Material Culture, Memory, and the Aesthetics of Displacement: Art Practice in Nigerian Refugee Contexts

The intersection of forced displacement, material culture loss, and creative practice raises profound questions about how art functions as a mechanism for memory preservation, identity reconstruction, and psychosocial recovery in refugee and internally displaced populations. This study develops an original theoretical framework for understanding art practice in contexts of displacement and applies it through empirical research in internally displaced persons communities in Borno and Adamawa States, and among refugees from the Cameroon Anglophone crisis in Cross River State, representing North East and South South contexts. The theoretical contribution is a framework that articulates art-making as a form of what the study terms materialised memory, through which displaced persons reconstruct disrupted cultural identities by creating objects that encode remembered aesthetic traditions. The empirical component uses ethnographic methods including participant observation, in-depth interviews with 60 internally displaced persons who engage in art or craft-making, and collection and analysis of artworks produced in displacement contexts. Visual analysis is applied to document the aesthetic systems, material choices, and narrative contents of works produced. The theoretical framework draws on memory studies, the material culture of displacement literature, forced migration scholarship, and expressive arts therapy theory. The original contribution is both the theoretical framework and the empirical evidence base, which is rare for this population in the Nigerian context. Findings contribute to art therapy, refugee studies, cultural heritage, and the expressive arts literature, with implications for humanitarian programming in Nigeria. Keywords: material culture, displacement, memory, art practice, internally displaced persons