This event will be held virtually.
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Cosponsored by the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the Department for African-American and African Diaspora Studies.
The Practice of Restitution: Diasporic Archive and Artform
Overarching questions: How far can artform redress gaps in historical narratives, and can contemporary creative production work as a primary document? (If ancestors are with you as you paint, then it is a primary document.) How do film, paintings, art curation, and/or cuisine tease, stretch, or embolden memory? Does this “restore” a lineage or stories? What role does verbal description/ text/ written word play in pairing with these archival expressions—if any? Is non-verbal/silent or non-textual artform open-ended, in terms of objective or story? If so, does the indeterminateness of a non-verbal creative production/archive speak towards African diasporic tradition? Maybe it’s not meant to be precise, or binary, or settled. And perhaps the emphasis is not to remedy past violence, but instead to present “impossible” stories/histories, to insist on impossible future dreaming (ernesto, sun ra, etc.). What is your imagined impossible and irrational world, either broadly or as it relates to artform?
Elizabeth Colomba in conversation with with Thabisile Griffin (ICLS Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Racisms)
“Art and Politics,” Understanding Systemic Racism
Join us for a conversation on artform that “bends the association of ideas,” placing Black women at the forefront of leisure and comfort, as well as a discussion on the recent publication of Queenie, a graphic novel about Stéphanie St. Clair, master of underground economy and political activist from Martinique and a crucial figure of 1930’s Harlem.
Elizabeth Colomba is born in France and raised in Épinay-sur-Seine, from parents of Martinican descent. She lives and works in New York City. Elizabeth received a degree in applied art from the Estienne School of Art, Paris and also studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
Colomba’s paintings have been exhibited at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; the Balthus Grand Chalet, Switzerland; the International Biennial of Contemporary Art (BIAC), Martinique; Volta, New York; the Fondazione Biagiotti Progetto Arte, Florence and the inaugural triennial at Columbia University. The Moon is my only luxury was the artist’s first solo exhibition and catalogue in New York which opened in the spring 2016. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem and Princeton University.
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