Diaspora in the Field of Vision

Abstract

Diasporic artists have become visible in small but significant numbers since the expansion in post-war education in Britain – supported in part by those sympathetic to the politics of educational equality and in part by those for whom education and diasporic experience were the enabling factors for their practices. Out of these practices emerged the critical debates about visual cultural diversity, now commonplace within contemporary art education. This article will address some of the key issues that have been made apparent in the work of some contemporary diasporic artists who live, work and have studied in Britain. These issues will be looked at within the frame of contemporary British art education and its changing role in the current era. In addition, the article will look at how emerging contemporary art practices (for example, live art practices) figure in the hierarchies that dominate the existing institutional structures in higher education in Britain.