Friday 19 February 2010, 10.00–18.00

SOLD OUT

This major international symposium will consider and reflect on recent developments in the globalisation of the contemporary art of Africa and its many diasporas. A number of key international exhibitions have highlighted the increased importance of artistic production by African and African diasporic artists to the evolving geography of global contemporary art. This symposium gathers artists, curators, art historians and cultural critics to discuss and unravel the complexities of presenting and exploring art of the African diaspora and situating it within debates around Modernism.

Speakers include Shaheen Merali, curator of Black Atlantic: Travelling Cultures, Counter-Histories, Networked Identities, Berlin 2004; Sonia Boyce, artist in Black Skin/Bluecoat, The Bluecoat, Liverpool, 1985; and Carol Tulloch, Reader at TrAIN, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London, and co-curator of Black British Style at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2004. For a full list of speakers please see programme below. 

In partnership with Liverpool University Press, University of the Arts Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and the University of Liverpool

This event is supported by Tate Liverpool Members

Tate Liverpool  The Auditorium
£35 (£20 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes lunch and refreshments

10.00-10.15                              Welcome

10.15-11.45                               1^st panel & discussion

Re-thinking Diaspora

This panel will reflect on the concept of diaspora and its continued relevance to understanding contemporary African and African diasporic art.

•         What are the uses and misuses of the concept ‘diaspora’? What are the tensions and conflicts between understandings of ‘contemporary African art’, ‘African diasporic art’ and ‘black art’?

•         How is the emergence of new diasporas of migrant African artists – so called Afropolitans – transforming the perceived geography and the historical make up of the notion of ‘African diaspora’ formally focused on ideas of ‘race’ and ‘blackness’?

•         What are the alternatives to current understandings of diaspora? How will they relate to issues of ‘race’; the changing physical and conceptual geographies of ‘Africanness’, ‘Blackness’ and the ‘Black Atlantic’?

•         What forms do the new ‘Black transnationalism’ take?

Chair: Paul Goodwin, Tate Britain

Paul Goodwin is a theorist, curator and urban researcher. He is an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London and Curator of Cross Cultural Programmes at Tate Britain. At Tate, Paul creates platforms for cultural engagement by programming talks, symposia, workshops and live art events. He is co-editor of Under-construction (DG Artes, 2009) an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between shanty towns and the central city in Lisbon, Portugal and curator of the Under-construction exhibition in Lisbon in May 2009. Paul worked as a consultant curator for Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic at Tate Liverpool, 2010.

Panel members:

Dr Raimi Gbadamosi: Dancing In A Space Provided, Or Running Amok

The paper will investigate the role of diaspora as it applies to the over-determination of artists and their production. It will address questions of place, and the possibilities available to practitioners in a world where the acceptance and continued aggressive protection of national and political boundaries is no longer debatable.

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Raimi Gbadamosi is an artist, writer and curator. He received his Doctorate in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art. He is a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group 'Afroeuropeans', University of Leon, Spain, and the 'Black Body' group, Goldsmiths College, London. He is also on the Editorial board of Third Text.

Carol Tulloch: Thinking Through Dress, African Diaspora and Diaspora

This talk will review a series of transnational projects that have looked at dress and the African diaspora to push critical thinking on the subject, and the dynamics of the concepts ‘diaspora’ and ‘African diaspora’.

***

Carol Tulloch is Reader at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. She is a core member of the Transnational Art, Identity and Nation Research Centre (TrAIN) at the University of the Arts London, and is a Fellow in the Research Department of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Carol was principal investigator of the international research project Dress and the African Diaspora Network. Carol has curated a number of exhibitions which include Black British Style, Victoria & Albert Museum, London and has published widely including editing the publication Black Style.

Dr. David Dibosa: Making a Critical Difference; African-related Art Practices in an Era of Globalization

In an era of increased globalization, what roles do the practices of contemporary artists and intellectuals related to Africa play? This presentation focuses on the first African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, asking what implications the exhibition had for an understanding of increasingly globalized systems of international art exchange. In the light of the demand to engage with political, social, religious and even spiritual difference, Dibosa asks what the criticality of African-related art might look like as well as on what ground it might stand.

