Making stories visible: Examining feminist art-based methodologies to explore embodied experiences of displacement in Colombia

Keywords: feminist methodology, body mapping, Colombia, displaced persons, arts-based methods
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Wednesday
Session Start / End Time: 4/7/2021 09:35 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/7/2021 10:50 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 43

Abstract

As a result of over 60 years of ongoing conflict in Colombia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) now estimates that 15% of the Colombian population are internally displaced. Women (including adolescents and girls) make up 55% of IDPs in Colombia. In addition to heightened levels of violence and marginalization, women experience forced migration differently than men due to their greater connection to and restriction to the domestic and private spheres. This presentation will focus on research undertaken in June 2019 with ten displaced women in Barranquilla, Colombia designed to examine the body as a critical site for exploring both the experience of displacement and conflict as well as for moving toward reconciliation. Central to the research process was the use of feminist participatory artistic methodologies – including body mapping, photovoice, and participatory video – to explore participants’ embodied and gendered experiences of displacement. In this presentation, I discuss how these feminist arts-based methodologies can be used to expand the way that displacement is understood both by academics and the general public. I argue that these methods, while time and labor intensive, have a number of benefits. They allow for a more profound vision of participants’ lives to develop, they provide more ways for participants to tell their stories and for researchers and others to understand their experiences, they shift control of the research from the researcher to the participant, and they provide opportunities for self-actualization and empowerment among the research participants through the research process.