Contemporary Confessional Forms and Confessional Art

Abstract

Within our twenty-first century confessional landscape, a new set of possibilities for confession has been realised which, in relation to the chronology of confessional art, expands on the political and social conditions visible in pre-millennial cultural politics. The confessional turn in postmodernity requires less of an emphasis on pre-modern frameworks of ritualised Christian confessional discourses. Taking into account the ubiquity of contemporary confessional forms (eg Facebook, Instagram, and the vlog/blogosphere), such historical terms of ritualised confession and its association to power appear almost archaic today. This article focuses on a framework of confessional art that explores a more direct mode of self-disclosure in order to examine self-representation and its relationship to subjectivity. As the boundaries between private and public space become increasingly problematised within this confessional landscape, this article posits that contemporary confessional art gives voice to displaced subjectivities to present a more complex politics of self.