Tijen Tunali
Academic Mentor: Rosalyn Deutsche, Professor in the Department of Art History, Barnard College
Research Topic:
Art Against Authoritarianism: Aesthetic Activism in Post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa
Tijen Tunali is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on contemporary aesthetics, political practices and relations in art activism and radical social praxis. Tijen was an EU Maria Skłodowska-Curie Cofund Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. Previously, Tijen was an EU Maria Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow at Le Studium-Centre Interdisciplinaire Cités, Territoires, Environnement et Sociétés at the University of Tours in France.
Tijen has published academic articles and opinion pieces on contemporary art and activism; art and neoliberalism; international art biennials and their discontents; alternative art forms, art spaces, and art communities; theory and practice of aesthetics and art in social movements; rebellious aesthetics and art in the urban public space; the aesthetics of the Zapatista Movement; queer aesthetics and museology; art and ecological critique; art and ideological critique; and art and migration politics.
Tijen is the founder and organizer of the international and interdisciplinary conference series "Art and the City: Urban Space, Art and Social Change," which was launched in 2018 and is held in a different city each year. The latest edition of the conference is scheduled to take place in Amman in June 2023.
With Professor Brian Winkenweder, Tunali is editing the volume "Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History" (January 2023) with the contributions of 40 renowned Marxist scholars.
Selected Publications:
Books:
2021 T.Tunali (ed). Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape (Routledge Research in Art and Politics). Oxford: Routledge, ISBN: 9780367521479
2015 T.Tunali. Festivals of Art, Carnivals of Representation: On Contemporary Art Neoliberalism. Online Publication by the University of New Mexico. URL
Special Issues in Journals:
T.Tunali(ed). Special Issue: Public Arts and the Contested Urban Public Space. Public Arts Journal. Vol 3, no2 , pp.1-117.
T.Tunali(ed). Special Issue: Street Art’s Politics and Discontents. Journal of Urban Cultural Studies (JUCS), Vol 7 no:2, Intellect Books, ISSN 2050-9790 (Print); ISSN 2050-9804 (Online)
T.Tunali(ed). Special Issue: Art and Urban Social Struggles. Urban Creativity Scientific Journal (UXUC) Vol 2 no: 1 ISSN 2183-3869 (Print); ISSN 2183-9956 (Online)
Peer-Reviewed Articles in the last 5 years (single author):
2021 “Contemporary Public Arts and Dialectical Aspects of the ‘Democratization’ of Public Space.” Public Arts Journal. Vol 3, no2 , pp.10-18.
2021 “The Right to Urban Public Space and Aesthetic Dissensus for Democratic Citizenship”, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Vol 8, no: 2, pp. 247–266, https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00044
2021 “Introduction: The Dialectic Role of Art in Late Neoliberal Urbanism.” In Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape. London, New York: Routledge: 1-18.
2020 “Street Art Between Business and Resistance.” Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, (Special Issue: Street Art’s Politics and Its Discontents), Vol. 7, no: 2-3, pp. 187-198.
2020 “Art’s Dialectical Relationship with Urban Struggles. Urban Creativity Scientific Journal (UXUC) Vol 2 no: 1, pp.6-11.University of Lisbon Press.
2020 “Voz, Visibilidad y Visión de Zapatistas: Otra Estética de la Globalización” (Zapatista Voice, Visibility and Vision: An-other Aesthetics of Globalization).”Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo (Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art) Vol. 7, no: 1, pp.343-378 University of Barcelona Press.
2020 “Humorous Aesthetics in Urban Protests during the Political Ice Age.” European Journal of Humor Research. Vol: 8 no: 2, pp.129-145.
2018 “Art, Migration and Globalization: 1990s Art Discourse and Now.” Kunstlicht: Journal for Visual Art, Visual Culture and Architecture (Special Issue: Furthering, Nurturing and Futuring Global Art Histories) Vol. 39 no.1: 11-19.
2018 “The Art of Resistance: Carnival Aesthetics and the Gezi Street Protests.” ASAP: Journal of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (Special Issue: Rules of Engagement: Art, Process, Protest) John Hopkins University Press, Vol 3 no 2: 377-399.