WORKSHOP: May 4–6, 2011. Center for Global Studies and the Humanities, Duke University

http://transnationaldecolonialinstitute.wordpress.com/decolonial-aesthetics/

EXHIBITION: May 4–June 20, 2011

http://transnationaldecolonialinstitute.wordpress.com/duke-university-exhibition/

by Geoffrey Mock
Complete article: http://today.duke.edu/2011/05/decolonial

In a new gallery deep in the old art museum building on East Campus, an exhibit of works from international artists provides a visual representation of some of the most significant humanities scholarship at Duke and beyond. Decolonial Aesthetics takes its name from a phrase coined by Walter Mignolo . William H. Wannamaker Professor of Literature and director of Duke's Institute for Global Studies and the Humanities. It refers to the idea that political, scholarly and artistic beliefs such as freedom and creativity are deeply bound with Western aesthetics, cutting off non-Western cultures from their own history and knowledge.

To Mignolo and others, concepts such as nationalism that were born of European experience are "double-edged" swords for people in Asia, Africa and Latin America, allowing these people to oppose Western hegemony but limiting the development of their own indigenous institutions. Too often, the result has been autocratic regimes replicating the political culture of the colonial rulers. The Decolonial project, Mignolo said, is a manifesto calling for non-Western artists and thinkers to transform art, sensibility and politics and reclaim them as part of their own culture.

The international artists in the new exhibit make their own contributions.  One common theme in the Duke exhibit is identity and invisibility.  In Black Magic at the White House (2009) by Danish artist, Jeannette Ehlers, a barely visible Vodoun  dancer moves across the stately courtroom of Marienborg, a magnificent Danish building built by a financier with ties to the slave and sugar trade.  Serbian artist Tanja Ostojic's Looking for a Husband With a EU Passport, details the events that occurred when she placed a personal ad looking for a husband in Western European media.

The exhibit, which will run through June 20, is tied to a workshop held at Duke May 4-6.  Mignolo and more than two dozen international artists and scholars discussed how to move non-Western cultures toward a future where ideas of democracy and art have moved beyond Western concepts.

Walter Mignolo
Chief Curator

Marina Grzinic
Alanna Lockward
Guo-Juin Hong
Co-Curators

Nayoung Aimee Kwon
Hong-An Truong
Miguel Rojas-Sotelo
Guo-Juin Hong
Tracy Carhart
Organizers

Dalida María Benfield (Artist / Scholar / U.S. / Panama)
Zoe Butt (Curator / Vietnam)
Teresa María Díaz Nerio (Artist / The Netherlands)
Marta Lucía Gómez Bustos (Artist / Scholar / Colombia)
Roberto Dainotto (Scholar / U.S.)
Jeannette Ehlers (Artist / Denmark)
Luigi Fassi (Curator / Italy)
Raúl Ferrera-Balanquet (Artist / Scholar / U.S. / Cuba)
Pedro Pablo Gómez (Artist / Colombia)
Lewis Gordon (Scholar / U.S.)
Marina Grzinic (Artist / Scholar / Austria/Slovenia)
Ana Hoffner (Artist / Austria)
Guo-Juin Hong (Artist / Scholar / U.S.)
Nayoung Aimee Kwon (Scholar / U.S.)
Ricardo Lambuley (Artist / Scholar / Colombia)
Pedro Lasch (Artist / México / U.S.)
Viet Lê (Artist / Curator / Scholar / U.S.)
Dinh Q. Lê (Artist / Vietnam)
Alanna Lockward (Curator / Scholar / Germany)
Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Scholar / U.S.)
Walter Mignolo (Scholar / U.S.)
Tanja Ostojic (Artist / Germany/Serbia)
Miguel Rojas-Sotelo (Artist / Scholar / U.S.)
Isa Rosenberger (Artist / Austria)
Maria Ruido (Artist / Spain)
Zvonka Simcic (Artist / Slovenia)
Aina Smid (Artist / Slovenia)
Hong-An Truong (Artist / U.S.)
Rolando Vázquez (Artist / México / The Netherlands)
Catherine Walsh (Scholar / Activist / Ecuador)

Participants:

SPONSORS

At Duke:
Romances Studies
Duke in the Andes
the Program in Literature
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Center for Global Studies and the Humanities
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South
Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies

From Abroad:

Facultad de Artes ASAB, Universidad Distrital Francisco
José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia
Institute of Philosophy of ZRC SAZU Ljubljana, Slovenia
Roosevelt Academy, The Netherlands
TDI/Transnational Decolonial Institute

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