Workshop
Silhouettes, Shadows and Masks as Thinking Models: Reflecting with Fanon, Mbembe, and Mudimbe
A Transdisciplinary Workshop organized by Hana Gründler und Rosa Sancarlo, Research Group Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, in collaboration with Villa Romana
Richard Bruce Nugent, “Drawing Nr. 4”, in: Ebony and Topaz, 1927, published by the National Urban League, p. 106.
Source: https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/watch/record_detail.cfm?contactid=3708&IndivID=&ArtistID=29365
In his seminal investigation on the psychological, individual and social impacts of colonialism on people of African descent (Peau Noire, Masques Blanc, 1952; translated to Black Skin, White Masks, 1967), Frantz Fanon centralized the signifying value of the experience of vision: of viewing and of being viewed. The author insightfully stressed how this dialectical optical interaction, departed from and projected onto the site of the body, fundamentally contributes to constructing assumptions of a supposed “otherness”. The so described dialectical phenomenon of vision involves notions of Blackness, shadows, masks, projections, and reduction. A series of concepts, and their accompanying visualizations, that are fundamentally constitutive of the motif of the silhouette, a visual, technical, conceptual and last but not least political site of obfuscation, opacity, and suspension of appearances and identities, beyond the enunciative trace of its contouring outline.
Thinking with and building on these notions and connections, we want to reflect further together on the different ways in which the visual and conceptual paradigm of the silhouette and its related concepts such as shadow and mask have been adopted and re-signified as kaleidoscopic thinking models by thinkers and poets like Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, Achille Mbembe and Valentine-Yves Mudimbe, and artists and like Kara Walker, William Kentridge, and Belkis Ayón, to name but a few. What (visual) language do the above-mentioned authors use in order to question the violent dimensions of the paradigm of otherness? What is the importance of figurative language and aesthetic experience in this rethinking of corporeality and identity? During this transdisciplinary workshop we aim to reflect upon, question, and/or dismantle philosophical and art-historical episodes, experiences, and narratives of colonialism and oppression, negotiation and contestation, empowerment and resistance.
Speakers:
Steyn Bergs
Giuseppe Capriotti
Alexandre Diallo
Ruri Kawanami
Bärbel Küster
Sophie Lynch
Azar Emami Pari
Vera-Simone Schulz
DAY 1, 27.01.2025 (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)
14.30 – 15.00 WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION Hana Gründler and Rosa Sancarlo (KHI – MPI)
AESTHETICS OF MODERNITIES
Chair: Larissa Maria Müller
15.00 – 15.30 Drawing ‘Asiatic’ Bodies in Grids, Lines and Silhouettes: Negotiating Corporeal Identity in Japanese Art Education, 1890-1930. Ruri Kawanami, Freie Universität and Humboldt University, Berlin
15.30 – 16.00 Silhouette as Solution? Historical Reflections on Masks between Critique, Enhancement and “Primitivism“ in the 1950s. Bärbel Küster, University of Zurich
B R E A K
RESISTANCE BETWEEN MATERIAL AND IMMATERIALITY
Chair: Daniel Tischler
16.30 – 17.00 Immateriality as Mode of Resistance. Countering Silhouettes of Exploitation and Oppression. Vera-Simone Schulz, Leuphana University and KHI – MPI
17.00 – 17.30 Silhouettes and Swahili Fabrics for a Post-colonial Kenyan Identity. Peter Ngugi’s Art against Corruption, Misogyny and Homophobia. Giuseppe Capriotti, University of Macerata
B R E A K
18.00 – 18.30 Shape and Shadow: Prelude to Nelson Makengo’s Nuit Debout. Steyn Bergs, Utrecht University
18.30 – 19.30 D I N N E R (for speakers only)
19.30 – 20.00 Film Screening of Nuit Debout by Nelson Makengo (2019)
DAY 2, 28.01.2025 (Villa Romana)
9.30 – 11.00 WELCOME Elena Agudio and Mistura Allison (Villa Romana)
Common Reading Session
B R E A K
MEMORY AND (IN-)VISIBILITY
Chair: Oliver Aas
11.30 – 12.00 Masked Identities and Silhouetted Histories: The Representation of Enslaved Africans in Qajar Photography. Azar Emami Pari, University of Passau
12.00 – 12.30 The Blur of Twilight Labor: Photography, Visibility & Johannesburg’s Night Workers. Sophie Lynch, University of Chicago
12.30 – 13.00 Reframing the Silhouette: Race, Space, and Memory in Alice Diop’s Nous. Alexandre Diallo, Independent Lecturer and Researcher
B R E A K
13.30 – 14.00 Film Screening of Toil by Helena Uambembe (2021). Introduced by Mistura Allison and Elena Agudio, Villa Romana
Scarica
Partner
27 – 28 gennaio 2025
This event will take place at Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai (27.1.2025) and at Villa Romana (28.1.2025).
To participate online please register via Zoom in advance
Avviso
Questo evento viene documentato fotograficamente e/o attraverso riprese video. Qualora non dovesse essere d’accordo con l’utilizzo di immagini in cui potrebbe essere riconoscibile, da parte del Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz a scopo di documentazione degli eventi e di pubbliche relazioni (p.e. social media) la preghiamo gentilmente di comunicarcelo.