The Right(s) to Remain: Art, Asylum and Political Representation in Australia
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Eliza Garnsey
Eliza Garnsey is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, UK and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. She is currently an Honorary Associate at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. Her trans-disciplinary research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics, particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice, and conflict. Eliza’s book,
The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition (Cambridge University Press, 2020), demonstrates that there are aesthetic and creative ways to pursue transitional justice.
Abstract
Thinking about artistic representation as a form of political representation enables a better understanding of what can be seen and said, who has the ability to see it and say it, and how it is possible to know and do politics in different ways. In the case of Australia’s immigration system, this understanding is critical. Australia’s treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees is widely criticised by the international community as violating international human rights and humanitarian laws and norms. The legal and bureaucratic frameworks surrounding refugees in Australia not only render their stories largely invisible but continue to perpetrate harm and suffering which goes unaddressed. In the absence of state protection, artistic representation becomes an important intervention into the practices and narratives surrounding Australia’s treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees. In this article, I explore Hoda Afshar’s video and photographic artwork Remain (2018) which documents the experiences and struggles of a group of stateless men who were left to languish on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, in the aftermath of the Australian government closing its Manus Regional Processing Centre. Remain is one of the only available avenues open to the men to share their stories and to communicate the harm caused by national policy and practices. I argue that the artistic representation of Remain becomes a crucial form of political representation in this aftermath; political representation which would not otherwise be possible.
About the author
Eliza Garnsey is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, UK and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. She is currently an Honorary Associate at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. Her trans-disciplinary research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics, particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice, and conflict. Eliza’s book, The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition (Cambridge University Press, 2020), demonstrates that there are aesthetic and creative ways to pursue transitional justice.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the many people who provided invaluable feedback and guidance on this article at various stages: Steven Howe, Laura Petersen and fellow contributors to this special issue; Duncan Bell; Claire Loughnan; Gillian Whitlock and participants in the Visual Politics Work-in-Progress Forum, University of Queensland; and the anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to Hoda Afshar and Behrouz Boochani for the use of images. This work is supported by the British Academy, grant number PF170086.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Foreword: Law and Art in the Aftermath
- The Right(s) to Remain: Art, Asylum and Political Representation in Australia
- Dis-Affective Justice in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006)
- Contemporary Art in the Aftermath of Legal Positivism: The ‘Other’ Contract Art as Material Jurisprudence
- ‘NO GO’: Artists, Trespass and the Aftermath of Occupation
- Research
- Dystopian Images of Law and Visual Performances of Identity in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
- Books, Broadcasters and the BBC: The Conversations Among British Modern Literature, Media and the Law
- Falling Man and the Aesthetics of Terrorism
- Book Reviews
- Shulamit Almog: The Origins of Law in Homer
- Kieran Tranter: Living in Technical Legality: Science Fiction and Law as Technology
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Foreword: Law and Art in the Aftermath
- The Right(s) to Remain: Art, Asylum and Political Representation in Australia
- Dis-Affective Justice in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006)
- Contemporary Art in the Aftermath of Legal Positivism: The ‘Other’ Contract Art as Material Jurisprudence
- ‘NO GO’: Artists, Trespass and the Aftermath of Occupation
- Research
- Dystopian Images of Law and Visual Performances of Identity in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
- Books, Broadcasters and the BBC: The Conversations Among British Modern Literature, Media and the Law
- Falling Man and the Aesthetics of Terrorism
- Book Reviews
- Shulamit Almog: The Origins of Law in Homer
- Kieran Tranter: Living in Technical Legality: Science Fiction and Law as Technology
