Translanguaging Art: Artists’ Engagements with Languaging in Multilingual and Migratory Contexts
摘要
At the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, migration and the global movement of people and languages are widely recognised as having a significant influence on everyday life, not only in large metropolises but also in smaller towns and villages. These dynamics are reflected and explored in art practice. The art world is currently witnessing a growing number of initiatives centred on language, with artists capturing, researching, and showcasing the linguistic practices of multilingual communities, often drawing on their own experiences of migration, language shifts, and multilingualism. This chapter examines multilingualism in the visual art practices of three contemporary Polish-born artists—Monika Szydłowska, Małgorzata Dawidek, and Krzysztof Wodiczko—who engage with languaging in migratory contexts. Through a cross-disciplinary analysis, spanning the fields of art and (socio)linguistics, I situate their work within the framework of translanguaging—understood as the practice of creating knowledge through the use of all available linguistic and semiotic resources. This framework enables an exploration of how these artists showcase multilingualism in their work, the methods they use to research multilingualism through their art, and, importantly, what their artistic practices reveal about language use and meaning-making in linguistically and culturally diverse communities.