How do black artists in the mid-twentieth century navigate the modernist imperative of progress in their often intermedial practices? This project explores the two-pronged forward thrust that impacted the lives, the artistic practice and formal ‘language’ of Black artists on both sides of the Atlantic and across three continents: The modernist ‘project’ with its manifest imperatives of newness in art on the one hand and the political movements directed at emancipation and independence from colonialist-racist situations. What does freedom mean in these contexts, for different artists? The pursuit of an individual artistic, formal vocation? What limitations are encountered in the realms of collaboration and patronage? The project engages with these questions by taking its cues from exploring ‘resistant’, often intermedial artistic practices.
Researchers: Eva Ulrike Pirker and Suzanne Scafe
