Ties that Bind
Featured Bastardized Electoral System: The Conceptual Ceramics Perspective View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jonathan Ebute Okewu
The yearning for just and improved political systems in Africa to deliver the dividend of democracy to its populace is clamoured for every now and then. A faulty process that breeds wrong leadership is prevalent. This affects everybody including the artists. This conceptual ceramic venture portrays in artistic fashion some of the elements of bastardization that characterize electioneering process in Africa and how this has contributed to ill-fated leadership styles. Clay is the motto used for conveying this thought and bringing to representativeness. It is a malleable material that yields to manipulation and forming. Clay gives the ceramic artist the “voice” to be able to contribute to issues of national debate and by extension, bring about redress. A process that has been coined in context of this study as “construction and deconstruction of clay forms” has been employed in generating the interrogative ceramic art work. The art work presents a tactile clay version of rot inherent in Africa voting systems. Issues of under-age voting, ghost voters and ballot manipulation have been portrayed via this medium. This work is a pointer that all is not well with the system of elections in Africa. By this work, also, it is a reminder that credible leaders can only emerge from a credible process and not a bastardized process currently ravaging the continent.
Featured Scripting the Unscripted: Text-art Encounter with the Matriarchal Mosuo Culture View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lulu Ao
This paper centres on the Mosuo culture, a unique matrilineal society in southwestern China, which has no written language. While much of the academic and popular focus has been on its matriarchal aspects, such as its distinctive matrimonial practices, this study underscores the often-overlooked significance of the Mosuo's rich oral tradition. The central challenge tackled in this research is representing the Mosuo—a culture where linguistic nuances remain primarily unexplored—through text art, a medium predominantly linked to written expressions. Venturing into this less-charted terrain, the research introduces novel academic pathways in text art. Simultaneously, it offers a balanced critique of dominant Western perspectives, challenging their sometimes superficial portrayals of the Mosuo culture. Grounded in participant observation, in-depth interviews, and studio practices, the study delves deeply into the Mosuo's linguistic dynamics, juxtaposed with its more widely recognized cultural attributes. Central to the discussion is the author's text artwork, Mosuo Language (2022). This piece innovatively translates the Mosuo's intricate oral patterns into captivating visual representations using the International Phonetic Alphabet. This approach instigates renewed discussions in contemporary text art and highlights its potential to encapsulate cultures with understudied linguistic facets. In conclusion, this exploration provides valuable insights into portraying lesser-studied linguistic aspects of cultures in text art, emphasizing the versatility of the medium and paving the way for future interdisciplinary endeavours.
Group Work, Feminism, and the Second Hayward Annual’s All-Female Jury
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jessica Braum
The formation of artist groups was a key feature of London’s cultural landscape in the 1970s. Guy Brett identified the “growing politician consciousness which accompanied the….feminist, black, and gay movements,” as a central impetus of such groups. Historically, groups are apodictic for feminist practice. In 1978, artists Liliane Lijn, Tess Jaray, Kim Lim, Gillian Wise, and Rita Donagh curated the second Hayward Annual ’78 (HAII). They selected works of art based on their conviction that “aesthetic quality had suffered from the previously ‘exclusive’ bias toward male artists.” The cohort of exhibiting artists comprised sixteen women and seven men, thus challenging the prevailing norm in major surveys conducted in Britain which largely excluded women artists. Liliane Lijn said, “We weren’t part of a feminist group, but doing this made us one.” Through consideration of the activism leading up to the formation of the all-female jury, the exhibited artworks, and the antagonistic critical reception to show, this paper proposes that this group functioned as a foil to the parochial frame through which institutionally-sanctioned British art was prospected. Drawing on Griselda Pollock’s consideration of HAII as an intervention by women in the art establishment and Amy Tobin’s reading of feminist collaboration as an intimate and expansive mode of creating, curating, and exhibiting art, this paper examines how the curation of HAII functioned as a progressive critique of structural imbalances in contemporaneous exhibition practices thus positioning the formation of this group as a significant moment in the context of British and feminist art histories.
Art Will Tear Us Apart: A Theoretical Investigation on the Civic Role and Expectations from the Artist in Climate Change Discourse View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Danai Papathanasiou
The paper seeks to understand the extent of an artist’s civic function and the communicating potential of the artistic output in climate change discourse. The topics of the Anthropocene and climate crisis have predominated calls for artist residencies, creative funds and exhibitions, culminating to a conflicting motivation for the artist’s work. First, they require autonomy to pursue projects in line with their creative interests. On the other hand, artists must accommodate the interests and objectives of their patrons, which in the case of the Anthropocene discourse, requires participation in the communication, education and dealing of climate crisis. This paper takes an interdisciplinary look into the artist’s role in climate change discourse, through political science and cultural economy. The artists here are regarded as “self-authorized representatives” (Urbinati & Warren, 2008) whose representative function is that of a trustee rather than a delegate. Such an arrangement balances the need to accommodate the interests of patrons and marquee issues while giving artists liberty to augment, shape, and challenge the public interests and the demands of the market. Simultaneously, the artistic output is challenged as a means of communication of climate change, based on Bourdieu’s (1979) class and taste distinction and Jasannof’s (2021) hegemony of epistemic knowledge. As such, the artistic output reaches the audience with pre-existing cultural and ecological capital, without creating further communication bridges.
