Dr. Joan Kee, Art History Talk
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Experience an enlightening Art History discussion with Dr. Joan Kee, featured as a distinguished speaker in the University of Houston School of Art Speaker Series.
The School of Art Speaker Series invites visiting artists to share their journeys, insights and works with students and community members alike. Distinguished guests offer a range of perspectives on the most pertinent issues facing today’s makers and scholars. The series is a key component of students’ experience at the School of Art. In addition to presenting their work to a large audience of students and community members, speakers spend extended periods engaging directly with students in small gatherings for focused debate and conversation, in formats tailored to their individual practice. Join us in exploring the world of art through the eyes of those who shape it.
Dr. Joan Kee is a professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on how modern and contemporary artworks challenge our understanding of words like “world,” “value,” “abstraction,” and “scale.” Published in 2023, her latest book The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art Beyond Solidarity, asks how we might tell a history of art that begins with the global majority, spanning Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe. Kee is a contributing editor at Artforum, an editor at large for the Brooklyn Rail, as well on the advisory boards of Art History, the Oxford Art Journal, Modernism/modernity, and Art Margins. She was the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College in 2021, a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow, and a 2022–23 Ford Scholar at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Lecture
title:
“The
Geometries
of
Afro
Asia”
Comprising
the
regions
that
more
than
80%
of
the
world
call
home,
Afro
Asia
came
to
the
political
fore
in
the
mid-1950s,
calling
for
accelerated
decolonization
on
the
one
hand
and
rejecting
Cold
War
polarization
on
the
other.
Building
on
this
history,
this
talk
mobilizes
Afro
Asia
as
as
an
epistemological
grounds
for
rethinking
geographical,
social,
and
aesthetic
worlds
primarily
through
the
worlds
Black
and
Asian
artists
have
catalyzed
through
their
work.
Figuring
space
and
time
as
open
questions
of
geometry
and
not
consequences
of
top-down
linear
thinking,
works
by
artists
including
Nobukho
Nqaba,
Musquiqui
Chihying,
Senga
Nengudi,
Ming
Wong,
and
Tuan
Andrew
Nguyen
defy
dominant
political,
social,
disciplinary,
and
geographical
demarcations
and
address
a
resurgent
crisis
of
imagination
that
admit
artworks
as
morally
and
politically
credible
only
when
they
perform
representationally.
More
than
a
call
for
inclusivity
or
a
revisionist
approach
to
art
history
and
its
methods,
I
argue
that
Afro
Asia
is
itself
a
means
of
thinking
about
lives
and
futures
beyond
survival
and
even
solidarity.
- Location
- Dudley Recital Hall University of Houston
- Cost
- Free
- Contact
- UH
School
of
Art
4188 Elgin Street, Room 100
Houston, Texas 77204
713-743-3001