Join the Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate, Session 4

Join the Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate, Session 4

Full address: Tate Britain, Library & Archive Reading Rooms, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

Event Date: Friday 31st August 2018
Time: 10.30am – 1.00pm

In these collaborative monthly research sessions at Tate, the WOCI Reading Group will draw upon the Panchayat Special Collection during its anniversary year; collectively exploring and highlighting the unique material within this vital collection of rare publications and exhibition ephemera from the 1980s.

Workshop reading text:

‘(A) A perspective emphasising mainly Assimilation

This perspective has four main features:

(i) A belief that race relations in Britain are by and large good, that it is counter-productive to try to improve them too fast, and that problems are only caused by extreme right wing groups.

(ii) A belief that curricula of educational establishments should reflect at all times British traditions, history, customs and culture.

(iii) A belief that ‘children are all children’, and that teachers should pay as little attention as possible to racial and cultural differences amongst their pupils/ students, or to racism in education and society at large – the ‘colour blind’ approach.

(iv) A belief that black people, before they can possibly learn anything else or be integrated into the mainstream of the education system, need to learn to speak and write correct English.’
ILEA, Inner London Educational Authority. Race, Sex and Class, 2. Multi Ethnic Education in Schools, 1983.

* photocopies of the extended version of this text will be available during the session.

About the Panchayat Special Collection
Panchayat was co-founded by Shaheen Merali and Allan de Souza in 1988, after consultation with artists Bhajan Hunjan, Symrath Patti, and Shanti Thomas. Panchayat was first organised by its co-founders as a project based arts organisation whose focus was to create an archive of works by contemporary artists who produced issue-based work, often in relation to developing and addressing plurality in multicultural environments. As Panchayat developed it was involved in publishing, curating exhibitions, programming conferences, and workshops.

The Panchayat Collection consists of documentation and reference library material relating to the cultural activities and activism predominantly in Britain, mainland Europe, North America and SE Asia between the 1980s and 2003. The Panchayat archive’s collecting strategy focused on the growing interactions within a globalising artworld of Black and Asian artists, as well documenting their commitment to the intersection between race, class, gender, policed sexualities, and (dis)ability. Dr Janice Cheddie and Shaheen Merali were keepers of the Panchayat Archive at the University of Westminster 2002 -2015 and remain central to its future development.

In May 2015 the contents of the collection were donated to the Tate Library as part of its Special Collection and since then has attracted researchers from both the arts and the humanities, including newer audiences that are interested in diasporic connections, Black and Asian British artists 1988- 2003, curatorial practices that emerged in the late eighties and in the role of women of colour in the visual arts and education.

About the WOCI Reading Group
The Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. The WOCI Reading Group aims to improve visibility for women of colour artists whilst using archive material to generate discussion and practice around current social and political concerns.

The reading group meets on a monthly basis to discuss work within the Women of Colour Index (WOCI); a unique collection of slides and papers collated by artist Rita Keegan that chart the emergence of Women of Colour artists during the ‘critical decades’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Reading group sessions aim to improve the visibility of women of colour artists whilst using material in the archive to generate discussion, thought and practice around current social and political concerns. All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, disabilities, religions and race are welcome.

To book tickets please visit Tate Webpage: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talk/women-colour-index-reading-group

Full PDF of ILEA, Inner London Educational Authority. Race, Sex and Class, 2. Multi Ethnic Education in Schools, 1983. Race, Sex and Class pp.20-22

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Join the WOCI Reading Group in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate with Janice Cheddie and Shaheen Merali

Join the WOCI Reading Group in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate with Janice Cheddie and Shaheen Merali

Date: Friday 29th June 2018
Time: 10.30am – 1.00pm
Address: Tate Britain, Library & Archive Reading Rooms, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

The Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group aims to improve visibility for women of colour artists whilst using material in the library and archive to generate discussion and practice around current social and political concerns.

In these collaborative monthly research sessions at Tate, the WOCI Reading Group will draw upon the Panchayat Special Collection during its anniversary year; collectively exploring and highlighting the unique material within this vital collection of rare publications and exhibition ephemera from the 1980s. All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, disabilities, religions and race are welcome.

