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Switch House at Tate Modern: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
It was worth braving the crowds to view the new Switch House extension at Tate Modern on Bankside during its launch week (14-19 June 2016) and explore several new floors of contemporary art from Tate’s permanent collection, as well as selected pieces on temporary display in the featured Artists’ Rooms and themed galleries. For this inaugural summer…
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Navigating the Dreams of an Icon: The Cy Grant Archives at the LMA – a new heritage initiative for 2016/17
The Cy Grant Trust – working in partnership with the education charity Windrush Foundation and London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) – recently received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to catalogue the archives of the writer, actor, musician, barrister and equalities campaigner, Cy Grant (1919-2010). Cyril Ewart Lionel Grant (known as ‘Cy’) was born in Guyana…
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Conference on African diaspora and European cultural heritage, University of Tampere (Finland) 6-8 July 2017
The 6th ‘Afroeuropeans’ biennial network conference will take place at the University of Tampere, Finland, 6-8 July 2017. The general theme is African diaspora and European cultural heritage. Submissions are encouraged exploring the topics below as well as proposals on other topics related to African/Black European communities and cultures: African diaspora and European cultural heritage Policing blackness; African/Black European…
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Thin Black Lines: marking time – on faces, within networks, and in exhibition spaces…
As I stood in front of Jelena Bulajic’s large-scale portrait of Alise Lange (2013) mesmerised by the network of fine wrinkles covering her face, my momentary thoughts merged with memories of another contemporary artwork that came back to mind in sharp focus – the image of Lubaina Himid’s topological art map, Thin Black Line(s) (2011). In Bulajic’s work, her mixed-media artistic cartography of facial lines…
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Activism and Scholarship: Achieving the “Plenitude of Blackness”
The Black Studies Association conference – “Blackness in Britain 2015: ‘The Black Special Relationship’” (held at Birmingham City University, 30-31 October 2015) – explored the nature of black activism within and beyond the UK higher education sector, with a particular focus on the historical and contemporary impacts of African-American scholarship on black intellectual life in Britain. Established and early career researchers from a range of…
