Keir Lectures on Art: Professor Steven Nelson
Learning from Johannesburg: Moshekwa Langa’s Maps of Desire
This lecture explores how South African-born, Amsterdam-based artist Moshekwa Langa, who spent his youth under the rule of Grand Apartheid in South Africa, trades in ethnography, the historic relations of whites and blacks, and the systems of homelands in the nation state to create collaged and drawn geographies that point to the constructed nature of official South African maps.
This discussion also looks at how Langa’s work, in its mixture of languages and semiotic systems, deconstructs the authority of maps and “official” information as a means to create new spaces and new ways to understand affiliation, and belonging, both racially and sexually.
Steven Nelson is Professor of African and African American Art and Director of the UCLA African Studies Center. He is currently the Treasurer of the National Committee for the History of Art and a member of the General Assembly of the Comité International d’histoire de l’art, and a Contributing Editor to Grove Art Online. Professor Nelson was a former president of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association; served as member of the advisory board for the for the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Visual Study; and was Reviews Editor for Art Journal and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Monday, 20 August 2018
6.30pm-8.00pm
Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre A
Spencer Road, (behind The Ian Potter Museum of Art)
University of Melbourne
Parkville Vic 3010
Admission is free.
Bookings are required.
Places are limited
To register visit: http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/nelson
For further information please contact: Dr Anthony White a.white@unimelb.edu.au
Steven Nelson is a Mcgeorge Visiting Speaker. This lecture is coordinated in partnership with the Power Institute, University of Sydney, as part of the Keir Lectures on Art Series, supported by the Keir Foundation and the Mcgeorge Bequest, University of Melbourne.
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