Panel 4
Indexing History
Panel Chair - Dr. Norman Vorano, Queen’s University
Saturday, February 10, 2024
9:00 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. EST
Giving Birth to Time: Reading into Cary Beth Cryor’s 35mm Self- and Birthing-Portrait
Lizette London, African American Studies, Emory University
This paper explores the connections between Black feminist photographic traditions, maternal memory, and the possibilities of the archives. In 1979, archivist, photographer and professor, Cary Beth Cryor produced a series of black and white 35mm film images from her own labor and delivery process, collectively entitled “Rites of Passage.” She commented on the series saying that “as unusual as this may appear, it was not difficult. It is my hope that this will serve as inspiration to other women who may want to do the unthinkable, the unfathomable, the utterly ridiculous.” While Cryor’s work represents an established tradition of Black women radically reclaiming portraiture to conceptualize narratives of self and community, her use of film photography has contemporary implications for broader visual reading practices of the archives; especially as it relates to recovering and animating the imaginative and affective possibilities of Black portraiture.
Through Christina Sharpe’s notion of the work of images and Black visual/textual annotation as means to envision “the fullness of Black life” in the contemporary, Cryor’s “Rites of Passage #1,” further illumines how the optic necessarily mediates time and memory. Thus, inherent in Cryor’s visual text are possibilities for reading Black women’s portraiture praxis as an “annotative practice.” As Katherine McKittrick states, the archives as structure and frame can inform how we enter the present and future moment(s). Cryor’s birthing of life in the filmic and metaphorical apertures of time enables us to forge new and necessary entrances into the archives of history and continue the work of bringing the lives, voices, and theoretical interpolations of Black women image-artists to the fore.
Lizette London (she/her) is an Afro-Pinay Black feminist visual artist and first-year doctoral student in African American Studies at Emory University. Working at the nexus of Black Feminist Thought, Black Queer Studies, and Black Visual Cultures, Lizette seeks to complicate notions of the major Black artistic movements of the 20th and 21st centuries by tracing a new set of genealogies within the visual arts canon. Her work explores the artistic, intellectual, and political practices of Black Queer women image-makers and writers through themes such as self/portraiture, visual literacy, literary theory, and cultural production.
Before Emory, Lizette earned an M.A. in Black Feminist Visual Arts and Culture from the NYU School of Individualized Study, where she was awarded the e. Frances White Award for her artistic and scholarly achievements, and a B.A. in Comparative Women’s Studies from Spelman College.
Mining, Mythology, and Materiality: Bronwyn Katz’s Artistic Reimagining of Histories of Extraction in Kimberley, South Africa
Stefanie Jason, Art History, Rutgers University
A broad spectrum of histories shapes the sculptural installations of contemporary South African artist Bronwyn Katz. From the colonial-apartheid systems that linger in the country’s present moment to geological archives of mining and natural forms, and mythologies of the Korana, an indigenous community of southern Africa. Bringing into focus Katz’s artworks that draw on accounts of Kimberley – a city in the country’s Northern Cape where Katz was born – this paper investigates ways in which these installations offer critical engagements with the city, whose configuration has been marked by a catalytic late nineteenth century diamond rush, black radicalism in response to dispossession wrought by mineral extraction, and indigenous knowledge emanating from the region at large.
With works comprised of found objects like bed mattresses, which Katz reconstructs into intricate assemblages, and natural materials like quartz and iron ore that punctuate her stripped-down forms, I will discuss the methods and materials that frame these works, while investigating how Katz’s process builds on and/or ruptures from African aesthetic practices across contemporary, modern and even precolonial temporalities. Paying special attention to complex understandings of ecology, southern African cosmologies and African feminist theory, this paper aims to query how Katz’s artistic experimentation and critical historiography offers a new visual grammar that not only re-envisions histories of resource and non/human exploitation but provides pathways for radically different futures.
Stefanie Jason is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Art History department at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Stefanie’s doctoral dissertation focuses on experimentation, ecology and being in contemporary southern African art and photography, while her MA thesis from Wits University, Johannesburg, centers pioneering photojournalist Mabel Cetu. Stefanie was a 2022 ArtTable Fellow working with Amant Foundation on the forthcoming exhibition Jayne Cortez: A Poet’s Guide to the World, and has written for publications such as Aperture, The Brooklyn Rail and Contemporary And.
