African Modernism in America, 1947-67
Dr. Salah M. Hassan and Dr. Chika Okeke-Agulu
To mark the end of the exhibition, join us for a conversation between esteemed art historians Dr. Salah M. Hassan, Cornell University, and Dr. Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University, hosted in collaboration with AFROPUNK Spaces. Moderated by Dr. Perrin Lathrop, co-curator of African Modernism in America, 1947-67. Dr. Salah M. Hassan will join virtually.
AFROPUNK is an integrated media platform anchored by a global music festival that celebrates Black culture and diversity through music, art, activism, and community. This collaboration marks the first AFROPUNK SPACES activation in Washington, DC, and underscores AFROPUNK’s strategic aim to leverage a Black-centered lens to inspire physical and virtual spaces where people can freely express themselves, connect with like-minded individuals, and explore their identities.
Salah M. Hassan is the Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Africana Studies and Research Center, and Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, and Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM), Cornell University. He is also the Founding Director, The Africa Institute, Sharjah, UAE. Hassan is an art historian, art critic and curator. He is an editor and founder of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (Duke University Press) and served as consulting editor for African Arts. He currently serves as member of the editorial advisory board of Atlantica and Journal of Curatorial Studies. He authored, edited and co-edited several books including Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination (2021); Ibrahim El Salahi’s Prison Notebook (English Edition) (2018); Ibrahim El Salahi’s Prison Notebook (Arabic Edition) (2018); How to Liberate Marx from His Eurocentrism: Notes on Black/African Marxism (2012); Darfur and the Crisis of Governance: A Critical Reader (2009), and Diaspora, Memory, Place (2008); Unpacking Europe (2001); Authentic/Ex-Centric (2001); Gendered Visions: The Art of Contemporary Africana Women Artists (1997); and Art and Islamic Literacy among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria (1992).
Hassan guest edited a special issue of SAQ: South Atlantic Quarterly, entitled African Modernism (2010), and co-edited a special issue of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Issue 49, November, 2021 titled Egyptian Surrealists in Global Contexts. His book Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist, published in 2012 in conjunction with the retrospective of the Sudanese artist, Ibrahim El Salahi, which was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London (2013) after premiering in the Sharjah Art Museum (2013) in Sharjah, UAE. He has contributed essays to journals, anthologies and exhibition catalogues of contemporary art. He has curated and co-curated several international exhibitions such as Authentic/Ex-Centric (49th Venice Biennale, 2001); Unpacking Europe (Rotterdam, 2001-02); and 3x3: Three Artists/Three: David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z (Dak'Art, 2004); The Khartoum School: The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan 1945–Present (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2014); When Art Becomes Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists 1938-1965 ( Palace of Arts, Cairo, Egypt, 2016, and Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, South Korea, 2017); and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness. (Serpentine Galleries, London 2022) (a collaboration between Sharjah Art Foundation and the Serpentine Galleries). He is the recipient of the College Art Association (CAA) 2021 Distinguished Scholar Award, and several grants and fellowships, such as the J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship, as well as major grants from the Sharjah Art Foundation, Ford, Rockefeller, Andy Warhol and Prince Claus Fund foundations.
Chika Okeke-Agulu is an artist, critic, and art historian who specializes in Indigenous, modern and contemporary African and African Diaspora art history and theory. He is the Director of Program in African Studies and Director of African World Initiative as well as Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University. In 2022, he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford University (2022-2023).
As a curator, he co-organized Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts, Princeton University Art Museum (2022) and the travelling survey El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019) (with Okwui Enwezor). Okeke-Agulu has co-organised numerous other art exhibitions, including Who Knows Tomorrow, Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2010); 5th Gwangju Biennale (2004); The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2001); Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1995) and the Nigerian section, 1st Johannesburg Biennale (1995). His books include El Anatsui. The Reinvention of Sculpture (Damiani, 2022); African Artists: From 1882 to Now (Phaidon, 2021); Yusuf Grillo: Painting. Lagos. Life (Skira, 2020); Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (Skira, 2016); Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (Duke UP, 2015); and Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2010). His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Artforum, The Guardian (Lagos), October, Huffington Post and South Atlantic Quarterly.
IMAGE: Ibrahim El-Salahi (b. 1930, Sudan; active United Kingdom), Vision of the Tomb, 1965, Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in., Collection of The Africa Center, New York, NY, Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson © Ibrahim El-Salahi, All rights reserved, ARS, New York, NY 2022, Courtesy Vigo Gallery and American Federation of Arts
