EMPIRE LINES

EMPIRE LINES

EMPIRE LINES uncovers the unexpected, often two-way, flows of empires through art. Interdisciplinary thinkers use individual artworks as artefacts of imperial exchange, revealing the how and why of the monolith ‘empire’. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Read articles, and join talks, tours, events, and exhibitions: jelsofron.com/empire-lines Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines TRANSCRIPTS: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-pwfn4U_P1o2oT2Zfb7CoCWadZ3-pO4C?usp=sharing MUSIC: Combinación // The Dubbstyle PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic

Episoder(151)

Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library)

Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library)

Writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga moves between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil, sounding out colonial histories and contemporary migrant experiences through kizomba and kuduro music, in Whites Can Dance Too (2023). ‘It took being caught at a border without proper documents for me to realise I'd always been a prisoner of sorts.’ Kalaf Epalanga’s debut novel follows a young man migrating from Africa to Western Europe, when he is suddenly stopped on his journey and demanded his papers by the immigration police. Finding work in various jobs, he does soon find community - and freedom - in the dance clubs of the cities. Whites Can Dance Too is an invitation to ‘embrace the other’ and it's also a form of auto-fiction. Kalaf migrated from Angola to Portugal, the former a colony, known as Portuguese West Africa until 1951, which remained a province and state of the Portuguese Empire until 1975. First publishing in Portuguese, Kalaf details the legacies of this colonisation in contemporary culture, taking from the Latin tradition of writing the stream of consciousness, and challenging Anglophone standards with oral storytelling. Kalaf also talks about his relationship with translation - and why the English language edition is his favourite. Drawing on his background in electronic dance music, Kalaf relocates techno on the African continent, combining elements of the traditional African zouk and contemporary kuduro genres to design kizomba, or dance parties. We talk about sound as a vibration - a migration - which can articulate emotions and memories beyond words, and why curating exhibitions or DJ sets is a form of storytelling too. Traveling across continents, he shares some of his literary inspirations, from Ondjaki to Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, and how he has connected with Afro-Brazilians since working in South America. We also discuss the relationship between diasporas in the Global South, and the importance of supporting cultural and literary industries. Whites Can Dance Too by Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn, is published by Faber, and available in all good bookshops and online. You can find Kalaf’s book playlist here, and the Kizomba Design Museum playlists here. For more artists practicing between Angola and Portugal, listen to Osei Bonsu, curator of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, on Edson Chagas’ Tipo Passe series (2014) on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410 WITH: Kalaf Epalanga, Angolan musician and writer. Now based in Berlin, Germany, he is a celebrated columnist in Angola, Portugal, and Brazil. He fronted the Lisbon-based electronic dance collective Buraka Som Sistema, and founded the Kizomba Design Museum, which launched at the São Paulo Biennial 2023. He was also co-curator of Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library in London. Whites Can Dance Too is his debut novel. ART: ‘Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

21 Des 202315min

Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)

Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)

Contemporary artist Maha Ahmed reconnects Asian art forms along the Silk Road, migrating between traditional Mughal and Persian miniature paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and imported Islamic ceramics. Where Worlds Meet captures both Maha Ahmed’s practice and life. Born in 1989 in Pakistan, she first studied Miniature Painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore from Imran Qureshi, pursuing her practice in that city, and also London, Tokyo, and Dubai, where she is currently based. Ahmed’s detailed paintings relate to her own migrations, each one populated with one or two birds in flight. Over time, her titles have shifted, from references to noise, towards solitude, emptiness, and meeting ‘a wall at every turn’. Ahmed speaks about her experience of isolation in Japan, and the loneliness shared by many during COVID lockdowns. But she also shares how Japan offered her many meeting points in her artistic journey, as displayed in her Leighton House exhibition. Maha’s miniatures draw from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts, and classical Japanese forms. Though historically-informed, her application of colour is wholly contemporary, with rich greens and blues lent from her time working at an illustration studio in Tokyo. She talks about about artistic exchanges between Asia and East Asia, and how woodblock prints, pigments, and dyes were often traded along the Silk Road, inspiring interdisciplinary and multimedia artworks. These are cultural histories which decentre and exclude Western Europe entirely, often absent in the art historical canon. The artist also combines historic and contemporary media; some are aged, with paint layered atop tea and coffee-stained paper, and some are stark and modern. She links back to London with ‘An Unfolding’ (2023), a work specially commissioned for Leighton House, which references the importance of colour in ‘non-representational’ art. Ahmed also details how she draws from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and how, as a Muslim, she feels ‘comfortable appropriating’ the colours of its 18th century Arab Hall, adorned with vivid ceramic tiles from Turkey and Greece, Egypt and Syria. Maha Ahmed: Where Worlds Meet runs at Leighton House in London until 3 March 2024.For more, you can read my article in recessed.space: recessed.space/00156-Maha-Ahmed-Leighton-House For more about Oneness (2022) at Leighton House, hear artist Shahrzad Ghaffari on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a8cb557e566005623d9ad59e8e0a3340 For more about Imran Qureshi, listen to Hammad Nasar in the EMPIRE LINES episode on Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009): pod.link/1533637675/episode/f6e05083a7ee933e33f15628b5f0f209 And read more about the exhibition, Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now, at MK Gallery and The Box, in my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery WITH: Maha Ahmed, contemporary artist, whose works draw inspiration from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts and classical Japanese painting techniques. She has lived and worked in Lahore, London, and Tokyo, and is currently based in Dubai. She is represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London, and Galerie Isa in Dubai. ART: ‘Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023)’. EDITOR: Luke Matthews. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

