CAA News Today
CAA Announces Exclusive Member Trip to Japan
posted by CAA — October 09, 2018
Makino Heinei gets blown away in the storm, an illustration from Ancient Tales & Folklore of Japan by R. Gordon Smith, 1908
Understanding Japan for CAA – Arts & crafts, history, religion & traditions
May 9-20, 2019
CAA is pleased to partner with Martin Randall Travel to offer an exclusive trip for scholars and artists to Japan.
“Understanding Japan for CAA – Arts & Crafts, History, Religion & Traditions” will take place May 9-20, 2019, and will be led by independent Japan scholar and CAA lifetime member, Pauline Chakmakjian.
Designed specifically for CAA members, this extensive tour will take visitors to the heart of Japan to explore its art and architecture, the continuing work of its craftspeople, its natural beauty and heritage, and modern Japan and its position in the world. Beginning in Tokyo, Understanding Japan for CAA promises to be a remarkable opportunity to engage with many aspects of the country. The tour features:
- Modern architecture in Tokyo and the contrasting traditional buildings in Shirakawa and Takayama.
- Stunning Buddhist temples and gardens in Kyoto, and the legendary, ancient shrine at Izumo.
- Traditional arts and crafts in Kanazawa.
- Overnights in a traditional ryokan (Japanese inn) and an onsen hotel (with natural hot spring bathing options).
- An exploration of the Japanese character in history and today, with specialist lectures by Pauline Chakmakjian.
More about Pauline Chakmakjian
Pauline Chakmakjian is an independent lecturer on a variety of subjects related to the history, fine arts and culture of Japan. She lectures for private member societies, corporate entertainment, private homes, universities, cruises, charities and other related organizations including lecture tours in Australia and New Zealand. She holds a BA in English Literature during which she was also awarded a Merit Scholarship in Fine Art, a Diploma in Law, an MA in Modern French Studies and is a member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. Pauline was elected onto the Board of the Japan Society of the United Kingdom from 2008–2014 and the Japan Society of Hawaii from 2015–2017. In 2014, Pauline was appointed a Visit Kyoto Ambassador by the Mayor of the City of Kyoto.
A portion of the proceeds from every trip will support CAA and its mission to advance art and design.
CAA Statement on Supreme Court Decision to Uphold Travel Ban
posted by CAA — June 26, 2018
In light of today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding President Trump’s travel ban, we are reposting our Statement from February 2017 here in its entirety. Our values have not changed.
As we stated when we joined two amicus briefs in May 2017, speaking out against this decision is inherent to our advocacy efforts and our international reach at CAA. The travel ban impacts the international attendees of our Annual Conference, it impinges on the flow of information and discussion between colleagues, and it harms the practice of research more broadly. See the statement below.
CAA Statement on Immigration Ban, February 2017
CAA, the largest professional group for artists and art historians in the United States, strongly condemns and expresses its grave concern about the recent presidential executive order aimed at limiting the movement of members of CAA and the broader community of arts professionals who fall under the selective set of criteria for national status or ethnic affiliation.
CAA has counted international scholars and artists among its members for many years. Committed to the common purpose of understanding the visual arts in all its forms, professionals throughout the world have enriched CAA’s community by adding diverse perspectives to the study, making, and teaching of art. With funding in recent years from the Getty Foundation to support travel and programs for scholars and curators from Africa, Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe, and Asia, the association now includes members from seventy countries. More than ten percent of our individual members are international. CAA has counted international scholars and artists among its members since the earliest years of its existence. The roots of CAA’s present-day international program stemmed from a desire to assist European refugees in the 1930s to support personal safety as well as academic and artistic freedom. During that decade, CAA had a “foreign membership” category; as art historians fled Hitler’s Europe, CAA ran a lecture bureau for refugee scholars that created speaking engagements for them at institutions throughout the United States.
