Cancelled

Due to reasons of ill-health, this lecture has unfortunately been cancelled.

This lecture is part of the 2022 Autumn Art Lecture series: 

Modernisms: Decolonising art's history

Book your ticket on Eventbrite here: https://bit.ly/3S3hqJW 

About the Autumn Art Lectures

This year’s Autumn Art Lectures are back in person to challenge the concept of Modernism as a monolithic entity: Is there just one Modernism or are there many? What does it mean to think of Modernism on the global stage? Is there such a thing as an ‘alternative’ Modernism or is Modernism itself already inherently hybrid? As many institutions, from galleries and museums to universities, engage with the challenges of embracing global visual culture, this investigation is both vital and timely. Our inter-disciplinary speakers include academics, curators, artists and pedagogues who have grappled with the idea of the Modern, paying particular attention to blackness, Asian-ness, difference and decolonisation. The series aims to expose diversity at the heart of the Modern.

The Autumn Art Lecture series is hosted by the University of Bristol's Faculty of Arts with support from the Centre for Black Humanities and Bristol Ideas.

About this event

Can art from the Muslim world be authentically modern and also express the spirit of Islam? The answer to this is yes. But this answer has little significance unless it is underpinned theoretically and legitimised institutionally; and the Muslim world does not yet have the ability to do this. The prevailing theories of modern art are Eurocentric, within which there is no place for Islam. And although there is now tremendous creativity in the Muslim world, with its art festivals and biennales, and the success of its artists worldwide, it does not have its own art institutions, with the ability to recognise, theoretically and historically, what its artists do. All this is still dependent on the West. The task for the Muslim world now is therefore to establish its own institutions, according to its own view of things and values, to develop and promote scholarship, involving theories of art based on its own understanding of history, which would not only liberate it from its subservience to the West but also enable its modern artists to think and create freely and independently. Araeen’s book launch and talk will grapple with these dilemmas, charting out his own attempts towards achieving these objectives.

This discussion will be introduced by Dr Elizabeth Robles and Dr Zehra Jumabhoy (Lecturers in Modern and Contemporary Art, History of Art department, University of Bristol), who will also moderate the Q&A with the audience.

About the speaker

Rasheed Araeen is an artist, writer and the Founding Editor of Third Text. As an artist, he began his journey in Pakistan in 1953, whilst also studying civil engineering. After doing some important works in Karachi, seminal to his subsequent pursuits, he came to the UK in 1964 and since then has lived in London. In the 1960s and 1970s, he became active in various groups supporting liberation struggles, democracy and human rights, which in fact led him to writing Black Manifesto (1975-76); and then to found numerous publications: Black Phoenix (1978-79), Third Text (1987-2011), and Third Text Asia (2008-09). His present concern is with the Muslim world, for the promotion of its past achievements and what it can now do to be part of the modern world according to its own view of things, values and vision.

Tickets

Book your ticket on Eventbrite here: https://bit.ly/3S3hqJW 

Check out the other events in the Autumn Art Lecture series: https://bit.ly/3EFba8r