Dis:Locating Palestine – Enacting Community: Chilestino Contemporary Art and Cinema

Chilean artists with Palestinian origin crystallize varying experiences of displacement, in-betweenness, genealogical quest, and communal affiliation. First generations of Palestinian migrants described in detail the tortuous trips to Chile after crossing Argentina, the Panama Canal, and the Andes, searching for other opportunities in neighboring countries or fleeing a war-torn area. Later generations provide narratives on the reverse travel, in their attempts to decipher the multilayered meanings of Palestine, be it a political cause or a screen for scattered family memories and the desire for belonging. With a special focus on the works of Miguel Littín and Claudia Aravena Abughosh, this article shows how artistic practices can imagine or enact alternative forms of community countering nationalist, religious, and ethnocentric imaginaries. I ground the study of the selected art pieces in the more than a century-long history of cultural and political entanglements between the Arab world and Latin America to interrogate the intertwined questions of the policity of art and the experience of friendship as a path toward defining non-exclusive communities.