Migrants’ Art and Writings: Figures of Precarious Hospitality

Time, precarious lives and memories and multiple narrations related to crossing borders constitute the key meanings of a series of contemporary pieces of works produced by migrant artists and writers (Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Marwan Rechmaoui, Jumana Emil Abboud and Hoda Barakat). Through an analysis of some of their works, this article focuses on some spatio-temporal images, actions and metaphors related to movement (crossing, walking through, passing borders). Then it questions the exploration of narratives in visual arts, especially the relationship between imaginary fiction and reality stories. Theatre may become the very place where contemporary tales of migrant people are translated, (re)told, performed. The very meaningful notion of hospitality becomes a theatrical practice in one of the most relevant spectacles of the Théâtre du Soleil, Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées) (2003). Another aspect of this creative hospitality — Leïla Sebbar’s Mes Algéries en France — concerns the interweaving of memories belonging to opposite sides of divided countries, after the colonial wars. This work of collection, transcription, translation from one to another gives an example of writing (as fiction and narrative) as a repairing work but also of revelation of unknown connections.