***

David Dibosa trained as a curator, after receiving his first degree from Girton College, University of Cambridge. He was awarded his PhD in Art History from Goldsmiths College, University of London. From 2004-2008, he was Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Theory at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts, London and remains at the UAL, where he is now Acting Director for the Engine Room, an Applied Research unit. David’s published work focuses on visual art and cultural difference.

11.45-12.00              BREAK

12.00-12.30             Keynote

Shaheen Merali: Subject nor Cited: Curating in the context of a continent

It remains a bastion of prejudice, a dumping ground for our worst and last thoughts. Nowhere on this sphere Earth is the repository for so much global toxicity. 

Merali will direct the audience to question their own perceptions and understanding of the process and personalities in curating Africa within the contemporary realm and suggest that we have all played apart in ‘curating’ the continent.

***

Shaheen Merali is both a curator and writer, currently based in London and Berlin, where, from 2003-8, he was the Head of Exhibitions, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, curating several exhibitions including The Black Atlantic; Dreams and Trauma, Moving images and the Promised Lands; and Re-Imagining Asia, One Thousand years of Separation. Exhibitions in 2010 include Never run away with Reena Kallat and Sara Rahbar (Stux Gallery, New York) and The 11th Hour (Tang Contemporary, Beijing).

12.30-13.00               Exhibition case study

Black skin/Bluecoat: The Bluecoat, Liverpool, 4 April-4 May 1985

In Black Skin/Bluecoat, artworks by Sonia Boyce, Keith Piper, Eddie Chambers and Tom Joseph attempted to expose and oppose multiple injustices experienced by black people from the beginning of African slavery. Bryan Biggs, Artistic Director at The Bluecoat and curator of Black skin/Bluecoat, will lead a conversation with artists Sonia Boyce and Keith Piper, speaking about the historical significance of the exhibition and its relevance for Liverpool. 

***

Sonia Boyce was born in London in 1962 and emerged in the early 1980s as a figurative painter, quickly gaining critical attention as an emerging figure in the black British arts movement, for works that spoke about racial identity and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s Boyce has worked increasingly with other people using a variety of media, in ‘improvised collaborations’, bringing the audience into sharper focus as an integral part of the artwork and demonstrating how cultural differences might be articulated, mediated and enjoyed. Sonia Boyce is currently an AHRC Research Fellow at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London.

***

Keith Piper is an artist and academic currently living and working in London. He has contributed to numerous projects both nationally and internationally, specialising in issues around race, historical narrative, technology and post-colonialism. He is currently a Reader in Fine Art and Digital Media at the University of Middlesex.

13.00-14.00               LUNCH

14.00-15.30               2^nd panel & discussion

Learning from Exhibitions

This panel will focus on some case studies of recent international exhibitions and reflect on what they mean for presenting and exploring African and African diasporic art.

•         What can we learn from recent international exhibitions focusing on African and African diasporic art?

•         What are the new curatorial narratives emerging from such shows and how do they situate African and African diasporic art within debates about contemporary and historic art?

•         How are African and African diasporic artists situated within the growing phenomenon of biennials? Is the ‘biennial effect’ transforming the way such art is curated?

•         What role have artists played in presenting African art to broader audiences?

Chair: Tanya Barson, Tate Modern

Tanya Barson joined Tate in 1997. In 2001 she co-curated the Turner Prize exhibition. Recent exhibitions she has curated include Making History: Art and Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now (2006); Jake and Dinos Chapman: Bad Art for Bad People (2006) and Ellen Gallagher: Coral Cities (2006) at Tate Liverpool; Frida Kahlo (2005) (with co-curator Emma Dexter) in 2007 at Tate Modern; Oiticica in London (with Guy Brett) in 2007 at Tate Modern, and Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic (2010) at Tate Liverpool (with co-curator Peter Gorschlueter). She is currently Curator of International Art at Tate Modern.