The recently announced ban on travel to the United States for residents of seven predominantly Muslim countries not only goes against the inclusive, secular underpinnings of American democracy, it stifles the open access to scholarship and art upon which our work is founded. The executive order goes against our professional and scholarly commitment to diversity, the global exchange of ideas, and the respect for difference. The contribution of immigrants, foreign nationals, and people of all cultural backgrounds greatly strengthens our intellectual and creative world. Further, we believe the executive order law challenges the values at the heart of the US Constitution’s protections on speech and association as well as our national commitment to democratic process for all.
Turning our backs on refugees and closing our borders selectively stifles creative and intellectual work in addition to its very real impact on peoples’ daily lives. We call on our public officials to thwart this attempt to seemingly preserve our own safety at the expense of those who are vulnerable and who also contribute so much.
Without question, CAA welcomes all members and non-members to our upcoming Annual Conference to discuss and debate what constitutes a thriving artistic and intellectual society. Such openness is essential to our mission. We are committed through dialogue and action to help any CAA members who are affected by this policy. To this end, the association and the Board of Directors will continue to monitor and respond to policies related to this order as well as pressure for its immediate repeal.
See the original statement posted February 2017.
See CAA Amicus Brief on Trump’s Travel Ban, May 2017.
For more on CAA’s advocacy efforts, click here.
Apply for the 2019 CAA-Getty International Program
posted by CAA — June 11, 2018
Nomusa Makhubu, University of Cape Town, chair of the “Border Crossings: The Migration of Art, People, and Ideas” alumni panel at CAA 2018. Photo: Rafael Cardenas
The CAA-Getty International Program, generously supported by the Getty Foundation, provides funding to between fifteen and twenty art historians, museum curators, and artists who teach art history to attend CAA’s Annual Conferences. The goal of the project is to increase international participation in CAA, to diversify the association’s membership, and to foster collaborations between North American art historians, artists, and curators and their international colleagues.
ABOUT THE 2019 GRANT
The 2019 CAA-Getty International Program will support fifteen art historians, museum curators, and artists who teach art history to attend the 106th Annual Conference, taking place in New York City from February 13-16, 2019. The grant covers travel expenses, hotel accommodations for eight nights, per diems, conference registrations, and one-year CAA memberships. The program will include a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history on February 12, at which grant recipients will present and discuss their common professional interests and issues. Attendance at the preconference is limited and by invitation only. This year the grant also will fund five alumni from the CAA-Getty International Program to participate in the preconference colloquium and speak at a session during the conference. As they have in previous years, representatives from CAA’s membership will host program participants during the conference week.
ARE YOU ELIGIBLE?
Applicants must be practicing art historians who teach at a university or work as a curator in a museum, or artists who teach art history. They must have a good working knowledge of English and be available to participate in CAA events from February 12-16, 2019. Only professionals who have not attended a CAA conference previously, and who are from countries underrepresented in CAA’s membership are eligible to apply. The grant excludes scholars from North America, Western Europe, and Australia, whose countries are well represented in CAA. It further excludes scholars who have received funds from American foundations or research institutes to participate in conferences or residencies in the United States. Applicants do not need to be CAA members. This grant program is not open to graduate students or to those participating in the 2019 conference as chairs, speakers, or discussants.
HOW TO APPLY
Please review the application specifications and complete the application form. PLEASE NOTE: In order to apply, you need an temporary Member Number, which you get by contacting Member Services. If you have questions about the process or are unsure of your eligibility, please email Janet Landay, project director of the CAA-Getty International Program.
Applications should include:
- A completed application form
- A two-page version of the applicant’s CV
- A letter of recommendation from the chair, dean, or director of the applicant’s school, department, or museum
Applications must be submitted no later than Monday, August 27, 2018. Only applications submitted via the online form will be considered. CAA will notify applicants by Friday, October 5, 2018.