Workshop Reading Text:
‘We should be concerned to provide an education for girls and boys together, for black and white children together, for children of all social classes together. Experience has demonstrated that a re-examination of educational provision from the point of view of a group of children disadvantaged by it produces a perspective of change and improvement of educational benefit to all the children, including those who are the apparent beneficiaries of the existing system. The current examination system for example does not simply disadvantage the “bottom 40%” it is an ineffective and inadequate method of recording the achievements of the sixty per cent who in some sense survive within it. It is not simply educationally undesirable that attitudes and values of educational institutions should be based on assumptions of differential provision in relation to gender, class or ethnic origin; the quality of the education itself suffers too’.
ilea (Inner London Education Authority) Race, Sex and Class, 1. Achievement in Schools, 1983

About the Panchayat Special Collection
Panchayat was co-founded by Shaheen Merali and Allan de Souza in 1988, after consultation with artists Bhajan Hunjan, Symrath Patti, and Shanti Thomas. Panchayat was first organised by its co-founders as a project based arts organisation whose focus was to create an archive of works by contemporary artists who produced issue-based work, often in relation to developing and addressing plurality in multicultural environments. As Panchayat developed it was involved in publishing, curating exhibitions, programming conferences, and workshops.

The Panchayat Collection consists of documentation and reference library material relating to the cultural activities and activism predominantly in Britain, mainland Europe, North America and SE Asia between the 1980s and 2003. The Panchayat archive’s collecting strategy focused on the growing interactions within a globalising art world of Black and Asian artists, as well documenting their commitment to the intersection between race, class, gender, policed sexualities, and (dis)ability. Dr Janice Cheddie and Shaheen Merali were keepers of the Panchayat Archive at the University of Westminster 2002 -2015 and remain central to its future development.

In May 2015 the contents of the collection were donated to the Tate Library as part of its Special Collection and since then has attracted researchers from both the arts and the humanities, including newer audiences that are interested in diasporic connections, Black and Asian British artists 1988- 2003, curatorial practices that emerged in the late eighties and in the role of women of colour in the visual arts and education.

Janice Cheddie was born in St. Lucia, West Indies and arrived in the UK with her mother and older brother in the 1960s. She is a London based researcher, writer and consultant who works across academia and cultural policy. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies. Janice Cheddie has published widely on issues of visual culture and difference. Between 2002-2015, she was, with Shaheen Merali, Keeper of the Panchayat Special Collection. She is currently an Associate Lecturer, at University of Greenwich. She was Visiting Senior Lecturer in Art History/Art Education, Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, University of the West Indies, Cavehill Campus, Barbados (2009-2010). 2005-2009 she was the lead consultant for the Heritage Diversity Task Force, Greater London Authority (GLA), London and associate editor of ‘Embedding Shared Heritage’ GLA, (2009). 2006-2008, she was a core member of the Dress and African Diaspora Network collaboration between Victoria and Albert Museum, University of California, Davis, and Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts London. Work of the Dress and the African Diaspora network, features in a special edition of Fashion Theory, Berg, 2010.  2000-2005, she was Arts Humanities, Research Council, Research Fellow on ‘Translating the Image’ Cross-Cultural Contemporary Arts’, Goldsmiths College, University of London, led by Professor Irit Rogoff.

Shaheen Merali is a curator and writer, currently based in London, who explores the intersection of art, cultural identity and global histories in his work. Previously, he was a key lecturer at Central Saint Martins School of Art (1995- 2003); a visiting lecturer and researcher at University of Westminster (1997- 2003) and the Head of Department of Exhibition, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003-2008) where he curated several exhibitions accompanied by publications, including The Black Atlantic; Dreams and Trauma- Moving images and the Promised Lands; and Re-Imagining Asia, One Thousand years of Separation. Merali was the co-curator of the 6th Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2006) and co-curator of Berlin Heist or the enduring fascination of walled cities for the 4th Mediations Biennale, Posnan, Poland (2014). His recent exhibitions include Refractions, Moving Images on Palestine, P21 Gallery, London; When Violence becomes Decadent, ACC Galerie, Weimar; Speaking from the Heart– The Polemic Sensibility from Iran, Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam and Fragile Hands- A curatorial essay on stated subjectivities, University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Masterclasses in 2015 include a series of talks on Globalisation at the London School of Contemporary Arts (LCCA) and Collaboration Strategies for the Amsterdam-based collective The State of L3. In 2017, the first of a series of monographs edited by Merali has been released by Isolated Labs (Tavares Strachan) and forthcoming release by Carrots Publishing (JJ XI). His essays have been included in recent publications including, Conflict And Compassion: A Paradox of difference in Contemporary Asian Art Edited by Bashir Makhoul and Alnoor Mitha, HOME Manchester, 2016; The Live Art Almanac Volume Edited by Harriet Curtis, Lois Keidan and Aaron Wright, Oberon Books London; Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Edited by Hamid Keshmirshekan, IB Tauris, 2015; Dissonant Archives, Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East, Edited by Anthony Downey, I.B.Tauris, 2015; In FLUX, Contemporary Art from Asia, Edited by P.D.Mukherji, N.P.Ahuja, K.Singh, Sage Publications, 2013 and Public Notice 3: Jitish Kallat at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. by Madhuvanti Ghose. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Press, 2011.

