Learning To Listen To The Real Refugees: An Exploration Into The Wider Message Behind Candice Breitz’s 2017 Biennale Showcase

Elspeth Walker

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustration by Alice Tyrell

In 2017, artists Candice Breitz and Mohau Modisakeng showcased for South Africa in the Venice Biennale country pavilion. Both used film installations and/or photography to create poignant pieces of work. For her piece, Breitz looked at refugee narratives within the wider context of identity under capitalism – a prevalent theme throughout the art exhibitions.

Breitz is an artist renowned for her video installations that mix both mainstream media and Hollywood cinema to create out of context work delivered by famous actors, often against a blank screen. This style is evident in her work exhibited in the pavilion.

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Jasmine Thakral

Edited by Karl Egerton

Illustration ‘Double Consciousness’ by Natasha Ruwona, https://www.behance.net/natasharuw40cf

The Hate U Give deals with the way in which police brutality and systematic criminalisation of black bodies damage African American communities, depicting the struggle often felt by people of colour between who they are and how they are perceived by the world. The events of the novel are particularly resonant in light of recent cases of police brutality which have resulted in the death of victims such as Trayvon Martin, which sparked the activist movement, Black Lives Matter. The Hate U Give follows Starr Carter as she negotiates the fallout from the horrific police brutality suffered by her friend Khalil. The novel explores Starr’s journey to finding her voice so that she can explicitly challenge police brutality against African Americans.

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The Inner Courtyard by Lakshmi Holdström

Avani Udgaonkar

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Illustration by Olivia Prenderghast: https://liviprendergast.wordpress.com/

TW: sexual violence mention

The study of Indian literature in Western universities has always been disappointing. Even in the best of courses, Indian literature is still limited to the Salman Rushdie – Jhumpa Lahiri – Vikram Seth (if you’re lucky) trifecta that is as irresponsible as it is exhausting. While the works of second-generation and diasporic writers are important, to use their limited voices as representative of an entire subcontinent with hundreds of languages and cultures, hardly constitutes an education. The depiction of Indian women, in particular, from Slumdog Millionaire (2009) to The Satanic Verses (1988), are hardly more than one-dimensional stock caricatures of stereotypically oppressed “third world” women. Individuality, independence, rebellion, and cultural nuances, all vanish against this overwhelming backdrop of Bollywood tropes and toxic masculinity.

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Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo

Sophie Hanson

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Art by Ottelien Huckin

https://www.ottelienhuckin.co.uk

Although existing feminist curricula reflect female marginalisation and its representation in literature for adults, there is significantly less feminist study of children’s literature. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the books we read as children form our understanding of the world and it is therefore important to include children’s literature in feminist critique. As a girl who always loved to read, children’s books failed to give me insight into the reality of inequality I would face as a woman, or of the potential I had in spite of it. In fact, it wasn’t until my late teens I came across a children’s book that provided this: that book was Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo (2016).

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The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Lily Thwaites

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Holly Summerson hollysummerson.wix.com/arts

Ying-Ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden”’ – Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club 1989) (246)

Many times in my life I have wished to be more like my mother; she is strong, independent, smart, but also a little bit wild. When I was eleven, I went over to one of our bookshelves and found a fairly worn copy of The Joy Luck Club, picked it up and brought it to her. She told me to read it and I did.

Seven years later and only now am I beginning to understand the significance of this book for women like my mother; strong and independent women who were once caught between cultures, but also for others, who cannot grasp the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship strained in a cultural cross-fire. It is a book my mother and her friends have all given their partners to read, and it is one that deserves attention, specifically in English Literature syllabi, where I find texts with Asian influences are often disregarded.

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Tracey Emin

Clare Appezzato

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustration by Holly Summerson hollysummerson.wix.com/arts

Tracey Emin’s work is provocative and personal. Her art is produced in a variety of ways including painting, drawing, sewing and sculpture. However, arguably her most notable and analysed media is neon text. With these, she stretches the limits of art and calls into question whether a phrase hung up in lights can be considered artwork. One look at it and you will think that yes it can, undoubtedly so. Her relative popularity aside (she was nominated for a Turner Prize) her achievements are consistently undermined, and her art is constantly critiqued for being ‘trivial’ and ‘vulgar’ by those who believe that art must adhere to some sort of strict guidelines. Emin hits back at these critics (mainly men) with her continually beautiful collections of neon lights. Emin belongs in the world of academia and she deserves to be studied, because she is a clear cut woman who is redefining what can be considered ‘art’. In this age of technology, new media and the internet, her neon lights are representative of a new age of art that comes along with it.

