Does Art Have a Nationality?On Disconnection, Cultural Roots, and the Right to Be Heard

The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831) Hokusai

In this increasingly globalized and interconnected world, the question arises: Does art need a nationality to be heard? For centuries, artists have drawn inspiration from their cultural roots—expressing collective identities, ancestral traditions, and the spirit of their homelands. From the brushstrokes of Chinese ink paintings to the rhythmic vibrancy of West African textiles, art has often functioned as a mirror of place and belonging. But what of the artists who feel culturally unmoored—those without a clear national or ethnic grounding? Is their art somehow less authentic, less visible, or even less “real”?
​
Art as a Cultural Emblem
Historically, art has been intimately linked to national and cultural identity. The Renaissance is Italian. Ukiyo-e is Japanese. French Impressionism, Mexican muralism, Russian Constructivism—the movements themselves bear the fingerprints of geographic and political histories. State institutions and public funding mechanisms have reinforced this link, curating national narratives through museums, biennales, and cultural grants.
Nationalism, too, has seized upon art for ideological ends, using it to forge collective identities or exclude outsiders. In such a context, artists have often been encouraged—or pressured—to produce work that affirms their national character, reducing the scope of their expression to symbols of origin.

The Individual Beyond Borders
Yet art is not only a product of collective identity. It is also the language of the individual. Many artists find their voices not by embracing inherited roots but by questioning them—or by existing outside them altogether.
Today, countless artists live in a state of cultural in-betweenness. Diaspora, exile, migration, and global mobility have led to what some call "third-culture identities"—people who do not fully belong to any one culture yet are shaped by many. Some have grown up speaking multiple languages, living in hybrid spaces, or actively resisting traditional definitions of where they are "from."
For these artists, cultural disconnection is not an absence—it is a condition, a presence in its own right. But in a world that often seeks the neatly packaged “identity story,” their art can seem hard to categorize. The absence of rootedness is mistaken for absence of meaning.

The Risk of Silence
The international art world, while professing openness and diversity, still frequently demands a narrative that locates artists within cultural parameters. Curators, galleries, and institutions often ask: What is your origin? What community does your work represent? For those who don't have a satisfying answer—or for whom the question itself feels irrelevant—visibility can be elusive.
Artists without a clear cultural label may find their work dismissed as lacking in “authenticity.” In truth, the very notion of authenticity is complicated: Is it something one inherits, or something one constructs? Can an artist be authentic simply by being honest about their estrangement?

Making Space for the Unrooted
The voices of unrooted artists are essential. They embody our current moment—a time of dislocation, hybrid identity, and shifting borders. Their work may speak to universal experiences: loss, loneliness, resilience, curiosity, contradiction. These are not tied to a flag or a folklore. They are human.
And perhaps therein lies the answer. Art that emerges from a place of cultural disconnection does not lack voice. It simply speaks in another register—one that doesn't rely on inherited traditions but on raw emotional clarity, on personal narrative, on experimentation unbound by expectation.

Toward a Broader Listening
Rather than asking whether art has a nationality, perhaps we should ask: What assumptions are we making when we look at a piece of art? Are we more willing to listen when we can attach a story of roots, heritage, and homeland? Are we less attentive when the story is ambiguous?
To truly value all forms of expression, we must move beyond the framework that binds art to nationhood. We must create room for artists who feel culturally disconnected—not as a failure of identity, but as an identity in itself. Their art doesn’t speak from a fixed place. It speaks from the threshold, the crossroads, the sea between shores.
In that in-between space, there is power. And there is voice.