Identity and belonging increasingly feature as themes in the work of contemporary artists, a focus that seems particularly felt by those artists who either personally or through their families have experienced dispersal and migration. The thesis explores how fourteen Algerian and Franco-Algerian artists position themselves and are positioned by others to identity and community. The difficult intertwined histories of Algeria and France fraught with the consequences of colonisation, the impact of migration, and, in Algeria, civil war, provides a rich terrain for the exploration of identity formation. Positionality theory is used to analyse the process of identity formation in the artists and how this developed over the course of their careers and in their art. An important part of the analysis is concerned with how the artists positioned themselves consciously or inadvertently to fixed or fluid conceptions of identity and how this was reflected in their artworks. The thesis examines the complex politics of identity and belonging that extends beyond nationality and diaspora and implicates a range of other identifications including that of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and career choice. The research addresses a gap in contemporary art scholarship by targeting a specific group of artists and their work and examining how they negotiate, in an increasingly globalised world, their relationship to identity including nationality and diaspora. The thesis foregrounds the ways in which this negotiation interacts with their careers, their art and the art market.
The thesis begins with an outline of the methodological approach. Positioning to identity is then examined in the background, education, professional development and art of three international artists, Kader Attia, Adel Abdessemed and Saâdane Afif. Analysis then focuses on the artwork of the eleven remaining artists through the themes of history and memory, journey and narrative and gendered space