14 Des 202315min

Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

For EMPIRE LINES’ 100th episode, we join artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to journey the Columbian Exchange, connecting continents from the 15th century, and contemporary port cities from Plymouth to Sharjah and Venice. The Columbian Exchange refers to the widespread transfer of plants, animals, goods, and people between the Americas, Afro-Eurasia and Europe - or the ‘Old’ and ‘New World’ - since the 1400s. With five screens, Arcadia considers these layered, overlapping journeys, travelling across stormy seas and sublime, epic landscapes. But these histories are also ‘interrupted’ with symbolic images of trade, disease, and smallpox, highlighting the fatal, often ‘genocidal’, nature of colonial encounters. Artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah talks about his intersectional, environmentally-engaged films, comparing previous works like Purple (2017) to this first ‘post-human project’. He connects historic viruses - often represented by Indigenous cultures in vivid oral and visual sources like Aztec codexes and ‘plague journals’ - with his experience producing during the COVID pandemic. Drawing on his work with the Black Audio Film Collective, John shares his collaborative, ‘democratic’ approach to filmmaking. And, 400 years since the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth to transport the Pilgrims to North America, we discuss the meaning of Arcadia’s immersive cinematic display for the port city today. John Akomfrah: Arcadia runs at The Box in Plymouth runs at The Box in Plymouth until 2 June 2024. He will represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale 2024⁠ in Italy from 20 April to 24 November 2024. For more on water and migration on film, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7 For more on sublime landscapes, listen to photographer David Sanya on the EMPIRE LINES episode about Lagos Soundscapes, Emeka Ogboh (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d WITH: Sir John Akomfrah CBE RA, British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), and now Smoking Dogs Films, with works including The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work recently on display at Tate Britain. Arcadia (2023), which premiered at the Sharjah Biennial 15 in the United Arab Emirates, is co-commissioned by The Box, Plymouth, Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam, and Sharjah Art Foundation. ART: ‘Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

7 Des 202313min

Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993) (EMPIRE LINES x Kunstmuseum Basel)

Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993) (EMPIRE LINES x Kunstmuseum Basel)

