CFP: Metropolitan Crossings: Art, Displacement, and the Making of Modern London, 1930s–1970s

Symposium at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London 5–6 November 2025

Deadline for submissions: 31 July 2025

To mark the English-language launch of Burcu Dogramaci’s Exile London: Metropolis,
Modernity and Artistic Emigration (Exil London. Metropole, Moderne und künstlerische
Emigration), the Ben Uri Research Unit invites proposals for a two-day symposium exploring
the intersections of exile, migration, and modern visual culture in mid-twentieth-century
London.

The symposium takes as its chronological frame the period from the 1930s to the 1970s,
beginning with the forced journeys of Jewish artists fleeing Nazism in Central Europe and
concluding with the postcolonial routes taken by Caribbean artists associated with the
Windrush generation and the scandalous aftermath of their reception and treatment in
Britain. These decades witnessed a transformation of London into a heterogeneous and
contested cultural space, shaped by successive waves of displacement: artists escaping
fascism, communism, and state repression; individuals uprooted by the disintegration of
empire; and migrants whose arrival was later constrained or criminalised by restrictive
legislation, notably the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968.

Despite these difficulties, London’s evolving metropolitan landscape became a crucible for
new artistic identities and alliances. While the city offered refuge and professional
opportunities, it was also marked by surveillance, exclusion, and institutional barriers. This
symposium aims to investigate how the experience of forced and voluntary migration shaped
artistic production, and how émigré, refugee, and postcolonial artists intervened in and
expanded the visual field of British art.

We are particularly interested in the emergence of transnational networks and
connections forged between artists from geographically distant regions who
found themselves in shared proximity through displacement. The symposium seeks to
interrogate these relational geographies of exile and the cultural politics they produced,
attending to both visible contributions and the persistent archival silences surrounding
migrant and diasporic artists.

We invite proposals on immigrant, exiled, or displaced artists in London that engage with,
but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Diasporic communities and cross-cultural collaborations and solidarities among
  displaced artists in London.
• Artistic responses to exile, internment, and political persecution
  The aesthetics and politics of displacement in visual practice.
• The impact of immigration policy on artists’ mobility, careers, and forms of expression.
• Colonial and postcolonial routes to the metropole and their artistic consequences.
• Institutional responses to migrant and refugee artists: inclusion, solidarity, erasure and resistance.
• Memory, trauma, and materiality in the work of displaced artists.
• Case studies of émigré artists in London in stateless contexts.
• Mental health and exile: how displacement trauma and institutionalisation shaped artistic practice and visibility.
• Curating and archiving artistic migration: historiographic and methodological challenges.

We welcome interdisciplinary approaches and particularly encourage contributions from
underrepresented scholars and practitioners.

Please submit a 300-word abstract and 100-word biography to the Ben Uri Research Unit at
(anam[at]benuri.org) by 31 July 2025 with the subject line ‘Metropolitan Crossings’. Each
paper will be 20 minutes in length. Acceptance will be communicated promptly following the
submission deadline.

The symposium will be held on 5–6 November 2025 at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum.