2018 AAANZ Conference – Aesthetics, Politics and Histories: The Social Context of Art, will be held at RMIT University Melbourne city campus in just two weeks. With over 70 panels and artist sessions, more than 270 presenters and 5 keynotes held over three days from 5 to 7 December 2018 this year’s conference is not to be missed.
Register now to attend: https://aaanz.info/register-for-the-2018-aaanz-conference/
The 2018 AAANZ Conference Committee are delighted to announce the keynote lectures Gabi Ngcobo and Ema Tavola will present at this years conference:
Addressing History in the Present
Photograph by Sabelo Mlangeni
Gabi Ngcobo, curator of the 10th Berlin Biennale.
The 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art marked 20 years of the biennale’s existence. Titled We don’t need another herothe 10th Berlin Biennale was a collaborative undertaking that refused to embrace a celebratory tone at the same time reconsidered what it means to commemorate. Curator of the 10th Berlin Biennale Gabi Ngcobo will discuss the series of strategies set up by the curatorial team. Starting from the public program titled I’m not who you think I’m not, she will touch on how conversations, proposals and negotiations with artists, institutions, press and the Berlin art communities provided the many layers that shaped the exhibition, design and publications of the biennale. Ngcobo will unpack how artists responded to urgent questions that can help shape a language from which we can continue to make visible that which requires undoing beyond the metaphorical notions of the decolonization process.
Vunilagi Vou – A New Horizon: Curating as Social Inclusion in Moana Oceania
Photograph by Pati Solomona Tyrell
Ema Tavola, independent curator
Art has the power to broker relationships, understanding and meaning, but the value systems of galleries and museums are not mutually transferrable. As collective peoples, my communities define themselves by their relationships with and to others. The practice of sharing knowledge, belonging and positionality through the facilitation of dialogue creates safe space. This necessary rule of engagement enables multiples voices to be heard and valued, allowing power dynamics to be critiqued, analysed and reframed.
My curatorial practice is underpinned by a methodology that privileges the process of engaging Moana Oceania / Pacific communities, but increasingly, the gallery is not enough. The positionality of indigenous peoples in institutions of colonial power too often perverts the presence of our voices. Power is not simply in the inclusion of our bodies, cultural languages and ideas, but in the receiving, the promotion and decision-making that surrounds all of our material production and its associated social currencies.
Curating is a mechanism for connection and power sharing, an intrinsically collective practice. In the
understanding of Moana Oceania / Pacific ways of being, and the meaning and mana of the spiritual
and functional application of creative energy, curating ‘Pacific Art’ has become a platform to embody a process of decolonisation and real-time social inclusion, by re-centering and embracing
the diversity of indigenous experience, bodies and worldviews.
This presentation will provide insight to three curatorial projects that have simultaneously struggled
and embodied these ideas; The Veiqia Project (ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland, 2015-16), Dravuni: Sivia yani na Vunilagi – Beyond the Horizon (New Zealand Maritime Museum, Auckland, 2016) and A
Maternal Lens (4 th International Biennial of Casablanca, Morocco, 2018).
For more information about this year’s conference and keynotes go to: https://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2018-conference/
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