HOMInG Working paper no. 12_2021
Mapping the meanings of home through art
A large-scale exploratory analysis of art exhibitions on home

Bernardo Armanni, Università di Trento – ERC StG HOMInG
bernardo.armanni@unitn.it

Abstract
This Working Paper contributes to the literature on home with a large-scale exploration
of the ways in which home is represented and translated into art. An extended primary
dataset (N=846) was produced for this purpose, considering art exhibitions held
worldwide from 2007 to 2020. The data were gathered through a query on the website
MutualArt.com, involving the following keywords: Home, House, Dwell and Domestic. Art
exhibitions are charted along lines of space, time, artistic forms, and main thematic
cores. Key findings can be summed up as follows: artists and exhibition curators have
increasingly been oriented to inquire the meanings of home and the home-migration
nexus; thematizations of home are remarkably different across geographic areas; art
forms are employed differently to materialize and perform different home-related themes.
Last, co-occurrence semantic networks are used to visualize the main connections
between home-related themes drawn by artists and curators in the production of
exhibitions.

Keywords: Home – Exhibitions – Art – Meaning structures – Home and migration –
Semantic Networks

Read the paper (pdf)!