The River, the lake and the ocean: Critical perspectives on art and the Global South
- Written byPress Office
- Published date 05 February 2024
A series of online conversations that will bring together world-renowned artists, scholars and curators to discuss issues around art and its contemporary condition will begin this month.
For many scholars, artists, climate activists, journalists, political and economic commentators, the term Global South has been used to highlight the difficulties of those negatively affected by globalisation. It has served as a means of reconceptualising geopolitical divisions reminiscent of the Cold War era. Water, the most basic and essential substance for sustenance of life, is taken as the point of guidance of such critical enquiry.
The River, the Lake and the Ocean represent distinct bodies of water, as well as three different ways through which to approach the relationships between art, time, place, displacement, the extraction within the globalised world we inhabit.
The series is convened by Dr Michael Asbury and supported by UAL’s International Relations Unit.
All conversations are online and hosted on Zoom.
Please note that each date must be booked individually (3 dates in total).
Wednesday 7 February 2024 6pm - 7.30pm
The River: Andrea Giunta in conversation with Michael Asbury
This first online session of the series considered how the flow of time, and within it the array of the present, may be understood in relation of Latin American art and its history.
In discussing such questions and setting an art historical frame for the series, distinguished Professor of Art History, Andrea Giunta joins curator, art critic and art historian, Michael Asbury (TrAIN Research Centre, UAL).
Wednesday 14 February 2024 6pm - 7.30pm
The Lake: Maria Thereza Alves, Antonio Pichillá in conversation with Lucy Orta and David Cross
The second online session of the series is joined by Lucy Orta and David Cross with Antontio Pichillá and Maria Thereza Alves in conversation about art and solidarity with Indigenous land-rights movement, the global climate crisis and ecological justice.
This session will have live interpreting from Spanish to English and vice versa.
Maria Thereza Alves is an artist/researcher/activist who has been active since the 1980s. She is a co-founder of the Brazilian Green Party and has worked for the International Indian Treaty Council in New York.
Antonio Pichillá is a Guatemalan artist of Maya Tzʼutujil heritage.
Lucy Orta is an English contemporary visual artist living and working between London and Paris. She is Chair of Art and the Environment at London College of Fashion, UAL.
David Cross engages with social-ecological crisis through visual culture. He considers his position as Reader in Fine Arts at UAL as an artist placement advocating for regenerative ecology and restorative social justice.
Wednesday 21 February 2024 6pm - 7.30pm
The Ocean: Rosana Paulino, Ayrson Eraclito and Olu Oguibe in conversation with Paul Goodwin
In this final online session, artists Rosana Pauino, Ayrson Heraclito and Olu Oguibe join Paul Goodwin to discuss their own critical approaches to art practice, its legitimation and global dissemination.
This session will have live interpreting from Portuguese to English and vice versa.
Rosana Paulino is a Brazilian contemporary artist, curator, and researcher. Paulino holds a doctorate in Visual Arts from the University of São Paulo, School of Communications and Arts and a specialization in printmaking from London Print Studio.
Ayrson Eraclito is a visual artist and curator. He completed a Doctorate in Communications and Semiotics at the Catholic University (PUC) of São Paulo. He is a Professor of Visual Arts at the Center of Arts and Humanities at the Federal University of the Recôncavo of Bahia (UFRB).
Olu Oguibe is a Nigerian-born American artist and academic. Oguibe is a senior fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Paul Goodwin is a British independent curator, urban theorist, academic and researcher, whose projects particularly focus on black and diaspora artists and visual cultures. He is Director at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, University of the Arts London.