Abstract
This chapter presents a multidimensional framework for analyzing the trajectories of migrant artists. I demonstrate that artist migrants are not only faced with the challenges related to navigating geopolitical mobility regimes, developing networks of socioeconomic relations, and positioning oneself in a professional art field; they must also steer a course between the aesthetic domains they find in different localities. Through their artistic training, an artist develops a sense of belonging to a domain in aesthetic space that orients meaning-making and pragmatic action within the art field and beyond it. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with migrant artists in Russia, I illustrate how the mechanism of attunement is used to manage or resolve the tension arising from a misalignment between dimensions in their developing trajectories.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In the Soviet and post-Soviet context, this refers to well-educated and highly qualified professionals, but this does not necessarily correlate with the “middle class” as an economic and consumption category.
- 3.
The Commonwealth of Independent States is the association of countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union.
- 4.
The first Central Asia pavilion was organized at the Venice Biennale in 2005. It was curated by Viktor Misiano, one of the most famous Russian art critics and curators.
- 5.
Garage Museum is one of the largest and the most influential private institutions for contemporary art in Russia. It is funded by Roman Abramovich.
- 6.
- 7.
In the 1990s, many missionaries came to post-socialist countries. Aygerim’s family was secular and only she converted. She learned about Protestantism through the American NGO where her elder sister started working.
- 8.
This term refers to the period following Stalin’s death in 1953 and to the cultural revitalization and political liberties ushered into Soviet society and other socialist countries as a result of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. For a discussion of the Khrushchev Thaw period in Czechoslovakia, see Chap. 13 by Zelinsky in this volume.
- 9.
For more on artist residences, see Chap. 3 by Roberts and Strandvad in this volume.
- 10.
This opinion was expressed in an interview with the head of a non-commercial art institution that provides support for mid-career artists in Russia. The interview was conducted for a related research project (unpublished).
References
Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, A. (2016). Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics. I.B. Tauris.
Anderson, B. (2019). New Directions in Migration Studies: Towards Methodological De-nationalism. Comparative Migration Studies, 7(1), 36.
Bain, A. (2005). Constructing an Artistic Identity. Work, Employment and Society, 19(1), 25–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017005051280
Becker, H. S. (2008). Art Worlds: 25th Anniversary Edition, Updated and Expanded. University of California Press.
Bergsgard, N. A., & Vassenden, A. (2015). Outsiders? A Sociological Study of Norwegian Artists with Minority Background. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21(3), 309–325.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). In R. Johnson (Ed.), The Field of Cultural Production (1st ed.). Columbia University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power (Ed. J Thompson and Trans. G Raymond & M Adamson). Polity Press.
Boutsko, A. (2021). Eurovision: Manizha from Tajikistan polarizes Russia. DW.com. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://www.dw.com/en/eurovision-manizha-from-tajikistan-polarizes-russia/a-57577536.
Brednikova, O., & Abashin, S. (Eds.). (2020). Living in Two Worlds: Rethinking Transnationalism and Translocality. The New Literary Review Publishing. [In Russian].
Buchholz, L. (2016). What Is a Global Field? Theorizing Fields Beyond the Nation-state. The Sociological Review, 64(2_suppl), 31–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/2059-7932.12001
Bydler, C. (2004). The Global Artworld, Inc.: On The Globalization Of Contemporary Art. Doctoral Dissertation. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Figura Nova Series 32. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
Chumley, L. (2016). Creativity Class: Art School and Culture Work in Postsocialist China. Princeton University Press.
Costanzo, J., & Zibouh, F. (2014). Mobilisation Strategies of Individual and Institutional Actors in Brussels’ Artistic and Cultural Scenes. Identities, 21(1), 42–59.
Dahinden, J. (2016). A Plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of Research on Migration and Integration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2207–2225.
DiMaggio, P., & Fernández-Kelly, P. (2015). Immigration and the Arts: A Theoretical Inquiry. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(8), 1236–1244.
Eyerman, R. (2006). Toward a Meaningful Sociology of the Arts. In R. Eyerman & L. McCormick (Eds.), Myth, Meaning, and Performance: Toward a New Cultural Sociology of the Arts. Paradigm Press.
Eyerman, R., & Jamison, A. (1998). Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge Cultural Social Studies. Cambridge University Press.
Fang, J. (2020). Tensions in Aesthetic Socialization: Negotiating Competence and Differentiation in Chinese Art Test Prep Schools. Poetics 79, 101443.
Florin, M., & Zeller, M. (2018). Soviet Transnationalism: Urban Milieus, Deterritorialization, and People’s Friendship in the Late Soviet Union. Ab Imperio, 4, 131–146.
Gibert, M.-P., & Kiwan, N. (2016). Artistic Identities and Professional Strategies: Francophone Musicians in France and Britain. Modern and Contemporary France, 24(3), 253–269.
Inglis, D., & Delanty, G. (Eds.). (2010). Cosmopolitanism. Routledge.
Ismailbekova, A. (2021). Living in Two Worlds: Rethinking Transnationalism and Translocality. [Review] In: The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs. Retrieved March 5, 2022, from https://oxussociety.org/living-in-two-worlds-rethinking-transnationalism-and-translocality/.
Jitlina, O., Kangas, A., Krivonos, D., et al. (2020). Escaping a Migrant Metropolis. City, 24(3–4), 431–451.
