Rethinking art and geopolitics through aesthetics: artist responses to the Iraq war

Abstract

A growing literature examines art in relation to the geopolitics of war, militarism and security. This paper argues that while this work has broadened the scope of critical research on geopolitics by attending to a hitherto under‐explored field of practice, it has been inhibited by a lack of attention to questions of aesthetics. To address this, the paper begins to conceptualise art and geopolitics in relation to this field. Emphasising the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of the aesthetic and attending to the implications of divergent understandings of aesthetic politics, the argument is developed empirically through a consideration of British artists' responses to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. It is argued that the ambivalence of these responses further underscores the aporetic nature of art in relation to geopolitics and the need for this to be addressed both methodologically and in terms of broader conceptual and theoretical debates about the politics of the aesthetic itself.