Getty Foundation Supports the CAA-Getty International Program for an Eighth Year
posted by CAA — June 05, 2018
The Getty Foundation has awarded CAA a grant to fund the CAA-Getty International Program for an eighth consecutive year. The Foundation’s support will enable CAA to bring twenty international visual-arts professionals to the 107th Annual Conference, taking place February 13-16, 2019 in New York City. Fifteen individuals will be first-time participants in the program and five will be alumni, returning to present papers during the conference. The CAA-Getty International Program provides funds for travel expenses, hotel accommodations, per diems, conference registrations, and one-year CAA memberships to art historians, artists who teach art history, and museum curators. The program will include a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history on February 12, 2019, to be held at Parsons School of Design.
Read about deadlines and the application process for the 2019 CAA-Getty International Program.
The CAA-Getty International Program was established to increase international participation in CAA and the CAA Annual Conference. The program fosters collaborations between North American art historians and curators and their international colleagues, and introduces visual arts professionals to the unique environments and contexts of practices in different countries. Since the CAA-Getty International Program’s inception in 2012, 105 scholars have participated in CAA’s Annual Conference. Historically, the majority of international registrants at the conference have come from North America, the United Kingdom, and Western European countries. The CAA-Getty International Program has greatly diversified attendance, adding scholars from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, Caribbean countries, and South America. The majority of the participants teach art history (or visual studies, art theory, or architectural history) at the university level; others are museum curators or researchers.
One measure of the program’s success is the remarkable number of international collaborations that have ensued, including an ongoing study of similarities and differences in the history of art among Eastern European countries and South Africa, attendance at other international conferences, publications in international journals, and participation in panels and sessions at subsequent CAA Annual Conferences. Former grant recipients have become ambassadors of CAA in their countries, sharing knowledge gained at the Annual Conference with their colleagues at home. The value of attending a CAA Annual Conference as a participant in the CAA-Getty International Program was succinctly summarized by alumnus Nazar Kozak, Senior Researcher, Department of Art Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine: “To put it simply, I understood that I can become part of a global scholarly community. I felt like I belong here.”
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS 2018
posted by CAA — May 29, 2018
In 2018, the CAA-Getty International Program featured two main events: a preconference colloquium on February 20 on international issues in art history at which all twenty scholars participated, and an alumni conference session on February 23 that featured five CAA-Getty alumni and an American-based scholar’s response. Included below is the program for the February 20 colloquium, followed by the abstracts and respondent’s remarks for the February 23 alumni conference session.
Now in its seventh year, the CAA-Getty International Program brought fifteen new participants and five alumni to the 2018 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Click here to read their bios and learn more. Photo: Rafael Cardenas
PROGRAM
Global Conversations 2018
Preconference Colloquium
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
The Getty Center
8:30 AM Coffee, welcome, and introductions
9:15 AM Postcolonial and Eurocentric Legacies
Chair: Peju Layiwola, Artist and Professor of Art History, Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, Nigeria
Beyond the Readymade: The Use of Found Objects in Contemporary South African Art
Alison Kearney, Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa
Resistance to Western Paradigms in East European and Latin American art from the late 1960s to 1989
Katarzyna Cytlak, Postdoctoral Researcher, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
The Emergence of Taiwan’s Modern Visual Art and the Formation of Identity
Hsin-tien Liao, Dean of College of the Humanities, National Taiwan University of the Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
10:15 AM Global Trends in Museum Research and Exhibitions
Chair: Ildiko Feher, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary
Digital Media Exhibition Curating in a University: the Case of the University of Port Harcourt Museum
John Agberia, Professor, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Thinking Cross-culturally: Asian Art in a Visual Dialogue,
Markéta Hánová, Director of the Collection of Asian Art, National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Gender Issues in Museums: Possibility, Provocation, Necessity?