Kiwan, N., & Meinhof, U. (2011). Cultural Globalization and Music: African Artists in Transnational Networks. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Kudaibergenova, D. T. (2017). “My Silk Road to You”: Re-imagining Routes, Roads, and Geography in Contemporary Art of “Central Asia”. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 8(1), 31–43.
Kubal, A. (2016). Spiral Effect of the Law: Migrants’ Experiences of the State Law in Russia – a Comparative Perspective. International Journal of Law in Context, 12(4), 453–468.
Kuleva, M. I. (2016). Contemporary Art as Profession: Career Paths of Young Artists with Different Educational Background (a case of St Petersburg). Russian Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology, 19(1), 110–124. [In Russian].
Lang, F. (2019). Bourdieu, Latour and Rasha Abbas: The Uses of Actor-Network Theory for Studying the Field(s) of Cultural Production in the Middle East and North Africa. Cultural Sociology, 13(4), 428–443.
Martiniello, M. (2014). Artistic Separation Versus Artistic Mixing in European Multicultural Cities. Identities, 21(1), 1–9.
Martiniello, M. (2015). Immigrants, Ethnicized Minorities and the Arts: A Relatively Neglected Research Area. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(8), 1229–1235.
Martiniello, M. (2018). Local Communities of Artistic Practices and the Slow Emergence of a “Post-Racial” Generation. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(6), 1146–1162.
McCormick, L. (2019). Moving Beyond Production: Ron Eyerman and the Cultural Sociology of the Arts. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 7(2), 247–259.
Moret, J. (2020). Mobility Capital: Somali Migrants’ Trajectories of (im)mobilities and the Negotiation of Social Inequalities Across Borders. Geoforum, 116, 235–242.
Ong, J. C., & Rovisco, M. (2019). Conviviality as a Politics of Endurance: The Refugee Emergency and the Consolations of Artistic Intervention. Popular Communication, 17(2), 140–153.
Parzer, M. (2021). Double Burden of Representation: How Ethnic and Refugee Categorisation Shapes Syrian Migrants’ Artistic Practices in Austria. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47(11), 2459-2476. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1826297
Petersen, A. R. (2017). Migration Into Art: Transcultural Identities and Art-Making in a Globalised World. Manchester University Press.
Rovisco, M. (2020). Artistic Encounters with Difference, Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism, and the Political Imagination. In B. Axford, A. Brisbourne, S. Halperin, & C. Lueders (Eds.), Political Sociologies of the Cultural Encounter (pp. 72–86). Routledge.
Rubio, F. D. (2020). Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum (1st ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Schapendonk, J., Bolay, M., & Dahinden, J. (2020). The Conceptual Limits of the ‘migration journey’. De-exceptionalising Mobility in the Context of West African Trajectories. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1, 1–17.
Schenk, C. (2021). Producing State Capacity Through Corruption: The Case of Immigration Control in Russia. Post-Soviet Affairs, 37(4), 303–317.
Schiller, N. G., & Meinhof, U. (2011). Singing a New Song? Transnational Migration, Methodological Nationalism and Cosmopolitan Perspectives. Music and Arts in Action, 3(3), 21–39.
Schramm M, Moslund SP, Petersen AR, et al. (2019) Reframing Migration, Diversity and the Arts: The Postmigrant Condition. Routledge.
Sedawi, B. (2019). Batoul Sedawi über ihr Studium in Damaskus und Berlin und die Holzwerkstatt. https://kultur-mitte.de/batoul-sedawi-ueber-ihr-studium-in-damaskus-und-berlin-und-die-holzwerkstatt/.
Simon, M. (2017). Music Practice a Ritual of Resistance in the (Post-)Migration Situation. Sociology of Power, 29(2), 133–152. [In Russian].
Simon, M. (2020). Staging Urban Diversity: Migrants on Theatrical Stages in Berlin and Moscow. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research 12(1), 15–47. [In Russian, summary available in English]
Simon, M. (2021). Why Manizha’s 2021 Eurovision Entry Touched a Raw Nerve in Russia. ZOiS Spotlight. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://en.zois-berlin.de/publications/why-manizhas-2021-eurovision-entry-touched-a-raw-nerve-in-russia
Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies. American Sociological Review, 51(2), 273–286.
Tinius, J. (2016). Rehearsing Detachment: Refugee Theatre and Dialectical Fiction. Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia, 5(1), 21–38.
Totah, R., & Khoury, K. (2018). Theater Against Borders: ‘Miunikh–Damaskus’—A Case Study in Solidarity. Arts, 7(4), 90.
Tremblay, D.-G., & Dehesa, A. D. H. (2016). Being a Creative and an Immigrant in Montreal: What Support for the Development of a Creative Career? SAGE Open, 6(3), 1.
Vanderwaeren, E. (2014). Integrating by Means of Art? Expressions of Cultural Hybridisations in the City of Antwerp. Identities, 21(1), 60–74.
Wilf, E. Y. (2014). School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity. University of Chicago Press.
Wohl, H. (2019). Creative Visions: Presenting Aesthetic Trajectories in Artistic Careers. Poetics, 76, 101358.
Wohl, H. (2021). Bound by Creativity. University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kobyshcha, V. (2022). Moving Through Aesthetic Space: Visual Artists and Migration. In: McCormick, L. (eds) The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11420-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11420-5_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-11419-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-11420-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)