlighting the mutability of moving image art as a form that generates transgressive, shifting environments. These environments offer innovative approaches to collaboration, collectivity, and engagement across diverse and unpredictable contexts. This book is an essential resource for students and researchers in Art History, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Literary Studies, Feminist and Queer Theory, Postcolonial Theory, and Affect Theory.