Key Points

In this tutorial we've seen artists who make use of conflict as an internal quality of their work. Through unexpected juxtapositions and tensions, their art challenges our expectations and perceptions of the everyday.

Artists like Michael Rakowitz and Deimantas Narkevicius explore how images and ideas from popular culture have become powerful contemporary mythologies, creating worlds in which facts become unbelievable and fiction tells everyday truths. Do you think fiction can sometimes be more "authentic" than historical documents and facts?

Peter Kennard, on the other hand, works with images as his raw materials and creates striking political photomontages, works in which two or more images are cut and joined together to create a new one. What do you think makes these cut-and-paste images so powerful?

Finally, artists like Mona Hatoum harness internal contradictions and unexpected materials. What purpose do these contradictions serve? Do they get you thinking about common objects in uncommon ways?