Jeanette Kohl, an associate professor and former chair of UC Riverside’s Department of the History of Art, has received a one-year fellowship at the prestigious Princeton Institute for Advanced Study based in New Jersey. Read more from Inside UCR: https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/54602
Exile involves anything that precludes a person from inhabiting or experiencing a condition of establishment. Thus, exile can be self- or externally-imposed, natural or voluntary, and come about for a wide variety of reasons such as: politics, ecology, economics, safety, ideology, sexuality, religion, or expatriation for study/work/security purposes. Although exile often has negative connotations, it can also be liberating for some individuals, particularly if they were established in a place or manner that prevented them from expressing their true selves or beliefs.
Exile is a state or condition not bound to a specific place or time. Because of its strong impact on the people living through it, exile has inspired works of literature, theater, music, and the visual arts. Ostracism was a punishment considered worse than death in Greek literature. Shakespeare inflicted banishment on many of his characters. Napoleon Bonaparte’s court painter Jacques-Louis David was exiled in Brussels following the Bourbon restoration, and while there, produced extraordinary portraits of fellow exiles, supporters of the deposed emperor. Hungarian-born László Moholy-Nagy, a central figure at the German Bauhaus School in the 1920s, went through several self-imposed exiles as he sought creative freedom and inspiration. In 1935, in response to the rise of National Socialism, he relocated to London, and then again to Chicago. The Argentine Leon Ferrari was forced into exile in Brazil in 1976 because of his political artworks in opposition to the military dictatorship, which also disappeared his son Ariel the year after. Nidaa Badwan opted for a year-long voluntary exile in 2013, retreating to her room in Gaza, which she rarely left. There, she created a photographic self-portrait series that leaves the chaos outside, to the streets of Gaza.
At a time when war, natural disaster, ecological devastation, famine, and intolerance continue to drive hundreds of millions of people out of their homeland, the conference aims to be a platform of dialogue to explore this phenomenon and its complex implications. Questions we seek to consider include: In what way do artists engage with the experience of exile, where gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, assume new connotations? Under which conditions can exile art open a dialogue on issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and the status of immigration?
We are honored to host Dr. Tatiana Flores, Associate Professor in the Departments of Art History at Rutgers University, as this year’s keynote speaker.
Exile
The Land of Non-Belonging
California Museum of Photography
May 25 – September 8, 2019
Reception: Saturday, May 25, 2019, 4pm – 6pm
Curatorial Tour: Saturday, May 25, 2019, 1:25pm – 1:55pm
Performance: Saturday, May 25, 2019, 5:40pm
Camilla Querin, curator of the exhibition Exile: The Land of Non-Belonging, will offer a walk-through of the exhibition before it opens to the public.
How does it feel to be far from home when going back is out of question? Exile: The Land of Non-Belonging explores the experience of exile and the desire for identity and belonging at a moment when thousands of people are being torn away from their homelands. Coming from Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, and Vietnam, the five artists whose works are included in this exhibition all left their native countries because of forced expatriation or voluntary emigration. They use photography and photo-related practices to narrate their journeys through new environments where gender, ethnicity, and sexuality assume different connotations.
The works engage with different aspects of exiled experience, which can have both positive and negative consequences. The fragility of objects and the ephemerality of gestures contrast with the permanence of memory and the power of self-affirmation. Exile features artworks by Nidaa Badwan, Ana Mendieta, Anh-Thuy Nguyen, Nooshin Rostami, and Gazelle Samizay, and is accompanied by a curatorial tour, artist performance, and related film program.
Exile is curated by Camilla Querin, Curatorial Fellow at the California Museum of Photography. Offered to an exceptional PhD student in the History of Art at UCR, the CMP Curatorial Fellowship enables emerging scholars to work closely with curatorial staff and faculty advisors to conceive museum projects based on their own research interests. In this way, CMP Fellows contribute new scholarship to their field through original exhibitions. The Curatorial Fellowship program is a partnership between UCR ARTS and the History of Art Department at UCR. Exile is the inaugural CMP Fellowship exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible with the support of UCR’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS); the City of Riverside; UCR’s Department of the History of Art; the Center for Ideas and Society; and UCR’s Departments of Theater, Film, and Digital Production; Art; English; Anthropology; Religious Studies; Media and Cultural Studies; Political Science; Sociology; Philosophy; and the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program.
Devotion, Space, and Authority in Early Modern Iran and Deccan India
Peyvand Firouzeh, Ph.D. Cambridge University
Peyvand Firouzeh received her PhD from Cambridge University in 2016. Her work links early modern Persia and India, and aims to break down the traditional distinc-tion between the Islamic and the Indic. More specifically, she looks at Sufism as an element of elite patronage that transcended this larger region, revising a longstanding idea that Sufism was antithetical to elite political ideology. She is completing a book provisionally called Sanctity and Spatial Authority: Ne ‘matollahi Sufi Networks and Material Culture between Iran and Deccan India in the Early Modern Era.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at 12:00pm ARTS Seminar Room 333
ART HISTORY AT WORK LECTURE SERIES
Building Sustainable Careers: Lesser-Known Paths
Brooke Devenney Director of Individual Giving, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Brooke Devenney, Director of Individual Giving at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), will discuss how a Master of Arts in Art History at the University of California, Riverside has benefitted her as a fundraising professional in the arts. Her presentation will focus on her experiences working at the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and MOCA. As a lesser-known career path for art history students, fundraising can be a very rewarding way to combine a love of art history with a sustainable career in art museums.
Thursday, April 5, 2018 at 4:30pm in ARTS 333
The Mountains and the Red City: Identity in the Landscape of Almohad Marrakesh
Abbey Stockstill Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University
Abbey Stockstill is completing her dissertation at Harvard University on The Mountains, the Mosque, and the Red City: Abd al-Mu’min and the Almohad Legacy of Marrakesh. Her interests place Marrakesh as a meeting point of the Mediterranean (both North Africa and Iberia) and Sub-Saharan Africa in the period 1000-1500, and incorporate a number of other interests, from performance and ceremonial to technological transmission.
Monday, March 12, 2018 at 5:15pm ARTS Seminar Room 333
Sponsored by the Department of the History of Art