Curator Alice Wilke transports from Switzerland to sub-Saharan cities in Africa, tracing Carnival traditions across continents, via Carrie Mae Weems’ 20th century wallpapers, ceramic plates, and photographs.In 1993, the North American artist Carrie Mae Weems undertook a ‘pilgrimage’ to West Africa to discover her heritage. With photographs of historic architectures, former slave sites, and colonies, she seeks to retell histories about the origins of civilisation - but ones which also highlight her position as a contemporary artist practicing from a diaspora.As The Evidence of Things Not Seen - the final stop on Weems’ current ‘world tour’ of exhibitions - opens in Switzerland, curator Alice Wilke talks about how the show has changed from between the Barbican, in London, and Basel. Starting with the Missing Link series (2003), we consider the particular history of Carnival in Basel, a time of social and political critique, and tradition with unexpected connections to the Caribbean. We see how Weems relocates celebrated - and celebrity - Black women like Mary J. Blige in her practice, composing photographs like Baroque paintings to play on conventions of Western/European art, and keep stories alive through their retelling. Moving through Weems’ wider work, we consider the racism, internalised shadism, and hyper-visibility of Black people in society, and what European institutions haven’t yet seen, in their under-representation of POC artists.Carrie Mae Weems. The Evidence of Things Not Seen runs at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland until 7 April 2024. For more, you can read my article in Shade Art Review: shadepodcast.substack.com/p/jelena-sofronijevic-revisits-carriePart of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.Return to Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now at the Barbican in London, with curator Florence Ostende’s EMPIRE LINES episode on From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-1996): pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3daFor more about Weems’ wallpapers, read about BLACK VENUS: Reclaiming Black Women in Visual Culture at Somerset House, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-houseFor more about Dogon architecture in Africa, listen to Dr. Peter Clericuzio’s episode on The Great Mosque(s) of Djenné, Mali, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/079e9ccf333c54e7116ce0f9a6e7a70cWITH: Alice Wilke, assistant curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. She has worked as a research assistant at the city’s HGK FHNW Art Institute, where she supervised the podcast series Promise No Promises!, the Kunsthalle Göppingen, and the Museum Tinguely. She is the assistant curator of The Evidence of Things Not Seen, with curator Maja Wismer.ART: ‘Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993)’.PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastAnd Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

30 Nov 202313min

Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009) (EMPIRE LINES x MK Gallery, The Box)

Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009) (EMPIRE LINES x MK Gallery, The Box)

Curator Hammad Nasar expands ideas of miniature painting, moving around South Asia and Western Europe from the 17th century to now, with Nusra Latif Qureshi’s 2009 digital print scroll, Did You Come Here To Find History? Beyond the Page, a touring exhibition of South Asian miniatures, is truly historic and historical. At its core are more than 180 detailed, small-scale works on paper, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the time when the Mughal Empire ruled over much of South Asia. But these miniature paintings are borrowed not from contemporary India or Pakistan, but the British Museum in London, the Tate and V&A, and the Royal Collection. So how did this wealth of South Asian miniature paintings come to be held (and hidden away) in Britain’s greatest collections – and what does it mean for this sheer quantity to be here now? Hammad Nasar, one of the exhibition’s curators, puts these works in conversation with those by leading contemporary artists from South Asia and its diasporas, including Hamra Abbas, Imran Qureshi, Shahzia Sikander, Khadim Ali, and Ali Kazim. We consider their practice across media, highlighting the different forms in which miniature practice lives and lives on, whether in sculpture, film, or architectural installations. Travelling along Nusra Latif Qureshi’s digital-printed scroll, we unpick the layers of portraits, from contemporary passport photographs, to traditional portraits from Venice and Mughal India. With a miniature painting of Saint Rabia, the first female saint in Sufi Islam, Hammad also highlights how women and the body have been represented in Islamic cultures, pluralising perspectives on the past. Connecting Britain and South Asia, we consider the foundation of the world-renowned Miniature Department of the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan, and how artists have long engaged with a range of non-Western/European media, including Japanese woodblock prints. Hammad defies the marginalisation of miniatures – due to their size, and ‘non-conventional’ means of distribution and display – suggesting that art markets and institutions must ‘grow up’ in their appreciation of the media. We also trace migrations and two-way flows, how courtly and Company paintings influenced well-known Dutch Masters like Rembrandt, to Anwar Jalal Shemza, a multidisciplinary artist of modernist and abstract works. Plus, Hammad talks about the ‘empire-shaped hole’ in British history, and why it is important that we share uncomfortable histories like the legacy of the East India Company to challenge the displacement of empire, as something that happened over there and then. ‍Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now runs at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes until 28 January 2024, then The Box in Plymouth in 2024. For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery. Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100. For more on contemporary miniature painting, hear contemporary artist Maha Ahmed on Where Worlds Meet (2023) at Leighton House in London, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/fef9477c4ce4adafc2a2dc82fbad82ab WITH: Hammad Nasar, curator, writer and researcher. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, where he co-leads the London, Asia Programme, and co-curator of the British Art Show 9 (2020–2022). He is the co-curator of Beyond the Page, an exhibition supported by the Bagri Foundation. ART: ‘Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

