Refugeetude + the Readymade

‘Refugeetude + the Readymade’ presents a queer reading of critical strategies of feminist appropriation that articulate points of contact and moments of disruption between Canadian art histories and the field of forced migration studies. The essay explores the potential of aesthetic practices that operate through counterhegemonic recontextualization and inscription as practice-based methods that have been touched/tache-d by feminist, queer, and refugee intuitions. The argument is grounded through an analysis of questions of genealogy and cultural belonging theorized by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her catalogue essay for Inscription, an exhibition by artist Jamelie Hassan presented in 1990 at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina SK. This analysis is considered in relation to Vinh Nguyen’s proposition of the term refugeetude as a form of critical consciousness emerging from experiences of forced migration.