ANNOTATING ART'S HISTORIES

Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers (inIVA and MIT Press, forthcoming, 2008) is the final volume in the Annotating Art’s Histories series, re-traversing the chronological terrain of the first volume by mapping art since 1900 in light of migration and displacement as key characteristics of 20th century art. Ruth Phillips and Ian McLean question the ‘apprenticeship’ model in Native North American and Australian Aboriginal histories; Steven Mansbach documents the influence of emigre art historials from Central Europe in American universities after 1945; Ikem Stanley Okoye offers a case study of modernist architecture in Nigeria in the 1920s; Sieglinde Lemke accounts for diasporic forms of modernism and postmodernism in close readings of Aaron Douglas and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Amna Malik and Jean Fisher address migrant aesthetics in practices from the 1970s and 1980s. Mercer’s, ‘Black Britain: Three Moments in Diaspora Formation,’ examines three international arts festivals—in Sengal 1966, in Guyana 1972 and in Nigeria 1977—arguing that de-historicised narratives of ‘black British arts’ are predicated on a misfit between the nation-state model in art history and the ex-centric logic of belonging embodied in modern diaspora formations. The specific problems associated with conceptualising ‘Black Britain’ were addressed in Mercer’s 2006 keynote at Howard University, ‘Diaspora Didn’t Happen in a Day: Reflections on Aesthetics and Time,’ in Victoria Arana ed, Black British Aesthetics Today, Cambridge Scholars Press (forthcoming, 2007).

Kobena Mercer (series editor) / Projects / Contact