Natalia Keller, Researcher of the Collection, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
11:15 AM Interdisciplinary and Transnational Methodologies
Chair: Nomusa Makhubu, Senior Lecturer of Art History, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Mirrors and the Invention of Perspective
Felipe Chaimovich, Chief Curator and Professor, Museo de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, Brazil
Experiments and Innovative Strategies in Croatian Photography during the 1960s and 1970s
Sandra Krizic-Roban, Senior Research Advisor, Institute of Art History, Zagreb, Croatia
Understanding African Art: an Interdisciplinary Exercise
Romuald Tchibozo, Senior Lecturer, University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin
12:15 PM Lunch
2:00 PM Cultural Identity, Politics, and the Powers of Art
Chair: Parul Pandya Dhar, Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art History, Department of History, University of Delhi, India
Tracing the Cultural Ideology of the Indus Valley People
Sarah Umer, PhD Coordinator/Assistant Professor, Lahore College for Women, Pakistan
Datok Fatimah in Chinese Body: The Homely and Unhomely Presence of a Klang House Temple
Simon Soon, Senior Lecturer, Visual Art Department, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Reenergized by the Maidan: A Conjunction of Art and Politics
Natalia Moussienko, Leading Research Fellow, Modern Art Research Institute, National Academy of Arts, Kyiv, Ukraine
3:00 PM Considering an International Art History Curriculum
Chair: Cezar Bartholomeu, Artist and Professor of Art History, School of Fine Arts, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Terminology and Methodology in Teaching Asian Art to Russian Art History Students
Anna Guseva, Associate Professor, Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia
A Chinese Perspective on Cross-cultural Transmissions of Art History
Chen Liu, Associate Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Translation and Change: Teaching Art History in Thailand
Thanavi Chotpradit, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
4:00 PM Open discussion
Moderator: Steven Nelson, Professor of African and African American Art and Director of the UCLA Center for African Studies
5:00-6:30 PM Cocktail Reception
Discussant Remarks for CAA-Getty Alumni Session
posted by CAA — May 22, 2018
Discussant Remarks for CAA-Getty Alumni Session, CAA Annual Conference, February 23, 2018
Saloni Mathur, University of California, Los Angeles
Firstly, it is important—and indeed powerful—that the participants on this panel, titled Border Crossings: The Migration of Art, People, and Ideas, have themselves journeyed from afar and crossed many borders to convene this “Global Conversation” today. Supported by the CAA-Getty International Program, which is now in its 7th year, and which has as its goal to build international participation in CAA in order to diversify and enrich membership in our scholarly community, today’s panelists and chairs are art historians who teach, work and write in South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria, Hungary and India. Together, they represent four continents (Europe, Asia, Africa and South America), and a wide range of art historical interests across a broad time span. In other words, this is no arm-chair exercise about an abstract topic—migration—but a kind of intellectual practice grounded in a dialectic between a shared approach to history, on the one hand, and a situated understanding of the present, on the other.
A number of questions arise at the outset related to the overarching theme of migration and border-crossing: What kind of analytic or optic does it provide? Is it a methodology in the disciplinary sense, or is it more of a perspective or thematic focus—one that clearly rejects stasis in favor of fluidity, mobility, and the connectedness of the world? In this session, we have seen the rubric of migration illuminate seemingly incommensurable topics: the migration of an individual artist from Japan to Brazil in the twentieth century (Cezar); the border crossings made possible by new communication technologies and their role in enhancing the discourses of art in Nigeria (Peju); the transmission of objects and aesthetic ideas within South and Southeast Asia in the premodern world (Parul); and the crises caused by distinctly anti-migration forces in contemporary Europe, in particular the role that the visual arts can have in response (Ildikó). This raises an opening meta-question: is this too many things? That is to say, does it make sense to think of the migration of people, art, objects, and ideas together as a coherent inquiry? Does the optic get stretched too thinly, and thus compromised as an analytical tool? Allow me to turn to each paper in a little more detail to ground my own optimistic response.
