Big Ideas in Art and Culture Lecture Series
This series is proudly presented in partnership with Musagetes.
Aruna D'Souza
An Art of Opacity
June 24, 2021, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Informed by Édouard Glissant’s notion of “the right of opacity” for the colonial subject—a right stripped by the colonizer, who surveils every aspect of that subject’s experience, and denies the existence of what he cannot see—a number of artists, including Jennifer Packer, Simone Leigh, Dawoud Bey, and Rose-Janan Uddoh have explored the power of withdrawing from view as a central aspect in their work. This Lecture compliments the inclusion of D'Souza's book Whitewalling: Art, Race and Protest in Three Acts in the CAFKA Summer Reading Series: White Elephant Edition.
Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. Her work appears regularly in 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the editorial advisory board, and is a contributor to The New York Times. Her writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Art News, Garage, Bookforum, Momus, Art in America, and Art Practical, among other places. Her most recent book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited), was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. She is editing a forthcoming volume for Thames and Hudson, Making It Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reader. She is also editor of Lorraine O’Grady’s Writing in Space 1973-2018 (Duke University Press, 2020), and is co-curator of the retrospective of O’Grady’s work, Both/And, which opened in March 2021 at the Brooklyn Museum.
Image: Say Her Name, 2017 Oil on canvas 121.9 x 101.6 cm 48 x 40 inches Private Collection. Courtesy the Artist, Corvi-Mora, London and Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York Photo: Matt Grubb
Kathy Hogarth
What's race got to do with it? Race, representation and appropriation in arts
July 15, 2021, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
This talk explores how race is represented and often misrepresented through various forms of arts and questions the role of arts and culture in advancing race relations in todays society and context. This Lecture compliments the inclusion of Hogarth's book A Space for Race: Decoding Racism, Multiculturalism and Post-Colonialism in the Quest for Belonging in Canada and Beyond in the CAFKA Summer Reading Series: White Elephant Edition.
Dr. Kathy Hogarth is the Special Advisor on Antiracism and Inclusivity and an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Waterloo. Much of her work is focused on race, racism and related social policy. She is an avid advocate for change related to race equity and anti-racism. Dr. Hogarth is the author of the book “A Space for Race: Decoding Racism, Multiculturalism and Post-Colonialism in the Quest for Belonging in Canada and Beyond”.
Hogarth's 2018 book A Space for Race written with Wendy L. Fletcher explores the impact of unquestioned racial assumptions in the Canadian narrative which have constructed an insider/outsider culture. From that baseline, the authors then developed an analytic designed to move beyond racialized othering to a society of genuine inclusivity and universal belonging.