Shifting Contexts and Meaning: Richard Harrington’s 1950 Padlei Photographs, Then and Now
Jamie Cameron, Art History and Visual Culture, York University
Arctic photographers of an era were drawn into the colonial vortex, their cameras re-inforcing a colonial narrative. Although enmeshed in the systemic forces of colonialism, not all Arctic photographers worked in the dominant paradigm of salvage ethnography. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, photographer Richard Harrington dogsledded to Inuit communities, and in 1950 wintered in the barren lands inland from the west coast of Hudson Bay. There, he lived among the caribou Inuit or Padleimiut, photographing their way of life during a starvation period when the caribou migration failed. In 1955, MoMA’s “Family of Man” exhibition included three images from Harrington’s Padlei photographs, and the Padlei images are featured in several publications on Harrington’s Arctic photography.
The 1950s context of reception was unarguably colonialist, a time when government initiatives relocated the Padleimiut, bringing their way of life on the land to an end. Relocation into settlements erased their lifestyle, removing it from lived experience and over time diminishing its presence in Padleimiut oral tradition. But as the Inuit-led initiative called Atiqput – or Project Naming – shows, the semiotics of the 1950 Padlei images are not static, but are dynamic and organic, shifting over time. In the present, Harrington’s photographs played a vital role in Atiqput’s project to identify unnamed Inuit in historic Arctic photographs. By re-narrativizing images from the perspectives of their Inuit subjects, Atiqput introduced a decolonial context of reception for the Padlei photographs. This presentation explains how Harrington’s Padlei photographs invite re-appraisal from a decolonial lens, restoring the lived experience of winter 1950, keeping it in memory by voicing Padleimiut agency, preserving their heritage, and resisting erasure of their way of life.
Jamie Cameron is a retired law professor (2020) from Osgoode Hall Law School, and is currently completing her Masters’ degree in the Graduate Program in Art History and Visual Culture at York University. Her major research paper (MRP) focuses on the Arctic photography of Richard Harrington, and especially on his 1950 photographs of the Padleimiut, the “people of the willows” or caribou Inuit, considering its context of meaning then and now, from colonialist and decolonial lenses. Three papers on the Harrington photographs and a placement in the Harrington archive at The Image Centre (Toronto Metropolitan University) have been done. Examining Richard Harrington’s photographs then and now is a good fit with the conference theme of Context and Meaning in the past and present.
Navigating Identity and Artistry: Black Mother Artists from the United States, Brazil, and South Africa
Carolina de Campos Tornich Manoel, Art History, Queen’s University
This presentation delves into the intricate connections between motherhood, race, and artistic expression in the lives of Black female artists across transnational cultural landscapes. It spotlights prominent figures like Zizipho Poswa (South Africa), Mary Sibande (South Africa), Sunshine Castro (Brazil), Renata Felinto (Brazil), Manuela Navas (Brazil), Renée Cox (United States), and Calida Rawles (United States), placing a particular emphasis on showcasing some of their works.
This material is an important part of my research, which revolves around comprehending how being a Black mother influences these artists' trajectories within the art market, affects their creative decisions, and molds the challenges they face. The central spotlight of this presentation will be on their artistic creations.
Referencing Achille Mbembe's insights, it underscores how the historically constructed concept of race has shaped our world, often marginalizing individuals within the confines of the neoliberal system. To grasp the artistic expressions and career trajectories of these artists, it's essential to comprehend the contexts of colonialism, enslavement, and apartheid that preceded their experiences in the US, Brazil, and South Africa.
The presentation centers on exploring recurring themes within their artworks, including domestic labor, nuances of pregnancy and childcare, critiques of capitalist and racist systems, and celebrations of cultural heritage. Also drawing on influential Black feminists like Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, and Lelia Gonzales, the presentation peels back the layers of intersectionality.
Carolina de Campos Tornich Manoel is a PhD student in Art History at Queen’s University with a background in Visual Arts from the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and Journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas (PUC-Campinas). She holds a master's degree from the University of São Paulo (USP), focusing on the works of South African artist Willie Bester.
Her academic journey has fostered a profound comprehension of visual expression, allowing her to delve into the intricate intersections between art, media, and cultural narratives. Carolina's current PhD research centers on Black women as artist-mothers, investigating their experiences and representations within art. This academic pursuit reflects her dedication to exploring underrepresented narratives within the artistic landscape.