Abstract
This chapter presents a multidimensional framework for analyzing the trajectories of migrant artists. I demonstrate that artist migrants are not only faced with the challenges related to navigating geopolitical mobility regimes, developing networks of socioeconomic relations, and positioning oneself in a professional art field; they must also steer a course between the aesthetic domains they find in different localities. Through their artistic training, an artist develops a sense of belonging to a domain in aesthetic space that orients meaning-making and pragmatic action within the art field and beyond it. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with migrant artists in Russia, I illustrate how the mechanism of attunement is used to manage or resolve the tension arising from a misalignment between dimensions in their developing trajectories.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In the Soviet and post-Soviet context, this refers to well-educated and highly qualified professionals, but this does not necessarily correlate with the “middle class” as an economic and consumption category.
- 3.
The Commonwealth of Independent States is the association of countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union.
- 4.
The first Central Asia pavilion was organized at the Venice Biennale in 2005. It was curated by Viktor Misiano, one of the most famous Russian art critics and curators.
- 5.
Garage Museum is one of the largest and the most influential private institutions for contemporary art in Russia. It is funded by Roman Abramovich.
- 6.
- 7.
In the 1990s, many missionaries came to post-socialist countries. Aygerim’s family was secular and only she converted. She learned about Protestantism through the American NGO where her elder sister started working.
- 8.
This term refers to the period following Stalin’s death in 1953 and to the cultural revitalization and political liberties ushered into Soviet society and other socialist countries as a result of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. For a discussion of the Khrushchev Thaw period in Czechoslovakia, see Chap. 13 by Zelinsky in this volume.
- 9.
For more on artist residences, see Chap. 3 by Roberts and Strandvad in this volume.
- 10.
This opinion was expressed in an interview with the head of a non-commercial art institution that provides support for mid-career artists in Russia. The interview was conducted for a related research project (unpublished).
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Kobyshcha, V. (2022). Moving Through Aesthetic Space: Visual Artists and Migration. In: McCormick, L. (eds) The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11420-5_7
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