MA Art History student Amber Lee to deliver conference paper

26/04/2007

MA Art History student Amber Lee to deliver conference paper

Currently studying for her MA in Art History, Amber Lee has been invited to deliver a paper in July at the 'Art and Power: Eighth Student Summer Symposium' at the School of Art History, University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. For information on the conference, see: www-ah.st-andrews.ac.uk. An abstract of Amber's paper, entitled 'The Emergence of the Contemporary and the Destruction of the Frame', is provided below.

The Emergence of the Contemporary and the Destruction of the Frame
Amber Lee

Contemporary art by non-Western artists displayed in ethnographic museums creates new meaning foundational to the disruption of colonial discourse. Melding present day materials with rich cultural themes, contemporary non-Western artists bring life to the fixed frames in museums that preserve the dead and honor the past. I use as a case study the work of contemporary Maori artist George Nuku. Nuku considers unconventional materials such as polystyrene and Perspex to be the most appropriate material for celebrating his culture, as it exists in the present. His recent residency at the British Museum, organized in tandem with the exhibition 'Power and Taboo,' exemplifies well the impressive presence of the contemporary within the ethnographic exhibition space. In my paper, I argue that living references within the museum serve to prevent the viewer from seeing the past and the present as clearly distinct entities. In juxtapositions of contemporary art and objects of ethnography, boundaries are blurred between the primitive and the civilized, the past and the present, the centre and the periphery. I argue that Nuku's work is the kind of articulation that only exists within the 'alien territory' or 'Third Space,' described by Homi Bhabha. Nuku's work acts as a point of enunciation in the midst of a hybrid, where the didactic voice of reason and knowledge is increasingly obscured. Working on site in the British Museum, Nuku affirms the Postmetropolis and reconsideration of space as discussed by Edward Soja. Nuku's work also challenges notions of the primitive, illustrating that indigenous culture is, as Nicholas Thomas has described, 'simultaneously traditional and contemporary.' Nuku challenges us to consider culture as a process. In these ways, contemporary non-Western artists play a most critical role in expressing through artistic means shifting views of culture, time and space, as well as the blurring of boundaries.

Link to this page: http://www.richmond.ac.uk/n/248.aspx