Abstract
This article discusses the art of Alina Rome Cohen, a woman artist from the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Israel. Her glass sculptures highlight her hyphenated, multilayered, and dynamic identity, illustrating identity construction processes of migrant women under conditions of uprooting and re-grounding in the globalized era of transnationalism. The discussion feeds from theories influenced by “the material turn”, suggesting that artifacts “speak”. I will therefore argue that the material—glass—is involved in the active discussion and negotiation of power relations within society. Framed through Alfred Gell’s anthropological theory of art, first introduced in his book titled Art and Agency from 1998, this approach proposes a horizon of agency for the artworks themselves, which function in the world alongside other actants operating in the field, such as human beings. This article will analyze Rom Chohen’s artworks and will be informed by cultural theories from migration studies and gender studies, in order to ask new questions about the dynamics of the exclusion and inclusion of migrants under the ethno-national state of Israel, while offering alternative ways by which to think of concepts such as memory and time, as past and present are brought to a simultaneity.
Highlights
Visibility in Immigration: Body,figuraGaze, Representative sculptures. (Dekel and Rom 2019)tion”, Lomsky-Feder, Rappoport, and Ginsberg write about the immigrant’s experience ofIn their paper “An Introduction to Visibility invis-à-visImmigration: Body, Gaze,whoseRepresenvisibility while making a place for themselves, veteranIsraelis hegemonic tation”, Lomsky-Feder, and Ginsberg write about the immigrant’s experience visibility is prominent Rappoport, within the visual cultural space (2010).The immigrant’s visibility, or of visibility making a place for themselves, veteran whose hege- ethnic, lack thereof,while is a social phenomenon that links vis-à-vis the foreign andIsraelis veteran, in various monic visibility is prominent within the visual cultural space (2010)
This study focuses on sculpted works representing memories affected by migration
Rom Cohen exercises this in her artworks, which faithfully reflect and scrutinize her reflexive insights associated with her gendered and national identities while extracting the memories of the liminal space she has occupied since adolescence
Summary
The contemporary era of mass migration under transnational existence poses new challenges for understanding art and identities of migrant subjects, which have become increasingly complex and multi-layered, flexible, and fluid, no longer answering to any single criterion (Demos 2013; Elkins et al 2010; Harris 2011; Mathur 2011; Mercer 2016; Ring-Peterson 2017). Like all 1.5 generation immigrants, they can be seen as constituting a liminal group insofar as they neither experienced the full process of uprooting like firstgeneration immigrants, nor were born in the destination country like second-generation immigrants Instead, they lie between the old and new worlds, their lives a distilled illustration of the formative and ongoing nature of the process of migration. Understanding the complexity of their position requires attending to the original context which shaped the identity of these former Soviet Union women immigrants and considering the long-term processes they undergo in Israel. They face successive challenges in their new home, from state laws to powerful cultural stereotypes among the veteran Israeli public; these women respond to their shifting identities through artistic means. I propose to conceptualize the issue through intersectional analysis, in order to consider identities along axes of gender and additional identity dimensions
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
