The “metamorphoses of the political” in contemporary art of post-Oslo Palestine

This article explores the reconfigurations of the engagement of the Palestinian generation of artists in the light of the post-Oslo period and the increasing cultural flows in globalised art worlds. The aim is to study the “metamorphoses of the political” at work among Palestinian youth through the prism of the artistic mobilisations of the new generation of visual artists. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, based mainly on participant observation during a long-term ethnographic survey (from 2011 to 2017) between Ramallah, Gaza and Jerusalem, at the heart of the contemporary art worlds of Palestine, this article first deals with the way artists deconstruct nationalism and the national question in artistic discourse and practice. Secondly, it examines how artists, by exploring new issues, more in tune with the globalised world, are contributing to the creation of a “global Palestine”. Finally, the article discusses how Palestinian creative youth, by investigating new places of politics, participates in a – more intimate – redefinition of the political.