Basia Sliwinska is an art historian and art theorist. She focus on century art with a focus on the feminist practice of contemporary women artists. She joined University of the Arts London in 2017 as Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies.
‘Basia Sliwinska is an art historian and art theorist. She specializes on century art with a focus
on the feminist practice of contemporary women artists. She joined the University of Arts
London in 2017 as Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies’.
The text is centered on the definition of citizenship what truly means to belong in a place. She
mentions the definition of ecotone, transitory spaces, in between and the edge effect.
She analyzes the works of two artists, Joanna Rajkowska and Nada Prlja. This essay was written
for an academic audience.
The author starts the essay talking about her experience of going back to her country to
reissue her identity card after moving to the UK and starts to question about her citizenship.
She asserts her identity card defines her identity but not her sense of belonging.
This passage really stroke me and made me question about my own sense of belonging. I am a
Dominican living in the United Kingdom for the second time. In hopes of wanting to legally
establish here in the UK, but politics and strict immigration enforcement don’t allow me. I am
and feel Dominican. I love my country, but I don’t find my sense of belonging in the
Dominican Republic. It made me question to what extend politics can dictate our lives? As a
Dominican should I just accept I was born in the Dominican Republic and settle for staying in
a country that doesn’t give me freedom or just try to live in the place where I could find my
sense of belonging. I would love to live without the worry about travel visa or work visa,
restrictions imposed due to my nationality. I strongly believe we should all be one nation
where people can live and work freely. The author mentions that another way of thinking
about belonging within and across spaces is Citizenship as it being tied to one’s identity. As
Sliwinska states it is not a voluntary membership, one do not choose where to be born.
The main reason I identified myself with Prlja experiments was that she raised awareness of
issues of inequalities and injustice in societies. Prlja states ‘It is human to leave a country and
this is recognized in political practice, but there is right to enter a country’. In my opinion,
there is a double standard. There are countries that refuse refugees but wealthy people have
access to buy their nationality and passport.
Another example of passive activism was the work of Rajkowska on her input of citizenship.
The approach how she explains her daughter’s birth as a poetic way of giving her child to
Germany. And she can unite the fracture relationship between Poland and Germany through
her Rosa’s birth. The way she consciously choose Germany for it. She exposes that by Rosa
being birthed in Germany she automatically belongs to Germany. In my opinion, Rosa is a
mixture of her background and her memories. If she is raised outside of Germany by English
and Polish parents with no German influence, It would be very challenging for Rosa to feel
like she belongs in Germany.
Questions
It’s it fair that politics nowadays dictates us where we can or can’t go?
What has feminism to do with the global immigration happening today?
If the author took her scope out of the eurozone and into the western hemisphere would her results be different?
References:
https://arts-london.academia.edu/BasiaSliwinska
Basia Sliwinska, ‘Transnational Embodied Belonging Within “Edge Habitats”’, Third Text, 29:4 (2015), pp. 287-309.
Коментарі