Our conference
Unfinished Empire? Visual Arts and Architecture in Post-Imperial Contexts, 1900–2022
will take place at
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
on 19–20 May 2023.
The call to decolonize the visual arts rests on the notion that empires, even after they have fallen, continue to shape artistic values, concepts and practices. It argues that even when post-independence states declared their liberation from their former rulers, imperial and colonial regimes cast a long shadow it has proven difficult to evade.
The general contours of this argument are well known, but while broad critical explanations of hegemony, neo-colonial domination and decolonizing are established, there have been fewer focused individual historical studies of how and why imperial and colonial ideologies and attitudes persisted, even among the colonised. The dismantling of, for example, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, British rule in Africa and India, imperial Japan, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, may have had enormous political consequences, but there were many patterns of continuity of practice, values and ideas. Many individual artists and architects, cultural institutions and creative networks in post-independence states may have sought to establish new post-colonial ideas and practices, but many others perpetuated the old. Analysis of this phenomenon is the theme of this conference, which seeks to examine the post-imperial ambivalences faced and negotiated by individual and groups of artists and architects, artistic organisations and institutions, even entire municipal, regional and national governments.
Keynote speaker: Prof. Tapati Guha Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata
Location: The Museum of Decorative Arts, 17 Listopadu 2, Prague
The conference is free to attend, but registration is necessary.
Download the conference poster as a pdf.
Download the abstracts of papers.
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME:
Friday 19 May 2023
9.30–10.00 Registration
10.00 Welcome and Introduction
Radim Vondráček (UPM, Praha) and Matthew Rampley (Masaryk University, Brno)
Keynote Lecture
From An Imperial to a National Genre: The Changing Landscape of Calcutta’s Colonial and Post-Colonial Statuary, 1920s-1960s
Prof. Tapati Guha Thakurta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata)
11.15 Coffee
11.45–13.15 PANEL 1: INSTITUTIONS
The Restitution Debates Following the Provisions of the Treaty of Riga and the Shaping of Polish and Soviet Memory Institutions (1921–1937)
Ewa Manikowska (Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Imperial Histories and Conditions in the Russian Compound: The New Site of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem
Sigal Barnir (Bezalel Academy of Art and Design)
Decolonizing Asian Art History: A South Asian Perspective
Sonal (Shivaji College, University of Delhi)
13.15–14.00 Lunch
14.00–15.30 PANEL 2: MEMORIES AND POSTMEMORIES IN THE PRESENT
Touching the Wound as an Act of Unmasking: Portugal at the 2023 Venice Biennale
Teresa Pinheiro (Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon)
Alpine Butterwort and Sosnowsky’s Hogweed: Negotiating Botanical Imperialism in Contemporary Latvian Art
Jana Kukaine (Riga Stradins University)
‘A presence, an absence, a fictious territory’: Postmemories of Smyrna in Etel Adnan’s Family Memoirs (2015) and Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige’s Ismyrna (2016)
Elif Karakaya (University of Rochester, NY)
15.30 Tea
16.00–17.30 PANEL 3: MONUMENTS
The Monument of Karel Kopal in Znojmo: In the Whirlwind of History
Jan Galeta and Tomáš Valeš (Masaryk University Brno)
Casting Empires: The Dynastic Bronze Urn of Huế in Paris
William Ma (Lousiana State University)
Reviving Art, Renewing Empire: The Russian Church of Holy Maria Magdalena in Darmstadt
Louise Hardiman (Independent Scholar)
19:00 Conference dinner
Saturday 20 May 2023
9.30–11.00 PANEL 4: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC
‘For True Elegance…’ The Kingsway Stores at the Ends of Empire in West Africa
Ewan Harrison (University of Manchester)
Memory in Uzhhorod Interwar Architecture: The State vs. Private Developers
Lina Degtyaryova (Uzhhorod National University)
The Ministry of Public Works: Learning Lessons from the Contested Past
Vendula Hnídková (Institute of Art History, Prague)
11.00–11.30 Coffee
11.30–13.00 PANEL 5: EXHIBITIONS OF EMPIRE
Imperial Fugue: Echoes of the Qing Empire at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1933
Daniel M. Greenberg (University of Minnesota)
Reconciling Generations’ Artistic and Political Views in the Shadow of War: The International Exhibition of Women Artists in New York in 1939
Anna Kopócsy (Péter Pázmány Catholic University)
Colonial Entanglements, Decolonial Perspectives: A Case Study of the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw
Magdalena Wróblewska (Warsaw University)
13.00–14.00 Lunch
14.00–15.00 PANEL 6: PAINTING AND IMPERIAL PRACTICES
Oil Painting as Imperial Praxis: The Case of Jiang Feng and Chinese Art
Yi Gu (University of Toronto, Scarborough)
Mongolian Zurag Painting as Post-Imperial Modernity
Christianna Bonin (American University of Sharjah)
15.00–15.30 Tea
15.30–17.00 ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
With Jakub Stejskal (MUNI Brno) and Filip Herza (Academy of Sciences, Prague) as main discussants.
