Art Practice and Asylum in Israel

Weaving together first-person narratives of art practice, analytical accounts, and ethnographic research by artists and scholars in art history, theater, new media, music, and anthropology, this volume offers an overview of the wide range of conditions, processes, and motivations for artmaking among asylum seekers in view of Israel’s continued legal obfuscation of the refugee status process.

With attention to the theorization of artistic production as a form of active, effective citizenship, it decenters these discourses to account for illiberal political contexts, geopolitical border zones and new disciplinary orientations, considering artmaking in contexts of danger and incarceration. This carefully curated collection seeks to highlight the place of African asylum seekers in an increasingly illiberal, nationalist Israel, and the role of art as a resistant, affirming, and life-sustaining practice.

A study of the social, political, and aesthetic considerations that asylum-seeking artists bring to their practice, Art Practice and Asylum in Israel will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in migration and diaspora, art activism, and refugee studies.