The Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics of Migration in Contemporary Art from Angola and Its Diaspora

Some of the most potent analyses of past and present migratory crises, whether prompted by political, ethnic, or religious persecution, war, environmental catastrophe, or economic dispossession, have been produced through the visual arts. Privileged artistic subjectivity should never be conflated with that of a destitute migrant or refugee; however, artists themselves have often wished, chosen, or been forced to migrate to begin diasporic lives elsewhere. In this movement, they cross regional, national, continental, as well as cultural borders.¹ Some have been able to return home; of course, their migratory experiences impact the questions raised and the work they produce upon homecoming. Drawing mostly on my research on Lusophone Africa—Angola, in particular—as well as on European diasporic spaces such as Portugal, I shall attend to the concrete ways in which African artists have critically examined a “fortress” Europe that is in denial of its colonial past.² I shall also...