... The crafts of weaving, wood carving and embroidery also allow us to discern the retention of ... more ... The crafts of weaving, wood carving and embroidery also allow us to discern the retention of ... a good relationship with the dead, to remember and show concern for them, to identify themselves with ... Locke in an essay entitled "The African legacy and the Negro artist' (nd) states: ...
This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions o... more This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions of Jeff Donaldson and the AfriCOBRA group. It considers AfriCOBRA and its Black Nationalist artistic expressions in terms of a diasporic strategy for articulating and constructing community. Rather than consider the work's engagement with Africa as solely a look to an ancestral past, this article considers Africa as a touchstone for articulating a revolutionary and future-looking art movement. Discussions of ‘Afrofuturism’ often focus on fantasy and science fiction seen in examples such as the futuristic persona of Sun Ra and his film, Space is the Place. This article discusses the political and rhetorical work of revolution in the Black Nationalist thinking embraced by AfriCOBRA as a similar kind of conceptual reimagining of the world and its potential futures.
1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—... more 1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—yielded 39,950 books and 3,684 articles among the hits (search conducted July 24, 2015). While a search of “diaspora and art” yields mostly studies exploring the African and Jewish diasporas, one will also find texts on queer Puerto Rican artists, Iranian artists, Chinese artists, and more. Significant studies include: Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, Mariam B. Lam, and Kathy L. Nguyen, eds., Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014); Saloni Mathur, ed., The Migrant’s Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora (Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2011); Lawrence La FountainStokes, Queer Ricans: Culture and Sexualities in the Diaspora (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Jonathan Harris, Identity Theft: The Cultural Colonization of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008); and Sheldon Lu, China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 2. Steven Nelson, “Diaspora and Contemporary Art: Multiple Practices, Multiple Worldviews,” in Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 296–316. lar engagement with diversity. How might artists and art historians use theory to productively examine the work of artists with intersectional identities (or work of diverse media) without continuing to relegate those artists and objects to the margins?12 Is there a productive way to move beyond the classification of objects, institutions, or people? As a woman of color in the academy, the issue of diversity is always on my mind—both personally and professionally. Our hope with this forum is to reposition the issue of diversity from one of “privileged knowledge” to one of shared responsibility.
WHO KNEW THAT SURVIVING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC WOULD INVOLVE consuming copious amounts of television? ... more WHO KNEW THAT SURVIVING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC WOULD INVOLVE consuming copious amounts of television? Like many around the world heeding the warnings of health professionals, I found myself at home throughout and increasingly victim to the lure of the small screen. Online platforms from Wired to the Washington Post offered encouragement with endless lists of binge-watchable programs for the COVID epidemic. Critics compiled new lists and media platforms such as Netflix generated new collections of content to consume when, in the midst of the COVID crisis, George Floyd was murdered by police and Black Lives Matter protests burst into popular consciousness (Spangler ). Through the turmoil of the year, I have never been so simultaneously aware of—and confounded by—the blurring of lived experience and the flow of images and stories across my various screens. The entanglement of television, art,
The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s Nati... more The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Gallery of Art sought to introduce a broad public to the creative expression of African Americans at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. In its use of race as its organizing principle, the exhibition was also an early contributor to the production of “African American art” as a distinct field of study. James V. Herring, Alain Locke, and James A. Porter each played a key role in interpreting and presenting African American art both in Washington, D.C., and across the nation, and laid the foundations of an art-critical and art-historical tradition that continues today. This essay explores how Herring’s background as a curator, Locke’s background as a philosopher, and Porter’s background as an artist all colored their interpretations of African American art at this important juncture.
1. I am motivated here by the theory of disidentification, which José Esteban Muñoz put forward a... more 1. I am motivated here by the theory of disidentification, which José Esteban Muñoz put forward as a strategy of working both within and against the dominant cultural sphere. See Muñoz, “Performing Disidentifications,” Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 1–34. 2. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 235. 3. Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft (New York: Berg, 2007), 4. At the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Los Angeles in 2012, the sponsored panel of the Committee on Diversity Practices, “Beyond the Numbers Game: Diversity in Theory and Practice,” was organized around one essential theme: how we move from the compliance model of diversity to a methodologically driven one in our own practices inside and outside the classroom. In organizing the panel, my collaborator Jacqueline Taylor and I thought carefully about crafting a conversation that would address the productive tension between “doing” diversity, while critiquing it. We invited scholars from a variety of backgrounds and institutions to speak on themes that engage discourses of power and privilege more broadly, including diaspora and globalization, critical race art history, disability aesthetics, queer theory, and craft. The list was not meant to be exhaustive, and some perspectives were necessarily excluded. However, the edited version of our discussion presented here signals the importance of continuing to interrogate all categories of difference. —Jordana Moore Saggese
1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—... more 1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—yielded 39,950 books and 3,684 articles among the hits (search conducted July 24, 2015). While a search of “diaspora and art” yields mostly studies exploring the African and Jewish diasporas, one will also find texts on queer Puerto Rican artists, Iranian artists, Chinese artists, and more. Significant studies include: Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, Mariam B. Lam, and Kathy L. Nguyen, eds., Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014); Saloni Mathur, ed., The Migrant’s Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora (Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2011); Lawrence La FountainStokes, Queer Ricans: Culture and Sexualities in the Diaspora (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Jonathan Harris, Identity Theft: The Cultural Colonization of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008); and Sheldon Lu, China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 2. Steven Nelson, “Diaspora and Contemporary Art: Multiple Practices, Multiple Worldviews,” in Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 296–316. lar engagement with diversity. How might artists and art historians use theory to productively examine the work of artists with intersectional identities (or work of diverse media) without continuing to relegate those artists and objects to the margins?12 Is there a productive way to move beyond the classification of objects, institutions, or people? As a woman of color in the academy, the issue of diversity is always on my mind—both personally and professionally. Our hope with this forum is to reposition the issue of diversity from one of “privileged knowledge” to one of shared responsibility.
The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s Nati... more The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Gallery of Art sought to introduce a broad public to the creative expression of African Americans at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. In its use of race as its organizing principle, the exhibition was also an early contributor to the production of “African American art” as a distinct field of study. James V. Herring, Alain Locke, and James A. Porter each played a key role in interpreting and presenting African American art both in Washington, D.C., and across the nation, and laid the foundations of an art-critical and art-historical tradition that continues today. This essay explores how Herring’s background as a curator, Locke’s background as a philosopher, and Porter’s background as an artist all colored their interpretations of African American art at this important juncture.
This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions o... more This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions of Jeff Donaldson and the AfriCOBRA group. It considers AfriCOBRA and its Black Nationalist artistic expressions in terms of a diasporic strategy for articulating and constructing community. Rather than consider the work's engagement with Africa as solely a look to an ancestral past, this article considers Africa as a touchstone for articulating a revolutionary and future-looking art movement. Discussions of ‘Afrofuturism’ often focus on fantasy and science fiction seen in examples such as the futuristic persona of Sun Ra and his film, Space is the Place. This article discusses the political and rhetorical work of revolution in the Black Nationalist thinking embraced by AfriCOBRA as a similar kind of conceptual reimagining of the world and its potential futures.
Tobias Wofford, “Can You Dig It?: Signifying Race in David Hammons’ Spade Series,” in LA Object &... more Tobias Wofford, “Can You Dig It?: Signifying Race in David Hammons’ Spade Series,” in LA Object & David Hammons Body Prints. ed. Lindsay Charlwood (New York: Tilton Gallery, 2011), 86-135.
Tobias Wofford, “Exhibiting a Global Blackness: The First World Festival of Negro Arts,” in New W... more Tobias Wofford, “Exhibiting a Global Blackness: The First World Festival of Negro Arts,” in New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, eds. Karen Dubinsky et al. (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2009), 179-186.
... The crafts of weaving, wood carving and embroidery also allow us to discern the retention of ... more ... The crafts of weaving, wood carving and embroidery also allow us to discern the retention of ... a good relationship with the dead, to remember and show concern for them, to identify themselves with ... Locke in an essay entitled "The African legacy and the Negro artist' (nd) states: ...
This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions o... more This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions of Jeff Donaldson and the AfriCOBRA group. It considers AfriCOBRA and its Black Nationalist artistic expressions in terms of a diasporic strategy for articulating and constructing community. Rather than consider the work's engagement with Africa as solely a look to an ancestral past, this article considers Africa as a touchstone for articulating a revolutionary and future-looking art movement. Discussions of ‘Afrofuturism’ often focus on fantasy and science fiction seen in examples such as the futuristic persona of Sun Ra and his film, Space is the Place. This article discusses the political and rhetorical work of revolution in the Black Nationalist thinking embraced by AfriCOBRA as a similar kind of conceptual reimagining of the world and its potential futures.
