A Prelude: Practising Duets

Speakers' Biographies

Griselda Pollock is a feminist, postcolonial and social art historian, cultural analyst and curator. Professor emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art at the University of Leeds, she also directed the transdisciplinary Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (2001-21). In 1992 she developed a dedicated MA in Feminism and the Visual Arts. In 2020 she was awarded the Holberg Prize for her work in feminism and the arts, and the CAA Life-time Achievement Award for Writing on Art (2023) having received in 2010 CAA Distinguished Feminist Award for Promoting Equality in Art. A prolific writer and cultural theorist, her classic texts include Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology with Rozsika Parker (1981; 4th edition: 2022), Vision and Difference (1988), Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum (2007) and After-Image/After-Affect: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation (2013). Recent publications include Charlotte Salomon in the Theatre of Memory (2018), Mary Cassatt (new edition in full colour 2022), Killing Men & Dying Women: Imagining Difference in 1950s New York Painting (2022) and WOMAN IN ART: Helen Rosenau’s ‘Little Book’ of 1944 (2023). She has curated exhibitions on Christine Taylor Patten (2007, 2011) and on Bracha L. Ettinger (Memory and Migration, Freud Museum, 2009) and currently Medium and Memory (HackelBury Fine Art, London, 2023-24) catalogue available.

Varsha Nair is based in Baroda, India, where she studied painting at Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University.  She lived in Thailand from 1995 to 2019 where as one of the key co-organizers of Womanifesto, she was instrumental in  conceptualising projects that stretch beyond the traditional model of biennial exhibition-making to produce intergenerational and cross-disciplinary  workshops, collaborations, and networks. She has exhibited internationally and presented at various symposia. Her writings have been published in n paradoxa, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, and Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art of which she is Editorial Board member. Varsha is currently Guest Lecturer with the Masters of Arts Program at HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
www.varshanair.studio

Womanifesto started out by hosting gatherings biannually from 1997 to build an international platform for women living in Thailand. It was first established by a group of women artists, writers and activists following an exhibition titled Tradisexion held in Bangkok in 1995. Womanifesto went on to develop a diverse range of activities spanning community-based workshops, publication and internet-related projects, workshops and residencies, and more recently a regular online meeting point entitled lasuemo (the last Sunday of each month). 

Operating as a loose consortium of female practitioners, the collective is committed to supporting women’s practice through innovative projects that respond flexibly to the unfolding life events of the key members. Its organisational structure is centred around hospitality and collective generosity.

Since 2019, the Womanifesto Archives have been exhibited in multiple cities including Bangkok, Sydney and Hong Kong. In 2022, Womanifesto was featured in Documenta 15. In 2023, Nitaya established Baan Womanifesto in Udon Thani. This is Womanifesto’s first permanent space dedicated to its projects and wider engagement with the local community. Womanifesto held its first retrospective exhibition in Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in 2023.
www.womanifesto.com

Access

The event will be lived captioned on Zoom.
All enquiries please contact: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
 

About the exhibition

Outside the Circle, is an exhibition and event programme inspired by and generated from feminist and queer movements since the beginning of the 20th century that foregrounds intersectional feminist and queer strategies of radical emancipation, resistance, survival, and collective action as critical and pedagogical ‘ruptures’ in our lived experience. It is the fourth iteration of ongoing programme, The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins Towards Creative Emancipation.

Visit
18 October 2024 – 1 February 2025
Monday – Saturday, 12–5pm
 

Images:
Portraits courtesy the contributors
Griselda Pollock portrait by University of Leeds, 2018
 

Funding support

The Ignorant Art School Sit-in #4 at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.

Practising Duets Event Series is funded by the Research Groups programme at the British Art Network (BAN). 
BAN is a Subject Specialist Network supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.