Cezar’s paper turned to the figure of the artist, and highlighted the relation between migration and artistic subjectivity in the example of photographer, Haruo Ohara, who was born in Japan in 1909 and migrated to Brazil in 1927, where he would live and work until the end of the century (until his death in 1999). Significantly, as Cezar points out, this was not a solo or lone experience of transplantation, but part of Brazilian state policy to “import” Japanese workers to replace the workforce that served on farms and plantations after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888. Locating Ohara’s journey within the migration policies of the Brazilian state and its shift to a “melting pot” ideology in the early 20th century, Cezar pointed to the complex dialectic between Ohara’s photographs of “nature”—farm-life and the Brazilian countryside—and the more “pragmatic” scenes of family life that dominate his second phase of work during the 1960s, often read as a record of his adaptation and assimilation. Cezar suggested that this assimilation was entangled in the complexities of Brazil’s unique racial fabric, but I am also struck by the strong outsider quality of Ohara’s rural (ie: non-metropolitan) photographic practice. And this leads to a question for Cezar: how does the rural-urban tension further complicate the story of Ohara’s modernist-migratory aesthetic, if we understand our narratives of the latter as often belonging to the cosmopolitan mixing of artists in the metropole? (Even Raymond Williams’ far-reaching account of the city-country relation seems to me to harbour this bias.)
Peju offered a case-study from Nigeria, namely, the platform of the CCA, Lagos, the influential art center founded by curator, Bisi Silva, in 2007, intended to raise the critical engagement with contemporary art in Africa, especially new media and experimental forms. The way that the CCA has employed communication technology – namely, internet, social media, and web-based platforms – has been especially transformative, she argued, in a developing or postcolonial society because it has nurtured connection, visibility, discussion and debate and galvanized a productive discourse about art. At this point, I think we may all recognize in Peju’s account the validity and centrality of what I might call – for lack of a better term – globalization’s electronic frontier. By this, I mean the radical potential of new technologies for the migration of knowledge, and for connecting human beings across time and space, and by extension, for galvanizing the discourses of art. But, by definition this terrain is a moving target, an entirely unprecedented and experimental horizon whose uses and abuses are also well known (think Facebook & its role in influencing elections, or the relentless commercialization of these platforms). In relation to art, the internet and social media can foster engagement in all the ways that Peju has shown; on the down side, it can also produce a thin-ness of quality, a lack of depth of writing, and perpetually distracted forms of reception fostered by the instant “like” formats of Facebook and Twitter. A question then that arises from Peju’s own critical assessment of the Lagos situation: how should we continue to think (to paraphrase her subtitle) about “fostering art linkages in the information age”? Especially for CCA, after a decade of success, what are the ways to continue to move the discourses of art (by embracing technology, but perhaps also not?) in ever-more generative ways?
Parul used the theme of migration to activate our historical imagination, and to take, as she stated, “a temporal leap backwards” to examine the linkages and networks across the Indian Ocean in the pre-modern period of South Asian art history. Highlighting two particular modes of transmission — “itinerant concepts” and “voyaging objects” – Parul showed how architecture and monuments (ie: built forms fixed in time and space, and therefore the most recalcitrant from a migration perspective) can be read through iconography to reveal stories of migration in the pre-modern world. Moreover, the built environment was also represented (in terracotta objects, illustrated manuscripts, miniature models, and so on) and carried by pilgrims and traders in their journeys, offered up as gifts or souvenirs. And these, in the case of the Mahabodhi temple, appeared to inspire similar buildings in other parts of pre-modern Asia, namely, in contemporary China, Burma, Thailand, Nepal & Tibet. What results, Parul argues, is “a rich visual archive of intra-Asian travel.” In following such chains of transmission, how should we also avoid re-inscribing the original vs. copy dilemma, and the hierarchical value structure these designations have so long entailed? I am reminded here of Cezar’s objections to those interpretations of Ohara’s photographs that embarked on a search for their Japanese roots. In other words, journeys also imply origins or roots, and we should be cautious about privileging the former without essentializing or fixing the latter.