1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—... more 1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—yielded 39,950 books and 3,684 articles among the hits (search conducted July 24, 2015). While a search of “diaspora and art” yields mostly studies exploring the African and Jewish diasporas, one will also find texts on queer Puerto Rican artists, Iranian artists, Chinese artists, and more. Significant studies include: Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, Mariam B. Lam, and Kathy L. Nguyen, eds., Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014); Saloni Mathur, ed., The Migrant’s Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora (Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2011); Lawrence La FountainStokes, Queer Ricans: Culture and Sexualities in the Diaspora (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Jonathan Harris, Identity Theft: The Cultural Colonization of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008); and Sheldon Lu, China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 2. Steven Nelson, “Diaspora and Contemporary Art: Multiple Practices, Multiple Worldviews,” in Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 296–316. lar engagement with diversity. How might artists and art historians use theory to productively examine the work of artists with intersectional identities (or work of diverse media) without continuing to relegate those artists and objects to the margins?12 Is there a productive way to move beyond the classification of objects, institutions, or people? As a woman of color in the academy, the issue of diversity is always on my mind—both personally and professionally. Our hope with this forum is to reposition the issue of diversity from one of “privileged knowledge” to one of shared responsibility.
WHO KNEW THAT SURVIVING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC WOULD INVOLVE consuming copious amounts of television? ... more WHO KNEW THAT SURVIVING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC WOULD INVOLVE consuming copious amounts of television? Like many around the world heeding the warnings of health professionals, I found myself at home throughout and increasingly victim to the lure of the small screen. Online platforms from Wired to the Washington Post offered encouragement with endless lists of binge-watchable programs for the COVID epidemic. Critics compiled new lists and media platforms such as Netflix generated new collections of content to consume when, in the midst of the COVID crisis, George Floyd was murdered by police and Black Lives Matter protests burst into popular consciousness (Spangler ). Through the turmoil of the year, I have never been so simultaneously aware of—and confounded by—the blurring of lived experience and the flow of images and stories across my various screens. The entanglement of television, art,
The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s Nati... more The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Gallery of Art sought to introduce a broad public to the creative expression of African Americans at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. In its use of race as its organizing principle, the exhibition was also an early contributor to the production of “African American art” as a distinct field of study. James V. Herring, Alain Locke, and James A. Porter each played a key role in interpreting and presenting African American art both in Washington, D.C., and across the nation, and laid the foundations of an art-critical and art-historical tradition that continues today. This essay explores how Herring’s background as a curator, Locke’s background as a philosopher, and Porter’s background as an artist all colored their interpretations of African American art at this important juncture.
1. I am motivated here by the theory of disidentification, which José Esteban Muñoz put forward a... more 1. I am motivated here by the theory of disidentification, which José Esteban Muñoz put forward as a strategy of working both within and against the dominant cultural sphere. See Muñoz, “Performing Disidentifications,” Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 1–34. 2. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 235. 3. Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft (New York: Berg, 2007), 4. At the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Los Angeles in 2012, the sponsored panel of the Committee on Diversity Practices, “Beyond the Numbers Game: Diversity in Theory and Practice,” was organized around one essential theme: how we move from the compliance model of diversity to a methodologically driven one in our own practices inside and outside the classroom. In organizing the panel, my collaborator Jacqueline Taylor and I thought carefully about crafting a conversation that would address the productive tension between “doing” diversity, while critiquing it. We invited scholars from a variety of backgrounds and institutions to speak on themes that engage discourses of power and privilege more broadly, including diaspora and globalization, critical race art history, disability aesthetics, queer theory, and craft. The list was not meant to be exhaustive, and some perspectives were necessarily excluded. However, the edited version of our discussion presented here signals the importance of continuing to interrogate all categories of difference. —Jordana Moore Saggese
1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—... more 1. A quick search of the keyword “diaspora” on WorldCat—a global database of library collections—yielded 39,950 books and 3,684 articles among the hits (search conducted July 24, 2015). While a search of “diaspora and art” yields mostly studies exploring the African and Jewish diasporas, one will also find texts on queer Puerto Rican artists, Iranian artists, Chinese artists, and more. Significant studies include: Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, Mariam B. Lam, and Kathy L. Nguyen, eds., Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014); Saloni Mathur, ed., The Migrant’s Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora (Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2011); Lawrence La FountainStokes, Queer Ricans: Culture and Sexualities in the Diaspora (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Jonathan Harris, Identity Theft: The Cultural Colonization of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008); and Sheldon Lu, China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 2. Steven Nelson, “Diaspora and Contemporary Art: Multiple Practices, Multiple Worldviews,” in Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 296–316. lar engagement with diversity. How might artists and art historians use theory to productively examine the work of artists with intersectional identities (or work of diverse media) without continuing to relegate those artists and objects to the margins?12 Is there a productive way to move beyond the classification of objects, institutions, or people? As a woman of color in the academy, the issue of diversity is always on my mind—both personally and professionally. Our hope with this forum is to reposition the issue of diversity from one of “privileged knowledge” to one of shared responsibility.