23 Nov 202322min

Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

Photographer Hélène Amouzou, and curator Bindi Vora, capture the in/visibility of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe, moving between 21st century Togo and Belgium in a series of haunting autoportraits.Born in Togo, and now based in Belgium, Hélène Amouzou’s self-portraits consider how migration has shaped her identity. Her blurred, ghostly figure, set against suitcases, and the peeling wallpaper of a destitute attic, suggests at the sense of in/visibility, and the particular experiences of women trapped in domestic spaces. These photographs, created during a period where she was seeking political asylum, have become documents of her family’s two-decade long journey seeking safety and citizenship during the 1990s and 2000s.As the artist’s first exhibition in the UK opens at Autograph, she details her practice, and use of long exposures and sweeping motions to suggest continuities between past and present. Hélène shares Togo’s perspectives on northern European countries, as informed by colonial histories and myths. Togoland was a ‘protectorate’ of the German Empire in West Africa from 1884 to 1914, an area which included the current state of Togo and much of Ghana, and which Europeans had long dubbed ‘the Slave Coast’. During the First World War, it was invaded by British and French forces, and endured military rule by the latter until its independence in 1960. She likens Belgium’s location - similarly placed between France and Germany - whilst curator Bindi Vora connects with her own family’s experiences of displacement, herself a second-generation Ugandan-Asian migrant with connections to both Kenya and India. Plus, we discuss the impact of this public exhibition on Hélène’s private, intimate practice, and what it means to display these works in the context of the British media discourse about ‘migrant crises’.Hélène Amouzou: Voyages runs at Autograph in London until 20 January 2024. Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.For more on Nil Yalter, hear the artist on Exile is a Hard Job (1974-Now) at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/36b8c7d8d613b78262e54e38ac62e70fWITH: Hélène Amouzou, Togo-born and Belgium-based photographer. Bindi Vora, British-Indian interdisciplinary photographic artist, and curator at Autograph. Her first book is Mountain of Salt (2023), based on a 2020-2021 series of the same name.ART: ‘Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023)’.PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastSupport EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

16 Nov 202316min

Against Apartheid, Ashish Ghadiali (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Radical Ecology, KARST)

Against Apartheid, Ashish Ghadiali (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Radical Ecology, KARST)

Curator and filmmaker Ashish Ghadiali connects climate science, contemporary art, and activism, cultivating a radical, cultural ecology in the countryside of south-west England, in their multidisciplinary exhibition, Against Apartheid.As environmental crises disproportionately affect Black and brown communities, and the resulting displacement often racialised, should we consider these states of ‘climate apartheid’? And could contemporary art help to bridge the gap between science and academics, and everyday action guidance? Against Apartheid, a multidisciplinary exhibition in Plymouth, puts these practices, histories, and geographies in conversation, from vast wallpapers charting global warming, to an intimate portrait of Ella Kissi-Debrah, and plantation paylists collected by the Barbadian artist Annalee Davis, linking land ownership in Scotland and the Caribbean from the 19th century Abolition Acts. Other works affirm how historic ecologies of empire – African enslavement, the middle passage, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples - continue to shape our present and future, in the geopolitics of international borders, migration, and travel.Activist and filmmaker Ashish Ghadiali talks about his work as ‘organisation’, not curation, and how we can resist the individualisation that prevents effective collective political action. From his background in film, he suggests why museums and exhibitions might be better places for screenings than cinemas, outside of the market. We discuss why both rural countryside and urban city landscapes should be considered through the lens of empire, drawing on ‘post-plantation’ and anti-colonial thinkers like Paul Gilroy, Françoise Vergès, Sylvie Séma Glissant, and Grada Kilomba. We relocate Plymouth’s global history, a focus since #BLM, reversing the notion of the particular and ‘regional’ as peripheral to the capital. We explore the wider arts ecology in south-west England, and how local connections with artists like Kedisha Coakley at The Box, and Iman Datoo at the University of Exeter and the Eden Project in Cornwall, also inform his work with global political institutions like the UN.Against Apartheid runs at KARST in Plymouth until 2 December 2023, part of Open City, a season of decolonial art and public events presented by Radical Ecology and partners across south-west England.For more, join EMPIRE LINES at the Black Atlantic Symposium - a free series of talks and live performances, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Paul Gilroy’s formative text - which takes place from 24-26 November 2023: eventbrite.co.uk/e/black-atlantic-tickets-750903260867?aff=oddtdtcreatorPart of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.For more on Ingrid Pollard, hear the artist on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary on EMPIRE LINES.For more about climate justice, listen to artist Imani Jacqueline Brown on What Remains at the End of the Earth? (2022) at the Hayward Gallery in London.For more about the Eden Project in Cornwall, hear curators Hannah Hooks and Misha Curson on Uriel Orlow’s Learning from Artemisia (2019-2020).And listen to the in-conversation with Professor Paul Gilroy, recorded live, in the episode on The Black Atlantic (1993-Now): pod.link/1533637675/episode/90a9fc4efeef69e879b7b77e79659f3fWITH: Ashish Ghadiali, Founding Director of Radical Ecology and Co-Chair of the Black Atlantic Innovation Network (BAIN) at University College London (UCL). He is the Co-Chair and Co-Principal Investigator of Addressing the New Denialism, lead author on a publication on climate finance for COP28, and a practicing filmmaker with recent credits including Planetary Imagination (2023) a 5-screen film installation, for The Box, Plymouth, and the feature documentary, The Confession (2016) for BFI and BBC Storyville. Ashish is the curator of Against Apartheid.ART: ‘Radical Ecology, Ashish Ghadiali (2023)’.EDITOR: Nada Smiljanic.PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