About the WOCI Reading Group
The Women of Colour Index Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. WOCI sessions have focused on seminal exhibitions such as Testimony: Three Black Women Photographers (1986) and The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black art (1987) and artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Martina Attile, Jagjit Chuhan, Sharon Curtis, Nina Edge, Maxine Walker, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce and Chila Kumari Burman.

The WOCI Reading Group follows keenly in the footsteps of Rita Keegan who compiled the index and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Lauren Craig, Mystique Holloway, Gina Nembhard and Zhi Holloway, who as the formidable art and art research collective X Marks the Spot (XMTS), took the Index as the focus for their residency at the Women’s Art Library in 2012 culminating in the publication Human Endeavour.

To book tickets please visit Tate Webpage: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talk/women-colour-index-reading-group

Join WOCI in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate

Join the WOCI Reading Group in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate, Session 2

Full address: Tate Britain, Library & Archive Reading Rooms, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

Event Date: Friday 25th May 2018

Time: 10.30am – 1.00pm

In these collaborative monthly research sessions at Tate, the WOCI Reading Group will draw upon the Panchayat Special Collection during its anniversary year; collectively exploring and highlighting the unique material within this vital collection of rare publications and exhibition ephemera from the 1980s.

Workshop reading text:

‘The need’*

There is an urgent need, and there is an increasing demand from teachers, for resources which expose and challenge racist and sexist ideas. The world view reflected through school currucula is rooted in Britain’s colonial past and its global economic interests today. It is this perspective that underpins racism, sexism and class inequality. If teaching is to be truly educational we must provide learning materials which question this blinkered picture of society.’

Association for Curriculum Development, working against anti-racist education since 1982.

* photocopies of the extended version of this text will be available during the session.

About the Panchayat Special Collection

Panchayat was co-founded by Shaheen Merali and Allan de Souza in 1988, after consultation with artists Bhajan Hunjan, Symrath Patti, and Shanti Thomas. Panchayat was first organised by its co-founders as a project based arts organisation whose focus was to create an archive of works by contemporary artists who produced issue-based work, often in relation to developing and addressing plurality in multicultural environments. As Panchayat developed it was involved in publishing, curating exhibitions, programming conferences, and workshops.

The Panchayat Collection consists of documentation and reference library material relating to the cultural activities and activism predominantly in Britain, mainland Europe, North America and SE Asia between the 1980s and 2003. The Panchayat archive’s collecting strategy focused on the growing interactions within a globalising artworld of Black and Asian artists, as well documenting their commitment to the intersection between race, class, gender, policed sexualities, and (dis)ability. Dr Janice Cheddie and Shaheen Merali were keepers of the Panchayat Archive at the University of Westminster 2002 -2015 and remain central to its future development.

In May 2015 the contents of the collection were donated to the Tate Library as part of its Special Collection and since then has attracted researchers from both the arts and the humanities, including newer audiences that are interested in diasporic connections, Black and Asian British artists 1988- 2003, curatorial practices that emerged in the late eighties and in the role of women of colour in the visual arts and education.

All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, religions and race are welcome.

About the WOCI Reading Group

The Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. The WOCI Reading Group aims to improve visibility for women of colour artists whilst using archive material to generate discussion and practice around current social and political concerns. Previous sessions have focused on seminal exhibitions such as Testimony: Three Black Women Photographers (1986) and The Image Employed: the Use of Narrative in Black art (1987), and artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Martina Attile, Jagjit Chuhan, Sharon Curtis, Nina Edge, Maxine Walker, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce and Chila Kumari Burman.

WOCI Reading Group follow keenly in the footsteps of Rita Keegan who compiled the Index and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Lauren Craig, Mystique Holloway, Gina Nembhard and Zhi Holloway, who as the formidable art and art research collective X Marks the Spot (XMTS), took WOCI as the focus for their residency at the Women’s Art Library in 2012 culminating in the publication Human Endeavour.

