Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University College London : A - History of Art
Distance and Desire - Encounters With the African Archive
Distance and Desire offers new perspectives on the African archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings.
This output is a curatorial project consisting of an exhibition, and a catalogue/book.
This portfolio comprises two components:
(i) T, Garb, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, edited by Garb and including Garb’s introductory essay (10,000words) and additional scholarly essay (9,000 words) , Garb’s Interview with Walther, 10 commissioned essays, ancillary research materials.
(ii) Dossier comprising copies of: exhibition leaflets, installation shots, gallery guides, press releases, selected press coverage, photos of the international symposium held at NYU, symposium materials.
Distance and Desire was a large-scale curatorial project comprising three exhibitions in Walther Foundation, New York (2012-2013), and its expanded version in Neu-Ulm, June 2013, on-going. The project brings for the first time late 19th C and early 20th C portrait and figure studies of Africans into dialogue with contemporary lens-based work that engages critically with ethnographic and anthropological imagery. Part 1 juxtaposed Duggan Cronin’s compendium of ‘native tribes’ (in prints and books) with Mofokeng’s counter archive ‘The Black Photo Album’ (including vintage prints, reprints and slide show). Part 2 showcased contemporary work that addresses the ethnographic pictorial past. Part 3, included historical representations of Africans as mediated via vintage prints, post cards, albums, cartes de visite and books. The German show greatly expanded the range of works exhibited.
The inclusion of contemporary work provides a critical framework through which to examine the colonial past. Ethical, political and aesthetic questions are dealt with extensively in the catalogue and exhibition guides, including such issues as the agency of African subjects, the historical uses of colonial imagery, and the mediation of images in different formats. The aim is to go beyond the orthodoxies of much post colonial scholarship to re-examine the variety of modes of address and forms of engagement embedded in the historical archive and its appropriation/reformulation by artists today.
