How might the arts help to unveil and integrate realities so as to facilitate shared
meanings and understandings between peoples and thus generate the conditions for the
participatory, creative cultural diversity which may contribute to the construction of more
democratic societies?
Taking contemporary Chile as its case study, this research delves into the potential of
the arts to mirror and integrate fragmented sectors in a society’s drive towards human
development. To this end, it uses an interdisciplinary methodology comprising
complementary empirical and theoretical approaches so as to investigate the arts as
transcultural formative experiences.
The former entails a comparative analysis of two groups of Chilean artists (one group in
exile in Britain, the other resident in Chile) through data obtained primarily via in-depth
interviews. The theoretical approach contextualises and universally grounds these social
actors’ discourses in order to identify commonalities which may bind both groups
together. The thesis addresses the question of how these artists make art to construct,
mediate and sustain meanings, senses of belongings and humanising spaces for
transformative learning, exchange and integration in society, giving valuable insights into
subjective as well as collective processes of identity construction in the era of
globalisation. The findings take the shape of a written text following the logic of the
categories emerging from the artists’ narratives, together with a series of video projects -
an emergent outcome of the research.
This research is situated at the junctures of critical, cultural and educational theory. It is
of interest to cultural policymakers as well as scholars of contemporary art theory, social
history, political philosophy, Latin Americanism, exilic narratives and the poetics of the
audiovisual.Universities UK’s Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme and
Gray’s School of Art, as well as the Society for Latin American Studies