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2025 

Narratives of Exile, Migration, and Movement in Contemporary Art 

2025 College Art Association Annual Conference 
Chair: Sarah E. Kleinman, Virginia Commonwealth University
Friday, February 14, 2025 • 4:30–6 PM
New York Hilton Midtown • 2nd Floor – Madison Suite

In his 2011 essay “The Migrant’s Time,” Ranajit Guha casts diaspora as a temporal transgression, resulting in displacement and a rupture from shared pasts. This session invites papers that examine the ways in which art and curatorial practices intersect with experiences of displacement, migration, and cultural hybridity in contemporary art. Possible topics include:

• How have arts practitioners represented narratives of exile and displacement? What visual languages and narratives emerge from experiences of forced migration and diaspora? How do these representations challenge dominant narratives of place and belonging?
• How have artists navigated issues of identity in the context of migration and movement? How do their works reflect the complexities of cultural hybridity, diasporic identities, and the politics of belonging?
• How do material choices and artistic processes intersect with memories of displacement and migration? How have artists engaged with objects, textures, and archival materials to evoke personal and collective histories of migration and exile?
• How have curators engaged with narratives of migration, exile, and (post)colonial histories in exhibition-making? How have recent exhibitions served as sites of critical inquiry?
• How have diasporic artistic practices challenged dominant narratives of migration, displacement, and colonial legacies? How have arts practitioners mobilized art as a tool for resistance, solidarity, and social change?

This session aims to critically examine narratives of exile, migration, and movement within the broader context of contemporary art and visual culture. We particularly encourage submissions from emerging scholars, curators, and artists.  

Papers
‘she walked in reverse’: Forced Migration, Diaspora, and Indo-Caribbean Identities in Suchitra Mattai’s installations, Nicole F. Scalissi, PhD, California State University San Bernardino

Creolizing Landscapes: Public Domesticity and Hiram Maristany’s ‘Island in the City,’ Serda Yalkin, PhD candidate, Duke University

Shifting Sands/Shifting Identities: Anh-Thuý Nguyễn’s ‘Thuy & Sand,’ Olivia Murphy, PhD candidate, University of Oklahoma

Aesthetic Conversions in the US/Mexico Borderlands: Artist Collective COGNATE and the Work of Migration, Paloma Checa-Gismero, PhD, Swarthmore College

Manaf Halbouni’s Mobile Monument, Mobilistan and Multi-Directional Migration, Peter M. Chametzky, PhD, University of South Carolina

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The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art & Institutional Critique 

SCAH program
Amanda Cachia, Assistant Professor of Arts and Leadership, University of Houston
Friday, January 31, 2025 • 2:30–3:30 PM ET • Zoom
An ALS interpreter provided services during this event 

During this program, art historian and curator Amanda Cachia spoke about her 2024 book, The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique, published by Temple University Press. The talk also featured brief presentations by two of the featured artists discussed in the book, Carmen Papalia and Corban Walker.

The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique argues that as contemporary disabled artists move away from figurative representations of disability, they create an art of access, or access aesthetics, through works that center translation, sensory expansion, touch, and movement for audiences and offer an experience of “being with” disability. The book showcases artwork by contemporary disabled artists including Corban Walker, Christine Sun Kim, and Carmen Papalia, among others, and it inscribes contemporary disability art in the broad canon of contemporary art, where the artistic past can be regarded differently.