Finally, shifting to Ildikó’s report: it comes from the front lines of a fraught battle over migration today, namely, from land-locked Hungary, located on the journey from Syria and the Middle East to Western Europe, and whose right-wing government has famously assumed a hostile, anti-migrant policy that is under close scrutiny by Human Rights Watch. Citing TJ Demos’ work that focusses on the intersections between art, activism and contemporary politics, Ildikó points to the responsibility that we – as professors, art historians and students of culture – have to research, document and engage with the damaging effects upon human lives for those (unlike ourselves) who are denied the entrance and mobility necessary for all acts of migration. Here, the rubric of migration and mobility must be conceived through the dialectics and crises caused by detention and immobility. Ildiko’s concerns, drawn as they are from the situation in Europe, should not be lost upon those of us who work in North America today, where border walls, mass deportations, and so-called “Muslim bans” have also become official government policy, and where xenophobic fear and anti-immigrant hatred has found expression in historically unprecedented ways. Ildikó’s question is worth repeating and putting to all of us yet again: what is, and can be, the role of art in such a situation, and how can and should art history respond to the hostile, real-life wave of anti-migrant sentiment that we see today all over the world?
In other words, as borders themselves become strengthened and fortified, inciting fierce protectionism and xenophobic nationalism, it becomes all the more clear how important a migration perspective is for humanistic understanding. For borders and boundaries are continually re-made and un-made, and are therefore mutable and subject to change. Artists, curators, teachers can intervene through imaginative acts to counter the terrible hold that far-right discourses have gained on the psyche; we can interrogate how certain views become normalized and acceptable, and refuse the acts of violence and militarism that border politics unleash. To the extent that all of the papers today have highlighted border-crossing interventions that support alternate ways of seeing, they can be viewed as already having journeyed across a threshold of some sort.
Parul Pandya Dhar Abstract
posted by CAA — May 22, 2018
2018 Global Conversations
Border Crossings: The Migration of Art, People, and Ideas
Sponsored by the CAA-Getty International Program and CAA’s International Committee
Featuring five alumni of the CAA-Getty International Program
Panelist: Parul Pandya Dhar
Affiliation: University of Delhi, India
Paper Title: The Mediation of the Object: Iconographies of Travel Across the Indian Ocean
As 21st-century members of a global community accustomed to instant worldwide networks, it takes a certain degree of ‘historical imagination’ to comprehend the nature of interaction systems that had linked pre-modern societies and cultures. My paper explores the theme of ‘art and migration’ across early Indian Ocean linkages, specifically the movement of artistic ideas, objects, and people between India and Southeast Asia during the sixth to tenth centuries CE. These long-distance material and human migrations transpired on account of a variety of reasons such as pilgrimage, trade, war, diplomatic embassies, and more. Narratives of such travels and translocations, and of their subsequent localization in the different zones of contact, offer rewarding opportunities for investigating cross-cultural histories of art. Towards this objective, I will take up select case studies to explore the mobility of art-objects and their relationships to the journeys of people along the maritime silk route(s).
At a methodological level, I will examine the important role played by portable objects such as tiny terracottas, bronzes, illustrated manuscripts and miniature architectural models in the formulation of newer art vocabularies in distant lands, and the inextricable ways in which such material movements are tied to human endeavor and impulse for travel. My paper will highlight the specific circumstances for such translocations and translations and their bearing on particular art forms. In doing so, the paper foregrounds key methodological concerns to help understand the role of human journeys and migrant objects in shaping connected histories of early South and Southeast Asian art.
Ildikó Fehér Abstract
posted by CAA — May 22, 2018
2018 Global Conversations
Border Crossings: The Migration of Art, People, and Ideas
Sponsored by the CAA-Getty International Program and CAA’s International Committee
Featuring five alumni of the CAA-Getty International Program
Panelist: Ildikó Fehér
Affiliation: Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Hungary
Paper Title: Art and Migration Politics
Anett Hamori, 2015
According to politicians discussing the migration of refugees into Europe, we live in the most critical times since World War II. My country, Hungary, is on the migration route from Syria to Western Europe. It will be a long and difficult process to understand the social effects and other consequences of this modern age’s migration. Still, the way artist, historians, and scientists deal with it and examine the subject can help to avoid fears, from the unknown to the unfamiliar.
