| This dissertation examines the issue of "place" in the lives and works of three contemporary women artists of the African Diaspora: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, IngridMwangiRobertHutter, and Wangechi Mutu. Place as a location is a core challenge of globalism: though fundamental to our existence, it has ceased to be permanent or definite. However, place is more than location---it is cultural, gendered, historical, interactive, personal and social, among other things---and can only be fully understood in considering several of these different facets. Each of the artists in this dissertation has had to navigate through instances of bias (such as racism and chauvinism), and physical displacement in order to create, find, and represent their places. In three case studies, the artists' works and interviews serve as points of departure, illustrating how insights from Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty and Casey) and from Humanistic Geography (Tuan, Relph, Massey) as well as from the discourses of feminist geography and contemporary art historiography can help us understand place. As there is currently no systematic study of place in art, nor an art-specific place theory to use in analysis, it provides a summary of the geographical and phenomenological insights and proposes a "lens" of place to apply to art works and artists. |
