Photosculpture and the politics of nostalgia: Counter-hegemonic aesthetics in contemporary artistic practice

Abstract

This article investigates photosculpture as a counter-hegemonic aesthetic strategy that reconfigures dominant emotional regimes of nostalgia within contemporary visual culture. By extending photography beyond its historically dominant notions of flatness and indexicality into sculptural, material, and spatial dimensions, photosculpture unsettles affective narratives that sustain heritage discourse, colonial romanticism, and nationalist sentimentality. Focusing on contemporary artworks and my own artistic research into diasporic memory and Creole vernacular architecture, the study argues that the hybrid image-object of photosculpture generates both conceptual and sensory dissonance that challenges normative frameworks of feeling. Drawing on William Reddy’s theory of emotional regimes (2001), Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia (2001), and Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective reorientation (2004), the article positions photosculpture not merely as visual critique but as an affective and spatial practice for reimagining relations among memory, history, and belonging. As such, it contributes to current debates on photography’s expanded materiality and proposes photosculpture as a critical modality within post-1970 visual and decolonial art practices that invite viewers to feel otherwise.