Restitution and Return
The discussion raises contemporary questions of restitution of cultural property taken during periods of colonial expansion.
Anthropology and I: My Time at the University of Paris Department of Ethnology
This source is an English translation by Stephanie M. Hohlios of a compelling 1971 memoir-essay by Japanese artist Okamoto Tarō—“Watashi to jinruigaku: pari daigaku minzoku gakka no koro (Anthropology and I: My Time at the University of Paris Department of Ethnology)”. Okamoto’s essay “Anthropology and I” sheds light on a widely recognized but little understood…
New York, Site of International Crossings
The session explores New York as a site of intersections of artists from around the world who have passed through or settled in the city.
The Multiplication of Perspectives: Opening Keynote
In the keynote lecture, Zdenka Badovinac introduces her concept of the “sustainable museum,” and explores possible translocal approaches to exhibition practice from the so-called periphery, nevertheless situated within the neoliberal global network of art museums and biennials.
Borders and the Barrier of the Skin
A key contradiction of globalization is its facilitation of the movement of goods while the movement of people is increasingly restricted. Furthering this tendency, biometric technologies have expanded the traditional notion of the border, regulating the circulation of gendered, racialized, and classed bodies.
Documenting Migration in Contemporary Art: Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project
How to raise awareness of the most recent refugee crisis in the Mediterranean in a way that does not spectacularize human suffering? Beginning with Bouchra Khalili’sThe Mapping Journey Project, this essay addresses how the present crisis has manifested as image and has made its way, across a variety of methodological and ethical approaches, into works of…
Breathing
Song Dong’s 1996 Breathing—a work that zeroes in on the act of breathing in two charged public spaces in Beijing—speaks to art as intertwined with the practice of living, resistance as well as futility.
Xu Bing’s Cropland (1987)
In Xu Bing’s Cropland, part of the Series of Five Repetitions (1987-88), Chinese characters double as landscape depiction, creating a liminal work that resonates between word and image, representation and abstraction.
Away from the Frontlines: Olga Rozanova and Aleksei Kruchenykh’s 1916 Album War
The 1916 album War by Olga Rozanova, made in collaboration with Aleksei Kruchenykh, draws upon the visual and linguistic vocabularies of Futurism and Suprematism to explore the trauma of war.
Hamaya Hiroshi: The Faces of Postwar Japan
Hamaya Hiroshi’s Composition of December 1953 becomes a marker of US occupation and the climate of post-war Japan.
Jac Leirner’s Lung and Untranslatability
Made of 1200 cigarette packs, Jac Leirner’s Lung works both reflect the consumerism of which they are born but also transcend far beyond it while conjuring tropes from Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Pop Art as well as Neo-Concrete art of her native Brazil.
Telling Secrets: Abu Bakarr Mansaray’s Sinister Project
Responding with imagination to the brutality and violence of Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002), Abu Bakarr Mansaray’s monumental drawing Sinister Project depicts a fictitious war machine with careful detail that reveals the artist’s background in science and engineering.