Amanda Boulos's Art Explores Decolonial Strategies Beyond Postcolonial Figures

Palestinian-Canadian painter Amanda Boulos creates works addressing shared desires of Palestinians in diaspora and Indigenous peoples in Canada to transcend settler colonial identities. Her art is analyzed through social historical, formalist, and iconographical approaches, proposing a shift in global contemporary art discourse from postcolonial figures like the oriental, subaltern, and hybrid toward representation strategies including transformation, ambiguity, and queering. This shift aims to build alliances within BIPOC communities against divisive settler colonial politics in Palestine, Canada, and other regions. Boulos's work is contextualized within two frameworks: art historical connections to contemporary artists engaging postcolonial conflict zones and Modern/contemporary Palestinian artists both in Palestine and its diaspora. Political contexts include Palestinian LGBTQ activism following the Second Intifada and the 2014 Israeli War on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. The analysis appears in ARTMargins Volume 12, Issue 2, pages 58-68, published on June 20, 2023, with a DOI of 10.1162/artm_a_00349. Content is subscription-only via MIT Press.