Crossing Borders: Migration and the Visual Arts in Denmark, 1800-2021 Tijana Mišković, PhD Fellow, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

Title: “Diasporic inbetweenness in the Work of Artists from the Former Yugoslavia Now Residing in Denmark”

Abstract: The Danish contemporary art scene has since 2000s been marked by artists from the former Yugoslavia. They came to Denmark as children with their families fleeing the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s or escaping the political, social and economic destabilisation that came as the aftermath of the conflicts. Common to these artists is that they are educated at Danish art academies. While Danish art education has shaped their visual language, the content of their artworks often relates to war, migration and exile - topics distant from their present Danish context. In this paper, I claim that such artistic practices are created in what I would call diasporic inbetweenness - a transcultural position between Danish culture and Yugoslav cultures before and after the war. This plural cultural affiliation affects the artists’ approach to subjectivity, cultural identity and national belonging. It is often addressed by a dynamic intertwinement of memories across national, cultural and generational divisions as well as a cultural translations and negotiations, which challenge the concept of the nation-state. Through examples of artworks by Alen Aligrudić, Damir Avdagić, Ismar Čirkinagić, Suada Demirović, Nermin Duraković, Amel Ibrahimović, Nenad Milčević, Vladimir Tomić, and Ana Pavlović, I will illustrate how dynamics of memory and cultural translation are articulated in the artistic practices of the selected community of artists and argue that these artistic tendencies, conditioned by the artists’ diasporic positioning, are strengthening the transcultural aspects in Danish visual arts.