Panel members:

Dr Leon Wainwright: Afro-modernism and the time-space logic of art history

The patterns of narrating and imagining histories of modern and contemporary art betray an intersecting temporal and spatial logic that art and artists of the African diaspora have always contended with. Their experience range from artists such as Guyana-born Aubrey Williams, whose works of the 1950s and 60s were dubbed with ‘primitive urgency’; the celebrated condition of displacement in British Pop Art and its decades-long erasure of Frank Bowling; to the participants of Brooklyn Museum’s ‘Infinite Islands’ exhibition, who were written off as ‘out of date’ when measured against the turn to ‘post-identity’. However, the attempt to resist hegemonic temporalities has often engendered surprising further patterns of provincialising backwardness. This presentation will show some of the outcomes this has held, and what alternatives are available in art historical thought for presenting art and artists of the African diaspora, and for contemplating ‘Afro-modernism’.

***

Dr Leon Wainwright is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, Visiting Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Third Text. He is External Curator of Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire at the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool, until April 2010). He publishes widely on modern and contemporary art and his book Timed Out: Art and the Transnational Caribbean, will be published later this year by Manchester University Press.

Chris Spring: “To hell with African art” Curating the Contemporary at the British Museum

Hassan Musa’s cri de coeur throws down the challenge to any hapless curator who might be thinking of employing such easy labels. This paper traces the development of the fledgling collection of contemporary works by artists of African heritage in one Department of the British Museum in the fifteen years since commissioned works by Sokari Douglas Camp and a small display of Magdalene Odundo’s ceramics formed part of its response to the Africa ’95 festival in the UK. During those short years the Department has changed its name, its location and its public, while the dawning of a new millennium, the celebration of Africa ’05, the marking of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the 50^th anniversary of Independence celebrations have all asked searching questions of the way in which the British Museum has responded to the return of Africa to Bloomsbury.   

***

Chris Spring is a curator of the African Galleries at the British Museum and is also an exhibiting artist responsible for the contemporary and southern African collections. Chris has published numerous books and articles on the subject of African arts and cultures, particularly contemporary art, textiles and arms and armour. His book, Angaza Afrika: African Art Now (London, 2008) won the Art Book Award for 2009 and was accompanied by an exhibition of the same name at the October Gallery, London. His latest book African Art in Detail (London) was published by the British Museum Press and Harvard University Press in 2009. Chris has worked throughout Africa developing collaborative projects with museums including the National Museum of Art, Maputo, Mozambique and the National Cultural Centre in Kumasi, Ghana.

Roger Malbert: From 'Rhapsodies in Black' to 'Africa Remix'

Roger Malbert will give an account of the genesis of two exhibitions, with reference to their political and aesthetic implications and to the international collaborations involved - with the US and France respectively. 'Rhapsodies in Black' considered the Harlem Renaissance as a modernist moment, and 'the New Negro Arts movement' as a creative expression of the wider social struggle for civil and political rights. 'Africa Remix' aimed to assert the central place of contemporary African artists in the context of modernity and internationalism, and to challenge traditional stereotypes.

***

Roger Malbert is Senior Curator, Hayward Touring, at the Southbank Centre, London.  He organised and co-curated 'Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance' with Richard J. Powell and David A. Bailey (Hayward Gallery, 1997) and 'Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent', with Simon Njami (lead curator), David Elliott and Jean-Hubert Martin, for the Hayward Gallery in 2005.

15.30-15.45                       BREAK

 15.45-17.15                       3^rd panel & discussion

Transnational, Cross-disciplinarity and Historiographical Methods

This panel will consider approaches in different disciplines with regard to cultural developments within the African diaspora along the American continent. Its trans-disciplinary as well as transnational approach is aimed at highlighting a common methodological tool while stressing the cultural heterogeneity of the continent.

