Gabriella Nugent
University of East Anglia, School of Art History and World Art Studies, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
I am an art historian and curator, specialising in global modern and contemporary art. My research documents and analyses artistic representation in relation to cross-cultural interactions and themes of colonialism, decolonisation and globalisation. I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2022–2025) in the Department of Art History and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. My books include ‘Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo’ (Leuven University Press, 2021) and 'Inji Efflatoun and the Mexican Muralists: Imaging Women and Work between Mexico and Egypt' (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2022).
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, my current book project, titled 'Unmade: The Politics of Difference in Contemporary Art', asks: in our current moment of decolonisation, when museums, galleries and universities are actively seeking to foreground African artists, to what extent do these approaches reinscribe an established sense of difference? I trace this idea of difference to the globalisation of the artworld in the 1990s and its expansion beyond a Eurocentric matrix. African artists at this time were often expected to perform a sense of 'Africanness' in their work premised on Western notions of the continent and its people. I discuss a generation of artists from South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria working in sculpture and sculptural installation who started to exhibit internationally from this decade onwards fully aware of these expectations. I examine the ways in which the selected artists deploy materials and their associations to dismantle expectations of difference and the identities imposed upon them both locally and globally. I demonstrate that there is much to be learned from artists who have had to grapple with impositions of difference long before the discipline’s attempt to decolonise.
After completing my PhD in History of Art at University College London in 2020, I was awarded Sharjah Art Foundation’s FOCAL POINT Publishing Grant 2020 and a Research Continuity Fellowship 2021 from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. My research has additionally been supported by awards from University College London, the Society for French Studies and the Association for Art History. My curatorial projects include 'Hand to your ear' (2021–2022) at London’s Emalin gallery and Hacer Noche: 'Promised Land' (2022) in Oaxaca, Mexico.
I have taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level at University of East Anglia, University College London, the Slade School of Fine Art and the School of Oriental and African Studies. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Email: [email protected]
www.gabriellanugent.com
Address: London, England, United Kingdom
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, my current book project, titled 'Unmade: The Politics of Difference in Contemporary Art', asks: in our current moment of decolonisation, when museums, galleries and universities are actively seeking to foreground African artists, to what extent do these approaches reinscribe an established sense of difference? I trace this idea of difference to the globalisation of the artworld in the 1990s and its expansion beyond a Eurocentric matrix. African artists at this time were often expected to perform a sense of 'Africanness' in their work premised on Western notions of the continent and its people. I discuss a generation of artists from South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria working in sculpture and sculptural installation who started to exhibit internationally from this decade onwards fully aware of these expectations. I examine the ways in which the selected artists deploy materials and their associations to dismantle expectations of difference and the identities imposed upon them both locally and globally. I demonstrate that there is much to be learned from artists who have had to grapple with impositions of difference long before the discipline’s attempt to decolonise.
After completing my PhD in History of Art at University College London in 2020, I was awarded Sharjah Art Foundation’s FOCAL POINT Publishing Grant 2020 and a Research Continuity Fellowship 2021 from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. My research has additionally been supported by awards from University College London, the Society for French Studies and the Association for Art History. My curatorial projects include 'Hand to your ear' (2021–2022) at London’s Emalin gallery and Hacer Noche: 'Promised Land' (2022) in Oaxaca, Mexico.
I have taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level at University of East Anglia, University College London, the Slade School of Fine Art and the School of Oriental and African Studies. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Email: [email protected]
www.gabriellanugent.com
Address: London, England, United Kingdom
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Books by Gabriella Nugent
ISBN 978-1-915656-00-1
Articles by Gabriella Nugent
This article joins the likes of others by such writers as Barry Schwabsky and Larne Abse Gogarty that have explored the rise of figuration in recent years. However, it specifically examines this development in relation to the politics of representation. The criticism in this article is not directed towards the artists and works of art discussed, but rather their mobilisation by institutions. To start, the article considers the revival of an older generation of artists, as well as the wider stakes of figuration and abstraction. It then proceeds to address a schism between a Western European and North American demand for certain images in the name of decolonisation and the actual politics of artmaking in the locales that Western institutions purport to represent. At a moment when figuration is being embraced by museums and galleries seeking to perform their equity, it is surely necessary to ask what can instead be gained from abstraction.
https://post.moma.org/michael-armitage-and-the-ghosts-of-past-picturing/
Book and Exhibition Reviews by Gabriella Nugent
Reviews of Colonial Legacies by Gabriella Nugent
Projects by Gabriella Nugent
Call for Papers by Gabriella Nugent
This session invites paper proposals that explore the deployment of video art by artists from Africa. Developed in the 1960s, video art emerged in the era of decolonisation, and its accessible technologies were later taken up by many people who had stories to tell. It is a medium of relative historical recentness and today favoured by artists operative in global contemporary networks. However, in comparison to the vast and growing literature on African cinema, there is relatively little scholarship on video art from Africa. This session seeks to explore how artists from Africa have specifically employed the languages enabled by video, such as montage, the loop, repetition and duration, to work through both the distant and more recent pasts in Africa. We are particularly interested in video works that explore histories of colonialism, decolonisation and nation-building projects. The archival turn in art has led artists to rework historical documents through video to elucidate local experiences and to contest old and clichéd assumptions with something previously unthought, unheard or unseen. These practices raise questions as to who owns history and how historical documents can be performed within the distinct needs and expectations of the present. Simultaneously, video has stepped in to address feminist histories, questions of labour, race and class, as well as transregional alliances. The panel thus invites proposals for papers which explore the potential, as well as possible shortcomings, of video art for addressing these histories.
ISBN 978-1-915656-00-1
This article joins the likes of others by such writers as Barry Schwabsky and Larne Abse Gogarty that have explored the rise of figuration in recent years. However, it specifically examines this development in relation to the politics of representation. The criticism in this article is not directed towards the artists and works of art discussed, but rather their mobilisation by institutions. To start, the article considers the revival of an older generation of artists, as well as the wider stakes of figuration and abstraction. It then proceeds to address a schism between a Western European and North American demand for certain images in the name of decolonisation and the actual politics of artmaking in the locales that Western institutions purport to represent. At a moment when figuration is being embraced by museums and galleries seeking to perform their equity, it is surely necessary to ask what can instead be gained from abstraction.
https://post.moma.org/michael-armitage-and-the-ghosts-of-past-picturing/
This session invites paper proposals that explore the deployment of video art by artists from Africa. Developed in the 1960s, video art emerged in the era of decolonisation, and its accessible technologies were later taken up by many people who had stories to tell. It is a medium of relative historical recentness and today favoured by artists operative in global contemporary networks. However, in comparison to the vast and growing literature on African cinema, there is relatively little scholarship on video art from Africa. This session seeks to explore how artists from Africa have specifically employed the languages enabled by video, such as montage, the loop, repetition and duration, to work through both the distant and more recent pasts in Africa. We are particularly interested in video works that explore histories of colonialism, decolonisation and nation-building projects. The archival turn in art has led artists to rework historical documents through video to elucidate local experiences and to contest old and clichéd assumptions with something previously unthought, unheard or unseen. These practices raise questions as to who owns history and how historical documents can be performed within the distinct needs and expectations of the present. Simultaneously, video has stepped in to address feminist histories, questions of labour, race and class, as well as transregional alliances. The panel thus invites proposals for papers which explore the potential, as well as possible shortcomings, of video art for addressing these histories.