Summer Symposium 2022: Art and Activism
Organised by the Association for Art History’s Doctoral and Early Career Research Network.
Location: Online
Date of Symposium: 21 & 22 July 2022
REGISTER NOW!: Art and Activism
The Association for Art History’s Summer Symposium is a two-day annual conference that highlights current doctoral and early career research from around the world. It is an opportunity for PhD students and ECRs who are engaged with art, art history or visual culture to present their research and meet other students and academics with similar research interests. Inspired by discourse highlighted at the 2021 Summer Symposium, Global Britain: Decolonising Art’s Histories, this year the symposium theme is Art and Activism.
We are delighted to announce our chairs: Catherine Spencer (University of St Andrews), Andrew Patrizio (University of Edinburgh), Paula Serafini (Queen Mary University of London) and Pablo Helguera (The New School) respectively.
Art often begets social change. A powerful tool for discourse, visibility and protest, an artwork can help us imagine the world anew or see the contour lines of our own world for what they are. As contemporary artist Bisa Butler remarked in a 2021 interview, “I see how much responsibility you have as an artist. You are the reflection of our times.” This year’s Summer Symposium explores the symbiosis of art and activism, showcasing papers about artworks made by or about collective action for social and environmental justice. What does art offer in the face of systemic oppression and inequality? What does an intersectional art history of resistance look like? What are the visual cultures of collective action?
In an editorial on visual activism (Journal of Visual Culture, 2016), Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jennifer Gonzalez and Dominic Willsdon define activism in art as the abandonment of neutrality. While no work can be considered neutral, they note, works of visual activism differ in the degrees of intensity and commitment. This symposium likewise encourages thought on the question of art’s ‘neutrality,’ not only its production but also its collection, teaching, and exhibition. How do museums, university departments, and arts institutions hold themselves accountable to the values of the artworks they exhibit or advocate? How do we embed the radicality of art into the structures of the institutions impacting how art is researched? What are different culturally contingent definitions of visual activism?
Image credit: AIDS quilt, Washington, D.C., Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.