Thesis Advisor: Hypatia Vourloumis

Thesis:The Phenomenology of Hypocrisy: the Performance of Third Culture Kids and Orientating in the Birchforest

February 2021

Abstract

This thesis is looking at artists and artworks that are being othered in a colorblind Northwestern European setting. These artists and their artworks are, through situated practices and queer phenomenology, organizing themselves socially and artistically to challenge the dominant culture they are part of. While in the US, the term “third culture kid” has been used to define children of diplomats and ambassadors growing up in another country than their passports indicate, the term was appropriated in Sweden in 2017 in the book Third Culture Kidsz written by a collective of authors through the pseudonym Ra Hidaya Modig.

Through looking at the work of artists and collectives such as This Is Sweden, Erik Lundin, Ceylan Öztrük, Petra Bauer and Anette Krauss, I trace approaches that challenge the Western view and cultural hegemony through approaches from marginalized and ”othered” positions of cultural dominance in order to be able to restructure a culture with a tradition of “colonialaphasia.” Drawing upon queer, feminist, decolonial theorists, this thesis argues for cultural ways in which the body can exist and produce artwork that trouble cultural hegemonic structures with in a Northwestern European perspective, through artworks that are challenging a dominant cultural hegemony.

Author Karina Sarkissova