Ellen Gallagher’s work deconstructs received truths and weaves together propositional narratives, inhabiting spaces where the future collapses into the past, obsolescence into technology and image into text. These are spaces carved out by the cultural aesthetic of Afrofuturism.
In the context of Gallagher’s work, speakers will explore and complicate readings of Afrofuturism and its influence on contemporary artists’ practices, creating an intricate understanding of the genre and its evolutions. Speakers include Zoe Whitley (Independent Curator and panel co-organiser), Hazel V. Carby (Professor of African American Studies and Director of the Initiative on Race Gender and Globalisation at Yale University), Amna Malik (Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Slade School of Fine Art,UCL), and Lili Reynaud-Dewar .
Speakers
Amna Malik is Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. She has published a number of articles examining contemporary art practice from the perspective of diaspora. She is currently researching two book projects: ‘Art and the post-colonial imaginary’ examines the work of diaspora artists who have disappeared from mainstream narratives and postcolonial accounts of art history; 'Proximity' is a study of documentary film and the politics of affect in contemporary art.Â
Hazel V. Carby is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies, Professor of American Studies, and Director of the Initiative on Race Gender and Globalization at y. Dr. Carby is considered a pioneer in and is also known as one of the world’s leading scholars on race, gender, and African American issues. Her publications include  : The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist, Race Men: The Body and Soul of Race, Nation, and Manhood, and Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America. She is currently working on her forthcoming book, Child of Empire.
Zoe Whitley is an independent curator and doctoral candidate based in London. Before beginning her PhD research in 2013 directed by artist Prof. Lubaina Himid MBE, Zoe was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she began her career in 2003 following an MA in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art and a BA (High Honors) from Swarthmore College. Artist-led and object-enthused, forthcoming projects include a book co-authored with Gill Saunders on prints of the African Diaspora (V&A Publications), a sole-authored book on the life and work of graphic designer Paul Peter Piech (Four Corners Books) and co-curating the Autumn 2013 exhibition for the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar was born in 1975 in La Rochelle, France, and lives and works in Grenoble. Her relatively epic projects combine performance, video, sculpture and involve her friends, her family and lately, her own body. Confronting her own biography and practice to the legacy of emblematic figures such as Josephine Baker, Sun Ra, and Jean Genet, she seeks to disrupt the expectations related to her own background and her role as a contemporary artist. She is the co-founder of Petunia a feminist art and entertainment magazine and writes regularly for various publications.
