Trauma and Memory in Visuality

Abstract

Dissertation 'Trauma and Memory in Visuality' examines how contemporary visual art engages with violent legacies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on the political and ethical burden of bearing witness through the means of art. Through the work of the Indian artist Nalini Malani (b. 1946, Karachi), it shows how visuality becomes a site for confronting collective trauma and renegotiating memory. Bringing trauma studies, memory theory, and the French historian Pierre Nora's concept of 'lieux de mémoire' into dialogue, it analyses how Malani's artworks address the aftermath of violence, gendered oppression, and colonial history. While centred on Malani, the work also situates her practice in a broader, transnational context, discussing a selection of artworks by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo (b. 1958, Bogotá) and the South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg), which challenge authorised narratives of the past. The dissertation argues that these contemporary artworks function as sites of political memory, reopening suppressed histories and intervening in dominant structures of remembrance, while demonstrating the important role that visual art plays in shaping how traumatic pasts are recalled and interpreted in the present.