Research Outputs (Art and Music)https://hdl.handle.net/10500/1792024-03-28T23:18:29Z2024-03-28T23:18:29ZThe Anthropocene Shifts in Visual Arts: A Case against AnthropocentrismKrajewska, Aniahttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/294092022-09-29T12:50:32Z2017-12-15T00:00:00ZThe Anthropocene Shifts in Visual Arts: A Case against Anthropocentrism
Krajewska, Ania
Although this paper focuses largely on the Anthropocene, it is not about the local or global
dangers of climate changes and escalation of pollution. It is about the diverse responses of
selected artists and humanists to the problems created by the anthropocentrically structured
powers geared for exploitation of biological environments and material ecologies. These
artistic reactions cannot be simplified to a single thread of environmental storytelling: they
are seen and interpreted as personal and moral responses to the perceptions about the old
culture-nature dichotomy as well as to commodification and depletion of the biosphere. This
article looks at individual reactions of artists who respond to the exploitable character of the
global-wide management of environmental and technological resources; the responses to
a paradigm often referred to as the “Anthropocene” or “Sixth Extinction”. The Anthropocene
and cognitive sciences have been considered game changers by numerous thinkers as they
can affect perceptions about anthropocentrism
2017-12-15T00:00:00ZRelocating the Centre: Decolonising the University Art Collections in South AfricaMkhonza, Bonganihttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/274402021-06-14T18:34:46Z2021-04-01T00:00:00ZRelocating the Centre: Decolonising the University Art Collections in South Africa
Mkhonza, Bongani
The collection of art by South African universities was inherent to colonial practice and central to this was a Eurocentric, colonial logic of classification and justification. As a decolonial project, I argue for the relocation of that particular centrality and question the situatedness—the epistemic involvement within a particular space or context—of the philosophies that inform the university art collections in South Africa (Daniel and Greytak 2013; Mignolo 2003; Walsh 2007). I then argue that, because of the legacy of colonialism in Africa, the tastes and aesthetics of art collected by university art collections are still largely influenced by Eurocentric epistemologies and their imagination of Africa (Mungazi 2005). In South Africa, like in many other former European colonies, “the production of knowledge […], has long been subject to colonial and imperial designs, to geopolitics that universalizes European thought as scientific truths, while subalternising and invisibilising other epistemes” (Walsh 2007: 224). Under the guise of neutrality and the universality of philosophies, as shaped by postcolonial theories “provocative arguments have been advanced to the effect [that] African philosophies were very few […] moreover, were a reaction to colonialist imagination of Africa as an ahistorical and dark space that is bereft of humanity” (Mpofu 2014: 1-25). This article derives its theoretical lens from the decolonial advancements pioneered by influential scholars from cultural, feminist, and postcolonial studies, mostly from Latin America and the global South.
2021-04-01T00:00:00ZBreakfast (On the Edge of the Desert)Duby, Marchttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/266482020-09-03T15:34:12Z2018-01-01T00:00:00ZBreakfast (On the Edge of the Desert)
Duby, Marc
Music score to accompany book chapter
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZBlack tronies in seventeenth-century Flemish art and the African presenceVan Haute, Bernadettehttps://hdl.handle.net/10500/191262015-10-27T13:23:14Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZBlack tronies in seventeenth-century Flemish art and the African presence
Van Haute, Bernadette
In this article I examine the production of
tronies or head studies of people of African
origin made by the Flemish artists Peter Paul
Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jan I Brueghel,
Jacob Jordaens and Gaspar de Crayer in an
attempt to uncover their use of Africans1 as
models. In order to contextualise the research,
the actual presence of Africans in Flanders
is investigated. Although no documentation
exists to calculate even an approximate
number of Africans living in Flanders at that
time, travel accounts of foreigners visiting
the commercial city of Antwerp testify
to its cosmopolitan character. A general
perception of black people in those days
can be extrapolated from the notebooks of
Rubens and contemporary theological views.
The examination of black tronies starts with
the studies of Rubens, made after live models
first in Italy and then in his workshop in
Antwerp. By comparing various African head
studies and considering them in the context
of contemporary studio practices involving
assistants (Van Dyck) and collaborators
(Brueghel), a historically more accurate
picture emerges regarding the production of
such studies. Jordaens and De Crayer also
made black tronies for use in history paintings,
and by tracing their appearance in a select
number of works it is possible to distinguish
their respective models. Assumptions
regarding the extent of the influence of
Rubens are thus put in perspective while
giving credit to contributions made by Van
Dyck, Jordaens and De Crayer to the study of
African people.
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z