9 Nov 202323min

And I Have My Own Business In This Skin, Claudette Johnson (1982) (EMPIRE LINES x The Courtauld Gallery)

And I Have My Own Business In This Skin, Claudette Johnson (1982) (EMPIRE LINES x The Courtauld Gallery)

Curator Dorothy Price outlines the figures of Claudette Johnson, a founder member of the Black British Arts Movement (Blk Art Group), and one of the first ‘post-colonials’ practicing in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and the Midlands from the 1980s to now. Ever so-slightly-larger than-life, Claudette Johnson’s drawings of Black figures reflect the status of their artist. A founding member of the Black British Arts Movement or Blk Art Group in the 1980s, she was a leading figure in a politically-charged creative community - called the first ‘post-colonials’ by Stuart Hall, for being born and raised in Britain. Johnson worked closely with fellow ‘post-Windrush’ contemporaries include Eddie Chambers and Keith Piper, Ingrid Pollard and Maud Sulter, Marlene Smith and Lubaina Himid - but her work has been relatively underrepresented. As the artist’s first public monographic exhibition opens in London, curator Dorothy Price talks about her practice in the Wolverhampton Young Black Artists Group - which predated the YBAs - and formative speech in the First National Black Arts Conference in 1982. Dorothy shares personal insights from the groundbreaking ICA exhibition, The Thin Black Line, and Claudette’s complex position as a Black European artist of African and Caribbean descent. Drawing on the Courtauld’s permanent collection, we see the artist’s work with African masks, sculptures, and conventional representations of Black women, challenging the colonial foundations of Western European modernism, and reappropriating the ‘primitivism’ of the likes of Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin to state her place in art history. We also discuss her contemporary practice, and how the history of the Black British Arts Movement can decentre the contemporary ‘Brixtonisation’ of the singular Black experience, drawing attention to cities in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and the Midlands. Claudette Johnson: Presence runs at the Courtauld Gallery in London until 14 January 2023. For more, you can read my article. For more about Keith Piper, hear curators Jake Subryan Richards and Vicky Avery on Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance (2023) at the Fitzwilliam Museum on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a5271ae2bc8c85116db581918412eda2 For more on Ingrid Pollard, hear the artist on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 For more about the ‘Brixtonisation’ of the Black British experience, listen to artist Johny Pitts on Home is Not A Place (2021-Now) at The Photographers’ Gallery on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/70fd7f9adfd2e5e30b91dc77ee811613 For more on Hurvin Anderson, hear Hepworth Wakefield curator Isabella Maidment on his Barbershop (2006-2023) series on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/5cfb7ddb525098a8e8da837fcace8068 Recommended reading: On Lubaina Himid: gowithyamo.com/blog/the-revolutionary-act-of-walking-in-the-city On Maud Sulter: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house On Sonia Boyce: gowithyamo.com/blog/feeling-her-way-sonia-boyces-noisy-exhibition On Life Between Islands at Tate Britain: artmag.co.uk/the-caribbean-condensed-life-between-islands-at-the-tate-britain/ WITH: Professor Dorothy Price, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld, London. She is also Editor of Art History, journal of the Association for Art History, and founder of the Tate/Paul Mellon Centre’s British Art Network subgroup on Black British Art. Dorothy is the co-curator of Presence. ART: ‘And I Have My Own Business In This Skin, Claudette Johnson (1982)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

26 Okt 202319min

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