To book tickets please visit Tate Webpage: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talk/women-colour-index-reading-group

 

 

WOCI Reading Group looking at ‘Understanding Patriarchy’ by Bell Hooks with Who cares? A radio tale & Resonance 104.4 FM

Patriarchy and ‘affective labour’- it is in the interests of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that women of colour work is undervalued, lowest paid and ‘unskilled’ (so called) care roles; carers, nurses, cleaners, domestic workers professions are filled up by women of colour in our economy.

Join us for the next Women of Colour Index Reading Group with Who cares? A radio tale, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Samia Malik and Rehana Zaman at Gasworks

Full address: Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London, SE11 5RH
Event Date: Sunday 13th May 2018
Time: 12.30pm – 1.30pm

Who cares? A radio tale turns Gasworks into a a live broadcast studio in collaboration with renowned experimental radio station Resonance 104.4 FM. A programme of newly commissioned and existing performances, sound works and discussions invites audiences to think about affective labour, the unrecognised emotional work that exists in all parts of life.

Tune in to Resonance 104.4fm or turn up at Gasworks and be present in the physical space of the gallery to observe all the hidden process of the programme’s second day of the live broadcast.

The Women of Colour Index Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. The reading group meets on a monthly basis to discuss work within the Women of Colour Index (WOCI); a unique collection of slides and papers collated by artist Rita Keegan that chart the emergence of Women of Colour artists during the ‘critical decades’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Reading group sessions aim to improve the visibility of women of colour artists whilst using material in the archive to generate discussion, thought and practice around current social and political concerns. All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, religions and race are welcome.

Workshop Reading Text:

‘Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation. Yet most men do not use the word “patriarchy” in everyday life. Most men never think about patriarchy – what it means, how it is created and sustained. Many men in our nation would not be able to spell the word or pronounce it correctly. The word “patriarchy” just is not part of their normal everyday thought or speech. Men who have heard and know the word usually associate with women’s liberation, with feminism, and therefore dismiss it as irrelevant to their own experiences. I have been standing at podiums talking about patriarchy for more than thirty years. It is a word I use daily, and men who hear me use it often ask me what I mean by it’. Understanding Patriarchy by Bell Hooks

Link to full text: http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/woci-reading-group-looking-at-understanding-patriarchy-by-bell-hooks-with-who-cares-a-radio-tale-tickets-45806969880
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/418509798621154/

 

Women of Colour Index Reading Group with Dr Karen Salt

What is the practice of justice in unjust spaces? A Women of Colour Index Reading Group with Dr Karen Salt

Join us for the next WOCI Reading Group with Dr Karen Salt, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Samia Malik and Rehana Zaman at SOAS.

Full address: Room B204 (2nd Floor), Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh St, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Event Date: Wednesday 9th May 2018
Time: 17:00 – 19:00

This session will take up fragments of thought inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ recent work M Archive, a poetic text that responds to the work of Black Feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander and follows on from Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (2016). These explorations will be accompanied by ‘readings’ of archive material from the Women of Colour Index on the work of Marlene Smith.

We begin by framing this quote by Gumbs

“what was in them that made work more food to them than food was? and tobacco? was it indigenous memory? how often did they paint their insides with substance and strain? is there an imprint that deepens in the face of repeated misunderstanding and tokenization? does it inoculate the blood?

what they found gave them pause. but they published a cursory article on ‘ego and the black artist’ to comply with the funding. and most of them moved on to other things. and didn’t tell each other that they never slept through the night again.”

[PLEASE NOTE WE WILL USE THE ABOVE QUOTE AS THE WORKSHOP READING TEXT)

Using Gumbs’ provocations and mullings as points to reflect and refract practice, justice, archives, work and memory, Salt works through questions of creativity and nullification. In disentangling issues of disavowal, activism and presence, Salt asks what ‘evidence’ do we produce for ourselves. In thinking about work, creativity and practice as an archive of evidence, Salt wonders if we have the necessary tools to work our way through the past—and the assemblages in our present—in order to construct just futures.

