Susan Best is Professor of Fine Art and Art Theory at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia. Recent publications include Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde (2011) which won the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand best book award in 2012.
This book begins with an extraordinary hypothesis: that art can function to mark, to remember and to heal social personal and collective shame. Rather than personal or historical expression, art can act as a form of reparative memory of what cannot be otherwise adequately represented. Reparative Aesthetics develops a new account of what photographic art by women art from the global south is able to accomplish through the acknowledgement and exposure of shame. Beautifully and hauntingly written, this book reminds us that art expresses what cannot be said. Elizabeth Grosz, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA Susan Best's work trail blazes a compelling narrative through art and psychoanalysis, revealing how the work of four women artists who 'look closely at our dark side' inform contemporary debates on the politics of trauma and repair. Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, University Art Gallery and Art Collection, Department of Art History, University of Sydney, Australia