Visual Cultures, African Cities/Now
A Conference on African Art
Hosted by The African Studies Program
April 23, 2005
Ohio University, Athens - Ohio
Mitchell Auditorium, Siegfred Hall (North Green,
behind Yamada House & Hudson Health Center).
Time: 9:30 AM- 6:00 PM.
Date: Saturday, April 23, 2005.
Click for Pogram
Conference Convener: Joanna Grabski, Denison University,
Granville OH Cities in Africa , like their counterparts elsewhere in the world,
are intensely -- perhaps even unrelentingly -- visual environments.
In Dakar as in Nairobi, in Johannesburg as in Lagos, the urban
terrain's unparalleled resources enable myriad visual phenomena
including paintings and sculptures, modernist architecture and
public monuments, sartorial expression, as well as printed and
electronic media such as cartoons, advertisements, video,
television, and the internet. This conference focuses on the
visual propositions constituting the urban environment and
seeks to consider how visual culture is produced, interpreted,
and consumed in contemporary urban Africa.
To this end, this conference will explore the following questions: How
does the city offer unique opportunities for the production and
consumption of visual propositions? How do individuals create and
engage these visual forms to construct, evaluate, contest or subvert
contemporary social realities? How do these forms operate as both
individual expressions and collective resources? How does the influx
of visual phenomena from one city shape visual expression in
another? And, if we understand expressive forms as operating in a
world of intertextuality, we must ask how urban visual projects
entangle and interface with other creative expressions?
Invited speakers include:
Allen Roberts, UCLA
Mouride Visual Culture in Dakar
Mary Jo Arnoldi. NMNH, Smithsonian Institution
Monuments in Mali
Onookome Okome, University of Alberta
Nigerian Videos
Modou Dieng, San Francisco Art Institute
Representations of the City
Evan Mwangi, Ohio University
Oral Literature in Urban Movies in East Africa
Olatunji Ojo, Ohio University
The Politics of Art Representation
Conference Format: Invited speakers will give 40-50 minute
papers followed by graduate student presentations and
discussion by conference participants.
Additional information:
Nana K. Owusu-Kwarteng
Assistant Director
Institute for the African Child
Center for International Studies
Yamada International House
Athens OH 45701
T: 740. 597. 1368
F: 740. 593. 1837
