March Meeting
Download the March Meeting 2022 programme here.
Register for March Meeting 2022 here.
The 14th edition of March Meeting, Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual convening of artists, curators and art practitioners to explore critical issues in contemporary art through panels, lectures and performances, will take place from 5 to 7 March 2022.
The 14th edition of March Meeting will convene under the banner of The Afterlives of the Postcolonial as an overarching theme which is intended to examine the persistent legacies of colonialism as well as emerging issues that have impacted recent global cultural, aesthetic and artistic practices. MM 2022 will build on the themes of MM 2021 as well as engage the theoretical framework of SB15: Thinking Historically in the Present in relationship to Okwui Enwezor’s conception of the ‘Postcolonial Constellation.’
The theme, The Afterlives of the Postcolonial, allows MM 2022 participants to explore the issues and challenges of our times in light of postcolonial studies, which has dominated the academy and transformed the cultural and artistic worlds for the last three or more decades. These current and emerging challenges encompass a wide range of issues that includes racism, settler colonialism, apartheid and other persistent structural inequalities, indigeneity and sovereignty as well as massive migrations to the North, new imperial wars and the return of colonial violence, social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Reparation, indigenous rights and climate change, in addition to restitution and repatriation of looted artefacts. These issues are compounded by intensification of surplus and extraction, the illusive nature of transnational capital, as well as the emergence of surveillance capitalism. They are exacerbated by environmental degradation and global warming, associated with the proposed Anthropocene epoch.
The meeting will also discuss new concepts and theoretical frameworks that have since emerged in the academy and the public sphere such as 'intersectionality’, ‘coloniality’, 'decoloniality’ and 'gendered identities.’
The ‘postcolonial’ in the title is perceived here in relation to postcolonialism as the critical study of colonialism and imperialism, and their legacies in all spheres of cultural and social studies. It is understood as the critical theory projected against hegemonic-imperial analyses of the historical, cultural, literary and artistic productions by both the coloniser and the colonised. Mindful of debates around the term postcolonialism as well as the asynchronicity of the colonial experience and decolonisation processes, the ‘postcolonial’ here refers to the ideological and cultural responses to colonialist structures and formulations, rather than making a claim for a condition that transcends colonialism all together. To discuss the 'afterlives’ of the postcolonial, MM 2022 will convene key voices whose work represent discourses, practices, theories and critical perspectives that may have emerged earlier from the terrain of the postcolonial, but are now decidedly informed by and focused on analyses of the world in the later twentieth and early twenty-first century and its present and future challenges.
March Meeting 2022 Speakers
Surafel Wondimu Abebe (Assistant Professor, Performance Studies and Theory, The Africa Institute, Sharjah); Lawrence Abu Hamdan (artist); David Adjaye (architect); John Akomfrah (artist); Awam Amkpa (Dean of Arts and Humanities, NYU Abu Dhabi and Global Network Professor, Drama, Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU New York); Brook Andrew (artist, writer, curator, founder, BLAK C.O.R.E. and Director, Reimagining Museums and Collections, The University of Melbourne); Anjali Arondekar (Associate Professor, Feminist Studies and founding Co-Director, Center for South Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz); Ngaire Blankenberg (Director, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art); CAMP (artists: Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran); Tina Campt (Owen F. Walker Professor, Humanities and Modern Culture and Media, Brown University and Visiting Professor, Art and Archaeology, Princeton University); Carolina Caycedo (artist); Zahid Chaudhary (Associate Professor, English Department, Princeton University); Iftikhar Dadi (art historian, artist and John H. Burris Professor, Department of History of Art and Director of the South Asia Program, Cornell University); Angela Davis (activist, scholar and author); Muriam Haleh Davis (Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California, Santa Cruz); TJ Demos (writer and Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History, Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz); Naminata Diabate (Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Cornell University and Senior Fellow, The Africa Institute, Sharjah); Manthia Diawara (Professor, NYU and filmmaker); Ntone Edjabe (founder and Editor-in-Chief, Chimurenga); Noura Erakat (human rights attorney and Associate Professor, Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice, Rutgers University); Elizabeth W. Giorgis (Associate Professor, Art History, Theory and Criticism, The Africa Institute); Ayesha Hameed (artist and Senior Lecturer, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, University of London); Nathalie Handal (poet, writer and Visiting Associate Professor, Practice in Literature and Creative Writing, NYU Abu Dhabi); Salah M. Hassan (Director, The Africa Institute, Sharjah, and Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University); Meena Kandasamy (activist, poet, novelist and translator); Bouchra Khalili (artist); Rachid Koraïchi (artist); Premesh Lalu (Professor, History, The Africa Institute and Founding Director, Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape); Nidhi Mahajan (Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of California in Santa Cruz and Inaugural Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies, The Africa Institute); Fouad Makki (Associate Professor, Department of Global Development and Director, Polson Institute for Global Development, Cornell University); Gerald McMaster (curator, artist, professor, OCAD University and Director, Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge); Walter Mignolo (Distinguished William H. Wannamaker Professor, Romance Studies and Professor, Literature, Duke University); Naeem Mohaiemen (artist, Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Concentration Head of Photography, School of Arts, Columbia University); Amy Niang (Associate Professor, Political Science, The Africa Institute); Chika Okeke-Agulu (Director, Program in African Studies and Professor, Art and Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University); Khalil Rabah (artist, Artistic Director, Riwaq Biennale and Founder, Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind); Michael Rakowitz (artist); Jolene Rickard (artist and Associate Professor, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University); Jolene Rickard (artist and Associate Professor, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University); Russell Rickford (Associate Professor, History, Cornell University); Hrair Sarkissian (artist); Ahmad Sikainga (Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellow, The Africa Institute, Sharjah and Professor, African History, Ohio State University); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (University Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University); Megan Tamati-Quennell (Associate Indigenous Curator, Contemporary Art | Kairauhī Taketake Toi Onāianei, Govett Brewster Art Gallery and Curator Modern and Contemporary Maori and Indigenous Art, Te Papa); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Professor, Department of African-American Studies, Princeton University); Françoise Vergès (Professor, Cultural Studies, The Africa Institute); Suraj Yengde (Research Associate, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University); Ala Younis (artist, researcher and curator).
COVID-19 safety measures
Please note that in line with government health and safety guidelines, visitors are required to show either a negative RT-PCR test result or a green status on the Al Hosn app, in addition to wearing masks and keeping a safe distance from others at all times. Audience capacity at the venue will be limited to ensure adherence to social distancing rules and seating will be arranged accordingly.