Three case studies will exemplify the diversity of approaches in terms of the presence and influence of black culture within three regions: USA, the Caribbean and Brazil. Although all panelists present a strong historiographical approach, their investigation focuses on the subject of black diasporic culture from different disciplines which range from: art history and its pedagogic development; cultural and political history; sociology and anthropology. In other words, the panel will investigate a variety of approaches ranging from the affirmation of identity, the advent of synchretism as a strategy for inhabiting a 'third space' and the issue of ethnicity in relation to political, cultural and social visibility.

•         How has the expansion of the field of cultural studies affected the dissemination of diasporic African culture and its pedagogy?

•         What strategies are available for the renewal of the field of art history in the light of recent international exhibitions?

•         What is the role of modernity in understanding contemporary diasporic African art and culture?

•         How do regional social and political histories affect the distinct ‘flavour’ of local cultural productions within our globalised world?

Chair: Dr. Michael Asbury

Dr Michael Asbury is a British/Brazilian art historian and curator. He obtained his MA at The University of Liverpool in the ‘Study of Contemporary Art’ and his PhD, at the London Institute investigated the work of Hélio Oiticica and its relation to modernism and Brazilian popular cultures. In 2000 he co-curated ‘Other Modernities: Foreign Investment, Milton Machado, Cildo Meireles and Yinka Shonibare’ as part of the International Congress of Art Historians (CIHA), and he was associate curator for the Rio de Janeiro section of ‘Century City: Art and the Modern Metropolis’, at Tate Modern in 2001. Recent curatorial projects include ‘Cildo Meireles: Occasion’ an offsite installation in conjunction with the artist’s exhibition at Tate Modern 2008. He is currently working with Camden Arts Centre as co-curator of ‘Anna Maria Maiolino: Continuous’, which will run from April to May 2010. Michael has written extensively as an art historian.

Panel members:

Cheryl Finley: Teaching Contemporary African Diaspora Art in a US Context

This paper examines some of the historical and methodological concerns related to the pedagogy of African Diaspora art history in the United States. Foundational texts like Thompson's Flash of the Spirit and essays such as Stuart Hall's "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" helped to shape the field of African Diaspora art history, and Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic has informed the work of many practicing contemporary artists of the African Diaspora. Pivotal exhibitions of contemporary African diaspora art have helped to move artists work from the margins to the centre of the art world, thus highlighting the African Diaspora's critical relationship to the discipline of art history.

***

Cheryl Finley is Associate Professor of Art History at Cornell University, New York.

Maria Iñigo Clavo: Rumours: Representations: Revolutions

This paper takes as its starting point a document claiming that: “Citizens shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks”. This appeal was in fact written in 1805 in the 14^th article of the Haitian Constitution in the context of the first Latin America Independent Revolution. The revolution itself has been marginalized from Latin American history since it consisted of an African slave insurgence and outside the European genealogies. Through an examination of Caribbean artists who work around this issue, this paper explores how the Haitian Revolution could be another example of how the African Diaspora connects different insurgence movements that interrogate Modern historiographies.

***

Maria Iñigo Clavo is Research Fellow in Art History at the University of Essex.

Livio Sansone: Sugar, Oil and the Black Atlantic

The paper explores the effects of sugar and oil, the first and the second key global commodity, on identity formation or, more specifically, how different global commodities relate to the making of blackness and whiteness. It focuses on the region surrounding Salvador, Bahia, where both commodities have had a great impact. Such comparison of life under the domination of these two different commodities has to be rimed with the Black Atlantic as method for understanding the circulation of the ideas of race, blackness and emancipation between Europe, Africa and the New World (Gilroy 1993). Sansone aims to present a perspective that combines the influence of the Black Atlantic with a specific colonial style (that can last very much longer than the colony itself) and the cultural dictatorship that accompanies the economics of a global commodity.

***

Livio Sansone is Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.

17.15-18.00               Plenary & discussion

Speakers from the conference panels will give a summary and conclusions from the whole day with a further opportunity for discussion.

This event is related to the Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic exhibition