Art historian and Professor Griselda Pollock traces the memories of contemporary artist women like Sutapa Biswas, one of her students in the 1980s, and the entanglements in feminist, queer, and postcolonial thinking in art schools and universities.
Griselda Pollock has long advocated for the critical function of contemporary art - and artists - in society. Whether paintings, drawings, or sculptures, these media can translate the traumatic legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and migration into visual form, and serve as refusals to forget - especially in our memory-effacing digital age.
Born in apartheid South Africa, Griselda has lectured in global contexts; at the University of Leeds in the 1980s, she encountered Sutapa Biswas, a ‘force of nature’ and one of the institution’s first POC art students. She shares her experience of the two-way flows of teaching and learning. Drawing on stills from the artist’s new film work Lumen (2021), and historic ‘Housewives with Steak-Knives’ (1984-1985), she highlights both Bengali Indian imagery, and motifs of 17th and 18th century Old/Dutch Masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt - and why the artist ‘didn’t need Artemisia Gentileschi’ when she had the Hindu goddess Kali.
Engaging with leaders of the Blk Art Group like Lubaina Himid, Sonia Boyce, and Claudette Johnson, we find connections with the first generation of British artists, born in the UK of migrant parents. Griselda also shares the important work of art historians and academics beyond Western/Europe, like Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, Catherine de Zegher, and Hiroko Hagewara. We discuss how being open to challenge and conversation, unsettling your own assumptions, denormalising and widening visibility are all ongoing obligations. Still, with Coral Woodbury’s paintings, layered atop H.W. Jansen’s History of Art (1968), we see how little the education system has changed. Griselda concludes with thoughts on Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and challenging the norms of modernist colonial tourism within the confines of free speech and market demand.
Medium and Memory, curated by Griselda Pollock, ran at HackelBury Fine Art in London until 18 November 2023. An expanded exhibition of Coral Woodbury’s Revised Edition runs until 4 May 2024.
Griselda Pollock on Gauguin is published by Thames & Hudson, and available from 28 May 2024.
For more from Lubaina Himid, hear the artist on their work Lost Threads (2021, 2023), at the Holburne Museum in Bath: pod.link/1533637675/episode/4322d5fba61b6aed319a973f70d237b0
And read about their recent exhibition at Tate Modern, and work with the Royal Academy (RA) in London, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/the-revolutionary-act-of-walking-in-the-city
For more about The Thin Black Line exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London (1985), hear curator Dorothy Price on Claudette Johnson’s And I Have My Own Business in This Skin (1982) at the Courtauld Gallery in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/707a0e05d3130f658c3473f2fdb559fc
For more about the artist Gego, who practiced in Germany and South America, read my article about Measuring Infinity at the Guggenheim Bilbao (2023), in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/infinite-viewpoints-gego-at-the-guggenheim-bilbao
WITH: Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of CentreCATH (Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History) at the University of Leeds. WITH: Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of CentreCATH (Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History) at the University of Leeds. She won the Holberg Prize in 2020 for her contributions to feminism in art history and cultural studies, books, and exhibitions. She is the curator of Medium and Memory.
ART: ‘Lumen, Sutapa Biswas (2017) and Lubaina Himid, from the Revised Edition series, Coral Woodbury (2023)’.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.
Melted into the Sun, Saodat Ismailova (2024) (EMPIRE LINES x Fondazione In Between Art Film, Venice Biennale)
Decolonised Structures (Queen Victoria), Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (2022-2023) (EMPIRE LINES x The Serpentine Galleries, Venice Biennale)
Dreams Have No Titles, Zineb Sedira (2022-Now) (EMPIRE LINES x Whitechapel Gallery, Goodman Gallery, Venice Biennale)
Giolo’s Lament, Pio Abad (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Ashmolean Museum)
Camera Obscura, Pia Arke (1990) (EMPIRE LINES x John Hansard Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art)
Lost Threads, Lubaina Himid (2021, 2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Holburne Museum, British Textile Biennale)
The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy (1993-Now) (EMPIRE LINES Live, with Radical Ecology)
Noko Y3 Dzen (There’s Something in the World), Serge Attukwei Clottey (2018-Now) (EMPIRE LINES Live at the Eden Project, Cornwall)
Habitat, Taloi Havini (2017) (EMPIRE LINES x Artes Mundi 10, National Museum of Wales, Chapter)
Freud: El Mago de los Sueños (The Wizard of Dreams), Vidas Ilustres Comic Book (1963)
The Madras College of Arts and Crafts, India (1850-Now) (EMPIRE LINES x The Noble Sage, Brunei Gallery)
Queer Feet, Osman Yousefzada (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Charleston)
Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020) (EMPIRE LINES x Eden Project)
White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)
The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)
Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023)
Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)
Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)
Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993) (EMPIRE LINES x Kunstmuseum Basel)
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