Contemporary Art at the Nexus of Cultures

My paper engages decolonial theory to explore the dynamic exchanges that materialize today at sites where the aesthetic ideals and values of disparate art frameworks meet. I acknowledge Western art’s epistemic dominance and proliferation but supplant its illusion of universality by recognizing a multiplicity of equally valid coexisting art formations with their own artistic narratives and practices. My thesis is that the sites of encounter between the Western and other art frameworks are where artists produce much of today’s most innovative and transformative art. 

Readings

Seminar participants are invited to read the following two texts (six pages) in advance of the seminar: 

• Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language,” in Isidore Okpewho, ed., ThingsFall Apart: A Casebook (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 62-63;
   
• Ngūgī wa Thiong’o,  “Decolonizing the Mind,” Diogenes, 184:46/4 (Winter 1998), 101-104. 

Part of the Art History Seminar Series, convened by Mary Roberts and presented by the discipline of art history at the University of Sydney, with support from the Power Institute.

This seminar is also accessible via Zoom (click here to join).