Jennifer
Cooper

I am a second year Techne funded PhD candidate examining the representation of death and displacement in Twenty-first century memorial artworks. Twenty-first century mass deaths of people displaced by global economics and conflict in Lampedusa and along the U.S.-Mexico border have led to problematic intersections of art and memorial culture which have raised questions of commemoration practices, disposability and commodification. Examining contrasting artworks (from figurative painting to installations using bodily remains and underwater sculptures), my thesis explores interdisciplinary questions of aesthetics and economics bound up in (memorial) art representing the deaths of economically-displaced individuals. I explore how patterns of exploitation and disposability rooted in neoliberalism - as well as in (post)colonial exploitation and conflict - cause and fuel the mass displacement of individuals, and examine how these patterns intersect with market forces involved in artistic attempts to respond to such deaths. I interrogate the economic cycles which (memorial) artists more-or-less knowingly express and upon which the circulation and value of their artworks depend. I highlight how these works bring into question relationships between different cultural conceptions of death and memorialisation and also raises concerns of how art representing deaths of displaced people may express a range of impetuses – from care of the individual to displacement of responsibility. My project brings to the fore the problematics of bearing witness to the disposability of the individual in mass displacement; and the potential commodification of the displaced dead individual in the art market.