Due to its political decisions, my country has frequently made headlines. There is no doubt that artists reacted immediately and in a very sensitive way to these new social challenges. I am convinced that we—art historians and professors—have the responsibility to study, document, and evaluate the works of art made by these artists in all of their aspects.
Tibor Iski Kocsis, 2015
In addition to the state-run, state-sponsored art exhibitions, there are alternative, independent, off-the-main-stream presentations of art that express the opinion of many artists and intellectuals driven by the urge to document the plight of these immigrants and explore the facts of current events. They use methods such as photography, street art, new media, or in the case of painting, Hyperrealism, a previously popular style that has been reborn today.
Brexit is also dividing Europe. What is the ultimate goal for our political structure: a united continent or political independence that emphasizes national interests? Which one is preferred? My paper will discuss how these issues and dilemmas are explored in contemporary fine arts, and new media.
Peju Layiwola Abstract
posted by CAA — May 22, 2018
2018 Global Conversations
Border Crossings: The Migration of Art, People, and Ideas
Sponsored by the CAA-Getty International Program and CAA’s International Committee
Featuring five alumni of the CAA-Getty International Program
Panelist: Peju Layiwola
Affiliation: University of Lagos, Nigeria
Paper Title: Conversations Across Borders: Fostering Art linkages in the Age of Information Technology
The limited capacity of African artists to participate in major art events and blockbuster exhibitions has sometimes been attributed to where they live. African artists who reside in the Global North appear to participate in exhibitions with greater ease. However, with improved technology, artists based on the African continent are increasingly becoming more visible, participating in biennales, art auctions, mega exhibitions and other artistic engagements that had previously been unavailable to them. With a growing reliance on the Internet and social media, there has been a gradual erasure of distance, so that the idea of “the Center” in artistic production and exhibition is giving way to multiple centers. This paper looks at the impact of digital communication technology in bringing about transnational and transcultural conversations amongst artists. The focus will be on how a curator like Bisi Silva, through her Centre for Contemporary Arts, based in Lagos, Nigeria, is using the Internet to disseminate information about her work and making connections with artists and other curators across distance and borders.
Cezar Bartholomeu Abstract
posted by CAA — May 22, 2018
2018 Global Conversations
Border Crossings: The Migration of Art, People, and Ideas
Sponsored by the CAA-Getty International Program and CAA’s International Committee
Featuring five alumni of the CAA-Getty International Program
Panelist: Cezar Bartholomeu
Affiliation: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Paper Title: Haruo Ohara’s photography: Japanese blossom in Brazilian culture
Haruo Ohara migrated from Japan to the south of Brazil in the 1950s to be part of an agricultural workforce formed to continuously replace slaves who were freed in 1888. As a photographer, his work encompasses three types of images: an ethnographic documentation of migration, a biographical album of life on the modern plantation, and an aesthetic portfolio of photographs that relates Brazil to modern Japan.
This paper situates Ohara’s work critically in Brazilian culture, while observing multiple contexts in which race and art are deeply intertwined. For that, it is necessary to consider the concept of nature in Brazil and Japan, the structure of the plantation, concepts of art and photography at the time, as well as the lack of representation of black people in plantations (or any manual labor in Brazil, for that matter). The paper also considers Ohara’s work both in a transnational and historiographical context. Within the scope of one paper, Ohara’s concept of nature will be considered through a limited number of representative photographs. Far from the idea of a menace—a “green hell,” in Ohara’s works—nature is not only a recurring theme, but may also be seen as a symbolic space where Brazilian culture, labor, and humanity are represented. The aesthetic idealization of nature tells us of the dramatic differences of life in plantations from the nineteenth century, where slaves were considered part of nature, and thus kept from proper rights within humanity, and in the 20th century, marked by European migration.