Art and Culture / African Studies Lecture

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“Prismatic Scatterings: Tracing Networks of Global Modernists in post-war Europe”
by Dr. Elizabeth Harney, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Toronto.

This project focuses on the histories of visual practice amongst artists hailing from colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and African Americans working in post-war Europe. It will challenge standard histories of this historical moment by identifying the “connective tissues” of modernity that supported diverse communities of practice. Standard histories of the postwar moment omit the vibrant intellectual networks of global artists working in Europe. Like those of an earlier inter-war generation, these artists–united in their shared condition of exile and with continued ties to “elsewhere”– networked in salons, studios, art academies, jazz halls and cafes. A number worked alongside colleagues in the Art Informel, Cobra, or Lettrism movements. They developed their practices in the shadow of the Algerian revolution, within the psychic and political struggles of decolonization and “thirdworldism,” and against the backdrop of post-war socio-cultural revolutions and Cold War politics.

7:00 p.m., February 28, Carleton University Art Gallery.

Sponsored by the School for Studies in Art and Culture, the Institute of African Studies, and the Carleton University Art Gallery.