Bios:

Dr Karen Salt directs the Centre for Research in Race and Rights and leads Europe’s first-ever Black Studies PhD programme—both at the University of Nottingham. Salt is an expert on sovereignty, power, collective activism and systems of governance and collaborates on a number of research projects, including the Arts Council England project, The Bigger Picture. She is an active grant reviewer and recently began a 3-year appointment as a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council Advisory Board where she advises on the development and implementation of strategic approaches to funding which reflect the challenges and opportunities arising for arts and humanities research and those that engage with it. She works with community organisations, activists and institutions on transformational social justice work and has focused quite a bit of her recent energies in thinking through the contours (and constraints) of inclusive practice(s). Her monograph, The Unfinished Revolution: Haiti, Black Sovereignty and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World, will be published by Liverpool University Press in Autumn 2018. She has begun work on two new monographs: States of Blackness: Nationhood and Power in Haiti, Liberia and Abyssinia and Twilight Islands: Race and Politics in the Shadows of the Caribbean.

The Women of Colour Index Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. The reading group meets on a monthly basis to discuss work within the Women of Colour Index (WOCI); a unique collection of slides and papers collated by artist Rita Keegan that chart the emergence of Women of Colour artists during the ‘critical decades’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Reading group sessions aim to improve the visibility of women of colour artists whilst using material in the archive to generate discussion, thought and practice around current social and political concerns. All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, religions and race are welcome.

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/436091586812919/

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-of-colour-index-reading-group-with-dr-karen-salt-tickets-45804998985

Join WOCI in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate with Shaheen Merali

Join WOCI in exploring, activating and indexing representations of cultural identity within the Panchayat Special Collection at Tate with Shaheen Merali

Date: Friday 27th April 2018

Time: 10.30am – 1.00pm

Address: Tate Britain, Library & Archive Reading Rooms, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

The Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group aims to improve visibility for women of colour artists whilst using material in the library and archive to generate discussion and practice around current social and political concerns.

In these collaborative monthly research sessions at Tate, WOCI will draw upon the Panchayat Special Collection during its anniversary year; collectively exploring and highlighting the unique material within this vital collection of rare publications and exhibition ephemera from the 1980s.

About the Panchayat Special Collection
Panchayat was co-founded by Shaheen Merali and Allan de Souza in 1988, after consultation with artists Bhajan Hunjan, Symrath Patti, and Shanti Thomas. Panchayat was first organised by its co-founders as a project based arts organisation whose focus was to create an archive of works by contemporary artists who produced issue-based work, often in relation to developing and addressing plurality in multicultural environments. As Panchayat developed it was involved in publishing, curating exhibitions, programming conferences, and workshops.

The Panchayat Collection consists of documentation and reference library material relating to the cultural activities and activism predominantly in Britain, mainland Europe, North America and SE Asia between the 1980s and 2003. The Panchayat archive’s collecting strategy focused on the growing interactions within a globalising artworld of Black and Asian artists, as well documenting their commitment to the intersection between race, class, gender, policed sexualities, and (dis)ability. Dr Janice Cheddie and Shaheen Merali were keepers of the Panchayat Archive at the University of Westminster 2002 -2015 and remain central to its future development.

In May 2015 the contents of the collection were donated to the Tate Library as part of its Special Collection and since then has attracted researchers from both the arts and the humanities, including newer audiences that are interested in diasporic connections, Black and Asian British artists 1988- 2003, curatorial practices that emerged in the late eighties and in the role of women of colour in the visual arts and education.

All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, religions and race are welcome.

Reading Text:
Margaret Thatcher was quoted in Panorama programme ‘The Class Revolution’ as saying “We want our children to learn to add, subtract and not to learn anti-racist maths – whatever that may be.” The Prime Minister’s views legitimatised the claims of the media and the right wing educationists that anti-racist education “detracted from the real endeavours”. EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ERA
Ann Marie Davies, Janet Holland, Rehana Minas. First published in March 1990.