The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s Nati... more The comprehensive 1933 Exhibition of Works by Negro Artists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Gallery of Art sought to introduce a broad public to the creative expression of African Americans at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. In its use of race as its organizing principle, the exhibition was also an early contributor to the production of “African American art” as a distinct field of study. James V. Herring, Alain Locke, and James A. Porter each played a key role in interpreting and presenting African American art both in Washington, D.C., and across the nation, and laid the foundations of an art-critical and art-historical tradition that continues today. This essay explores how Herring’s background as a curator, Locke’s background as a philosopher, and Porter’s background as an artist all colored their interpretations of African American art at this important juncture.
This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions o... more This article explores the role of Africa in the avant-garde aesthetic and political convictions of Jeff Donaldson and the AfriCOBRA group. It considers AfriCOBRA and its Black Nationalist artistic expressions in terms of a diasporic strategy for articulating and constructing community. Rather than consider the work's engagement with Africa as solely a look to an ancestral past, this article considers Africa as a touchstone for articulating a revolutionary and future-looking art movement. Discussions of ‘Afrofuturism’ often focus on fantasy and science fiction seen in examples such as the futuristic persona of Sun Ra and his film, Space is the Place. This article discusses the political and rhetorical work of revolution in the Black Nationalist thinking embraced by AfriCOBRA as a similar kind of conceptual reimagining of the world and its potential futures.
Tobias Wofford, “Can You Dig It?: Signifying Race in David Hammons’ Spade Series,” in LA Object &... more Tobias Wofford, “Can You Dig It?: Signifying Race in David Hammons’ Spade Series,” in LA Object & David Hammons Body Prints. ed. Lindsay Charlwood (New York: Tilton Gallery, 2011), 86-135.
Tobias Wofford, “Exhibiting a Global Blackness: The First World Festival of Negro Arts,” in New W... more Tobias Wofford, “Exhibiting a Global Blackness: The First World Festival of Negro Arts,” in New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, eds. Karen Dubinsky et al. (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2009), 179-186.
"Reconsidering Black Internationalism" in 'Melvin Edwards: Five Decades,' ed. Catherine Craft (Da... more "Reconsidering Black Internationalism" in 'Melvin Edwards: Five Decades,' ed. Catherine Craft (Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center, 2015), 60-7.
At the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Los Angeles in 2012, the sponsored panel ... more At the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Los Angeles in 2012, the sponsored panel of the Committee on Diversity Practices, “Beyond the Numbers Game: Diversity in Theory and Practice,” was organized around one essential theme: how we move from the compliance model of diversity to a methodologically driven one in our own practices inside and outside the classroom. In organizing the panel, my collaborator Jacqueline Taylor and I thought carefully about crafting a conversation that would address the productive tension between “doing” diversity, while critiquing it.1 We invited scholars from a variety of backgrounds and institutions to speak on themes that engage discourses of power and privilege more broadly, including diaspora and globalization, critical race art history, disability aesthetics, queer theory, and craft. The list was not meant to be exhaustive, and some perspectives were necessarily excluded. However, the edited version of our discussion presented here signals the importance of continuing to interrogate all categories of difference.
"Book Review: 'Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music' by Robert Farris Thompson" Afr... more "Book Review: 'Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music' by Robert Farris Thompson" African Arts (Spring 2016): 91-92.
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Papers by Tobias Wofford
the Committee on Diversity Practices, “Beyond the Numbers Game: Diversity in Theory and Practice,”
was organized around one essential theme: how we move from the compliance model of diversity to a
methodologically driven one in our own practices inside and outside the classroom. In organizing the
panel, my collaborator Jacqueline Taylor and I thought carefully about crafting a conversation that would
address the productive tension between “doing” diversity, while critiquing it.1
We invited scholars from a variety of backgrounds and institutions to speak on themes that engage
discourses of power and privilege more broadly, including diaspora and globalization, critical race art
history, disability aesthetics, queer theory, and craft. The list was not meant to be exhaustive, and some
perspectives were necessarily excluded. However, the edited version of our discussion presented here signals
the importance of continuing to interrogate all categories of difference.