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Applying a transnational feminist lens to refugee studies, we introduce the concept of feminist refugee epistemology, which posits that gendered displacement is not only about social disorder and interruption but also about social reproduction and innovation. Fusing the critical with the creative, we conceptualize refugee artwork as a critical practice that allows for new forms of knowledge that would otherwise not be produced or shared. In this article, we analyze the artworks of Vietnamese and Syrian women artists—Trinh Mai Thach, Nisrine Boukhari, Tiffany Chung, and Foundland (Ghalia Elsrakbi and Lauren Alexander)—whose installations and paintings capture the fluidity and dynamism of time and space and connect contemporary displacement from Vietnam and Syria to Western interventions in the regions. Grouping the artworks by two themes—epistolary forms of art and cartography as epistemic mapping—we show how the pieces formulate a radical re-viewing of refugees as producers of knowledge and potent figures of critique. Collectively, their works prompt a reading of refugee interiority as a feminist, not feminized, space, and the figure of the refugee/artist as knowledge producer, not as informant. We conclude that these feminist refugee artworks amplify the need to bring a visual art component to history—to engage other realms such as feelings and emotions in our search for the stories and lives that are not publicized but are nevertheless there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay takes a case-study approach to examine how culture may be transferred from immigrant cultures to a so-called host culture. Considering the work of three visual artists who came to the UK as refugees but who are now considered ‘British artists’, it examines the effect this curatorial definition may have on gallery viewers. The author proposes that looking at work that previously might have been viewed as ‘exotic’ or ‘foreign’ but that is now classed as British forces viewers to reassess and renegotiate their understanding of the nature of ‘Britishness’ and indeed of place-Britain. Drawing on the ideas of Edouard Glissant and also of contemporary geographers about the nature of place, the study proposes that place-Britain, like all places, is in a constant and never ending state of production. The work of artists from refugee populations, shown now as ‘British art’, becomes a dynamic part of this process and a means by which new elements are transferred and added to an ever-changing British cultural fabric [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a study that was performed at the Beddawi refugee camp in North Lebanon to look at the painters that reside there. The author discusses the works that they produce and examines how their situation being in a refugee camp has affected that work. Stories are included of several different artists and it is noted that they were originally collected in the speakers' native languages and translated here.