Invitation to Keynote Speech_Guggenheim Abu Dhabi_Manarat Al Saadiyat
: Salah Hassan mailto:mailto:mailto:mailto:mailto:(
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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Curatorial Seminar: African Art
Keynote Speech
Date: March /24/2015
Time: 18:30 PM – 20:00 PM
Location: Manarat Al Saadiyat
18:30-20:00
Africa in Europe, Europe in Africa: Who is the Afropolitan?
Salah M. Hassan, Goldwin Smith Professor, Cornell University
Salah M. Hassanis the Goldwin Smith Professor and Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM), and Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture in the Africana Studies and Research Center, and the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University. He is also a curator and art critic. He is editor and founder Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (Duke University Press). He authored, edited and co-edited several books including Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (Museum For African Art and Tate Modern, 2012, 2013); Darfur and the Crisis of Governance: A Critical Reader (2009); Diaspora, Memory, Place (2008);Unpacking Europe (2001]; Art and Islamic Literacy among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria (1992) among others. He is currently working on a book length manuscript and an exhibition entitled The Khartoum School: The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan (1945-Present).
Abstract: The field of contemporary African and African diaspora art and culture is currently riddled by two paradoxes: On the one hand, in Africa and its diaspora we are witnessing a burgeoning of creative energy and an increasing visibility of artists in the international arenas. Yet such energy and visibility has not been matched with a parallel regime of art criticism that lives up to their levels. On the other hand, we find a rising interest in exhibiting and collecting works by contemporary African and diaspora artists among western museums, private and public collections. However, such interest has been taking place within a xenophobic environment of anti-immigration legislations and closing of borders in the west. This paper addresses the need for an innovative framework to provide the critical unpacking of such paradoxes, and to offer a critical analysis of contemporary African and African diaspora artistic production. In doing so, the paper asserts the importance of movement, mobility, and transiency in addressing issues of contemporary African artistic and cultural production. The paper focuses on the use of the term “Afropolitan,” which has made its way into African artistic and literary criticism as a crossover from the fashion and popular culture arena. In thinking about the usefulness of“Afropolitanism”, the paper revisits the notion of “cosmopolitanism” in relationship to the entanglement of Africa and the West and its reconfiguration at the intersection of Modernity and postcoloniality.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
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Salah M. Hassan
Goldwin Smith Professor and Director
Institute for Comparative Modernities
Cornell University
The Toboggan Lodge
38 Forest Home Drive
Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Tel. (607) 255-8073
Fax. (607) 254-7244