Shaheen Merali is a curator and writer, currently based in London, who explores the intersection of art, cultural identity and global histories in his work. Previously, he was a key lecturer at Central Saint Martins School of Art (1995- 2003); a visiting lecturer and researcher at University of Westminster (1997- 2003) and the Head of Department of Exhibition, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003-2008) where he curated several exhibitions accompanied by publications, including The Black Atlantic; Dreams and Trauma- Moving images and the Promised Lands; and Re-Imagining Asia, One Thousand years of Separation.
Merali was the co-curator of the 6th Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2006) and co-curator of Berlin Heist or the enduring fascination of walled cities for the 4th Mediations Biennale, Posnan, Poland (2014).
His recent exhibitions include Refractions, Moving Images on Palestine, P21 Gallery, London; WhenViolence becomes Decadent, ACC Galerie, Weimar; Speaking from the Heart– The Polemic Sensibility from Iran, Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam and Fragile Hands- A curatorial essay on stated subjectivities, University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Masterclasses in 2015 include a series of talks on Globalisation at the London School of Contemporary Arts (LCCA) and Collaboration Strategies for the Amsterdam-based collective The State of L3. In 2017, the first of series of monographs edited by Merali has been released by Isolated Labs (Tavares Strachan) and forthcoming release by Carrots Publishing (JJ XI).
His essays have been included in recent publications including, Conflict And Compassion: A Paradox of difference in Contemporary Asian Art Edited by Bashir Makhoul and Alnoor Mitha, HOME Manchester, 2016; The Live Art Almanac Volume Edited by Harriet Curtis, Lois Keidan and Aaron Wright, Oberon Books London; Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Edited by Hamid Keshmirshekan, IB Tauris, 2015; Dissonant Archives, Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East, Edited by Anthony Downey, I.B.Tauris, 2015; In FLUX, Contemporary Art from Asia, Edited by P.D.Mukherji, N.P.Ahuja, K.Singh, Sage Publications, 2013 and Public Notice 3: Jitish Kallat at the Art Institute of Chicago,ed. by Madhuvanti Ghose. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Press, 2011.
museumofnonvisibleart.com/interviews/shaheen-merali/‎
Curated exhibition: Re-Imagining Asiahttps://universes.art/specials/2008/re-asia/

About the WOCI Reading Group
The Women of Colour Index Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. WOCI sessions have focused on seminal exhibitions such as Testimony: Three Black Women Photographers (1986) and The Image Employed: the Use of Narrative in Black art (1987), and artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Martina Attile, Jagjit Chuhan, Sharon Curtis, Nina Edge, Maxine Walker, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce and Chila Kumari Burman.

WOCI follow keenly in the footsteps of Rita Keegan who compiled the index and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Lauren Craig, Mystique Holloway, Gina Nembhard and Zhi Holloway, who as the formidable art and art research collective X Marks the Spot (XMTS), took WOCI as the focus for their residency at the Women’s Art Library in 2012 culminating in the publication Human Endeavour.

To book tickets please visit Tate Webpage: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talk/women-colour-index-reading-group

 

 

Women of Colour Index Reading Group with Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski

Join us for the next Women of Colour Index Reading Group with Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Samia Malik and Rehana Zaman at the Women’s Art Library.

Full address: Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross SE14 6NW
Event Date: Thursday 1st March 2018
Time: 3pm – 4.30pm

Bio: Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski Minneapolis based, London-born, Nigerian mixed-media artist/designer, archivist and organiser. Her work and research explores the relationship between feminist, queer, decolonizing theories/spaces and organizational, curatorial, artistic (self) archiving practices.

Sowinski is currently part of the Archival Education Research Initiative (AERI) Emerging Archival Scholars Program (EASP). Between 2014-16 she was an artist/archivist in residence at the Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths with art, archival research group X Marks the Spot. Sowinski is currently collaborating with artist/archivist Rita Keegan and the Women of Colour Index Artist Files Collection.  She is in the process of developing a collaborative digitisation project to archive the papers of Nigerian Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938-1997).  She is a committee member for the GLC Story Oral History Project and a specialist volunteer for the Equiano Centre, UCL.

The Women of Colour Index Reading Group was set up in October 2016 by artists, Samia Malik, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zaman. The reading group meets on a monthly basis to discuss work within the Women of Colour Index (WOCI); a unique collection of slides and papers collated by artist Rita Keegan that chart the emergence of Women of Colour artists during the ‘critical decades’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Reading group sessions aim to improve the visibility of women of colour artists whilst using material in the archive to generate discussion, thought and practice around current social and political concerns. All people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, religions and race are welcome

Workshop reading text:

‘WHAT IS PEOPLE’S REACTION TO YOUR WORK?
Not many people stop too much. A lot of people just pass over them. Black and white. I would like people to look at them a bit more carefully and think about them.

There’s a lot of discussion about art, but photography’s such a young a medium. There’s a big block even though there’s stuff coming out now. You need to actually compile bibliographies and stuff so that a dialogue can happen’. Ingrid Pollard talks to Molly Shinhat. Polareyes – A journal about Black Women working in photography, Issue No.1 1987.
Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-of-colour-index-reading-group-with-ego-ahaiwe-sowinski-tickets-43324042377
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/202303733686021/
FB: WOCI Reading group
Twitter: @WOCIReading