Although there have been important examples of art that address wounding, scarring, and healing throughout the 20th century, the proliferation of violent imagery since World War II has led to new kinds of artworks that marshal consciousness of traumatic events and their cultural processing. These developments in art practice run parallel with the emergence of “trauma studies” in the mid-1980s, which confront the repercussions of psychoanalysis, the Holocaust, global conflict, sexual violence, and race and gender discrimination.
An extensive and richly illustrated new publication is forthcoming and will include both new and historical scholarship on the subject by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Huey Copeland, Gavin Delahunty, Bracha L. Ettinger, Beatriz Colomina, Hal Foster, Erika Naginski, Griselda Pollock and Robert Storr.