Patterns of Trauma: Lebanese Women Artists and the Aesthetics of Abstraction in times of War

黎巴嫩女艺术家如何表现她们在内战（1975-1990）中的经历？他们的作品如何作为暴力冲突生活经验的见证形式？抽象美学能在多大程度上形象化集体创伤，以及破碎的身份和归属感？该项目旨在通过分析活跃在黎巴嫩和散居国外的五位黎巴嫩女艺术家的作品来回答这些问题。它揭示了创伤、后殖民斗争、阶级和性别在一个国家的审美生产中的联系，这个国家的民族认同和社会文化机构被一场植根于殖民主义遗产和不同宗教派别之间紧张关系的战争摧毁。学术界对阿拉伯现代主义和书法抽象的兴趣正在增长，例如，“阿拉伯世界的抽象”（Takesh，2020），“阿拉伯世界的现代艺术”（Shabout等人，2018年），以及展览“女性艺术家和全球抽象1940-70”（白教堂，2023年）。然而，目前对黎巴嫩女艺术家的抽象的分析是简化的，她们的作品要么被简化为伊斯兰艺术/遗产的先入为主的概念，要么被视为来自全球现代主义的抽象形式。这两种解释都将他们的艺术与战争和创伤分离开来。然而，黎巴嫩背景之外的研究表明，抽象可以与后殖民主义和历史事件后的个人创伤联系在一起（Terracciano，2014）。我的项目将通过遗产，证词和创伤的框架分析她们的工作，改变这些妇女的艺术实践方法。它将有助于交叉研究的增长和艺术史上流行的欧洲中心叙事的非殖民化（价格，2020年）。它将从一个独特的和未被充分研究的角度来扩展关于证词、流亡和移民的工作主体：阿拉伯历史、文化和家园中的散居者。五位女艺术家构成了研究的重点：埃特尔阿德南、胡盖特卡兰德、萨卢阿·拉乌达·舒凯尔、多萝西·卡齐米和朱莉安娜·塞拉芬。在内战期间，由于宗教和法律上的隔离，妇女更容易受到创伤。我分析了这些艺术家在20世纪70年代创作的作为创伤证词的艺术品，以及他们在黎巴嫩的接待情况，使用未出版的档案文件（见下文）。这十年的特点是后殖民时代的阿拉伯斗争和内战。该项目旨在探索艺术作品如何捕捉这一催化时刻之前和之后日益增长的紧张局势。我问这些艺术家在他们的祖国和国际上占据了什么样的“地方”和“空间”。对他们的工作有什么反应？流亡和流散在多大程度上影响了他们的做法？通过一个交叉的方法，包括阶级和性别，该项目将产生新的解释，他们的正式抽象的视觉语言与创伤的可视化。视觉分析（与遗产，身份和性别）将是我的项目的核心，辅之以话语分析，艺术家访谈，并在黎巴嫩，丹麦和加州档案研究。理论框架将由后殖民理论（例如，Sajed，2022; Lazali，2019; Mignolo，2018），将探索文化作为一种见证形式（例如，Jones，2019）和创伤理论（例如，Hayek，2015; Hirsch，2012）。

How do Lebanese women artists represent their experiences of the Civil War (1975-1990)? How can their artworks function as a form of testimony to the lived experience of violent conflict? To what degree can abstract aesthetics visualise collective trauma, and a fractured identity and belonging? This project aims to answer these questions through analysis of the artworks of five Lebanese women artists, active in Lebanon and the diaspora. It uncovers the connection between trauma, postcolonial struggle, class and gender in the aesthetic production of a country whose national identity and social and cultural institutions were devastated by a war rooted in the legacies of colonialism and tensions between different religious sects.Academic interest is growing in Arab modernism and calligraphic abstraction, for example, 'Abstraction From the Arab World' (Takesh, 2020), 'Modern Art in the Arab World' (Shabout et al., 2018), and the exhibition 'Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70' (Whitechapel, 2023). However, current analysis of Lebanese women artists' abstraction is reductive.Their work is either reduced to preconceived notions of Islamic art/heritage or seen as a form of abstraction taken from global modernism. Both interpretations divorce their art from war and trauma. Yet, research outside of the Lebanese context suggests that abstraction can be linked to personal trauma following postcolonialism and historical events (Terracciano, 2014). My project will transform approaches to the artistic practice of these women by analysing their work through the framework of heritage, testimony and trauma. It will contribute to the growth of intersectional research and the decolonisation of Eurocentric narratives prevalent in art history (Price, 2020). It will expand the body of work on testimony, exile, and migration from a unique and understudied perspective: diasporas in Arab histories, culture, and homeland.Five women artists form the focus of the research: Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Dorothy Kazemi, and Juliana Seraphim. Women were doubly susceptible to trauma during the Civil War through religious and lawful segregation. I analyse selected artworks as trauma testimonies created by these artists in the 1970s and their reception in Lebanon using unpublished archival documents (see below). The decade was marked by the postcolonial Arab struggle and the Civil War. The project aims to explore how the artworks capture growing tensions before and after this catalytic moment. I ask what 'places' and 'spaces' these artists occupied in their home countries and internationally. What was the response to their work? To what extent did exile and diaspora influence their practice?Through an intersectional approach, including class and gender, the project will engender new interpretations of their formally abstract visual language in relation to the visualisation of trauma. Visual analysis (with heritage, identity and gender) will be the core of my project, supplemented by discourse analysis, artist interviews, and archival research in Lebanon, Denmark and California. The theoretical framework will be informed by postcolonial theory (e.g., Sajed, 2022; Lazali, 2019; Mignolo, 2018), approaches exploring culture as a form of testimony (e.g., Jones, 2019), and trauma theory (e.g., Hayek, 2015; Hirsch, 2012).