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The Road To Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone

Isabel Lwin May Khine

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Art by Livi Prendergast https://liviprendergast.wordpress.com/

TW: Suicide, Sexual assault

The study of migration is interdisciplinary. Despite this, I have not come across much discussion in literary studies about the role that contemporary human migration plays on the way we read and what we choose to read. While universities would like to present themselves as progressive through a nod to Postcolonial Studies, in the arts we fall into the trap of discussing migration as if it is a static thing of the past and not alive today. This is because most discussion in the arts about migration is retrospective and looks to history for examples of human migration and migration crises, rather than looking at the situation today. I would like to move away from the institutional focus on the history of human migration. Instead, through analysis of The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone, I will be focusing on what the migrant has to say about themselves, their own existence, and their experiences in a contemporary context. By doing so I hope to centre conversation on the migrant’s agency and personhood.

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Becoming Unbecoming by Una

Martha Blow

Edited by Abigail Eardley

Art by Livi Prendergast https://liviprendergast.wordpress.com/

On the 5th October 2017, The Times published a story presenting decades of allegations of sexual harassment against film mogul Harvey Weinstein. What followed was the uncovering of an endemic culture of sexual harassment within Hollywood, followed by the seismic #MeToo hashtag. The Weinstein Scandal forced the conversation about sexual violence into global discourse and brought to light its ubiquity. While Becoming Unbecoming was published in 2015, prior to the Weinstein Scandal, it nonetheless addresses the rape culture that normalised Weinstein’s—amongst others—actions. That the graphic novel is set in the 1970s does not diminish its relevance to contemporary society, as evidenced by Weinstein’s exposure, and for that reason it is crucially important to academic curricula.

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The Museum by Leila Aboulela

‘They are telling lies in this museum,’ – Leila Aboulela (‘The Museum’ 18)

Martha Blow

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Art by Livi Prendergast https://liviprendergast.wordpress.com/

It was in my fourth year of university that I came across Leila Aboulela, shelved under ‘suggested further reading’ for a seminar on a Postcolonialism course. Indeed, before taking this course, my exposure to non-western writers within required reading was limited to the obligatory inclusion of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in my second year. Although Aboulela’s novel The Translator occasionally crops up on postcolonial syllabi, it is her unflinching approach to colonialism in ‘The Museum’ that captured my attention and caused me to question museum ethics and neutrality. The 1997 short story’s value has not gone unrecognised elsewhere: it was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. The 19-page tale paints the story of Shadia, a Sudanese woman studying at Aberdeen, and her acquaintance with a fellow student – a long-haired Scot named Bryan. The predominant theme of the story is the struggle of communication between colonialism’s ‘predetermined groups’, and while Bryan and Shadia begin to bridge the gap in communication, this is halted when they visit a local museum at the story’s denouement, culminating with Shadia’s announcement, ‘I shouldn’t be here with you. You shouldn’t talk to me…’ (Aboulela 18).

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There but for the by Ali Smith

Allie Kerper

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Illustration by Edith Pritchett https://www.instagram.com/edithpritchett_art/

Ali Smith’s novel There but for the tells the story of a man who, in the middle of a dinner party, locks himself in the spare room. The story unfolds over the course of the following year or so through the perspectives of four different characters whose lives the man, Miles, has touched in small ways. The characters whose voices comprise the story are Anna, an unemployed Scottish woman; Mark, a middle-aged gay man; May, an elderly woman with dementia; and Brooke, a 10-year-old Black girl. In each of their narrative turns, these characters reflect on experiences in their lives and how others perceive and react to them, giving the reader a rich and textured composite image of what human life can be in and around Greenwich, London in 2009-10. Smith’s novel marries realism and surrealism, satire and earnestness, and weaves it all together with wit and wordplay to create a compelling story of what it feels like to live in the political moment of the Recession.

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