The aim of the arts-based diffractive ethnography was to advance engaging research methods in migration and integration studies as well as to explore the collectivization of memories, experiences, and notions of homemaking among groups of self-identified migrants.

 

Through our networks, eight self-identified migrants living in Denmark participated and were invited to collectively explore the notions of home and homemaking in a migratory perspective, partly through the artworks displayed in the exhibition, Connections – Danish Artists form Ex-Yugoslavia, partly through conversations with each other on the basis of their experiences with the aforementioned artworks.

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The ethnography unfolded between November 2022 and February 2023 at the National Gallery of Denmark and hosted by curator, Tijana Mišković.

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This trialling of a methodological protocol of arts-based diffractive ethnography has contributed a new approach to arts-based migration and integration research that recognizes migrants as co-researchers of the phenomenon of migrant homemaking and not only as experts of their lives. Accordingly, the methodological protocol of arts-based diffractive ethnography moves beyond the tradition of giving voice to migrants, and instead facilitates a collective – and thereby empowering – form of co-researching.

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The results are presented in a chapter, “Art as an Diffractive Ethnographic Approach – engaging iterations of home in a migratory perspective” in the forthcoming edited volume, Handbook on Arts-Based Research edited by Lars Emmerik Damgaard & Mette Rold (in Danish).

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The collaboration with curator, Tijana Mišković has led to the development of a Manifesto for Diffractive Research Curation.

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Click HERE