Image: Grace Ndiritu, Healing the Museum, 2023

Speakers include: Yinka Esi Graves, Adrian Heathfield, Grace Ndiritu, Claire Tancons and Lucy Wright.

This one-day event, organised by art historian and critic Claire Bishop, will offer a range of artistic approaches to ancestrality in contemporary art and performance. 

The conference addresses the resurgence of interest in ‘ancestralism’ among performance and visual artists, who hark back to traditional, pre-modern or indigenous forms of collective knowledge, often in the form of ceremonies, rituals, and invocations. The reasons for an artistic interest of healing and ritual are important, and perhaps all too obvious: the global climate crisis, white supremacy’s systematic oppression of Black and indigenous life, and the failures of Western rationalism. These issues need to be articulated and reiterated. At the same time, difficult questions arise: whose ancestors are being invoked, and to what ends? What differences can we observe across historical periods and geographical regions? And how might we develop a critical vocabulary for approaching a body of work that often requires not just participation, but also an openness to the spiritual? 

Tickets: To book a free ticket via Eventbrite please visit following page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1224677717019

[Please note: Due to anticipated demand, this event has an allocation policy of one ticket per person. If you are subsequently unable to attend, please inform the organiser in advance so that your ticket can be reallocated.]

Schedule:

9.30am          Reception and coffee 

10.00am         Welcome and introductory talk by Claire Bishop

11.00am         Discussion by curator and critic Claire Tancons 

12.00pm        Lunch

1.15pm           Presentation by artist Lucy Wright

2.15pm           Break

2.30pm          Presentation by artist Yinka Esi Graves

3.30pm          Break

4.00pm          Grace Ndiritu in conversation with Claire Bishop

5.00pm          Break 

5.15pm          Response to the day by Adrian Heathfield 

6.00pm          Closing remarks and drinks