July Art Talks At Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos

The Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos has initiated a dynamic platform for visual art and culture discussions since opening its doors in January 2008. We have had artists, critics, writers, curators and funders talking about their work, their ideas and sharing their skills and knowledge base with us.

CCA,Lagos continues in its aims to build a strong education and public programme that reaches out to the widest audience possible. We aim to actively encourage debate and critical discourse that engages with topical issues that affect our society specifically and the world in general. To fulfil our objectives we invite local, African and international guest speakers to talk on a wide ranges of themes and issues concerning contemporary art and culture.

In July and August 2008 CCA, Lagos continues its public programme with talks by US based Nigerian art historian and writer, Professor Nkiru Nzegwu, American curators Lisa Binder and Kinsey Katchka and Italian doctoral research candidate Giulia Paoletti.

Friday 18^th July 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm

Dr Nkiru Nzegwu.

Title: Art and Africaresource.com

Dr Nzegwu will talk about Africa Resource.com as a repository for cultural equity. She will highlight the ways in which over the past ten years Africa Resource.com has developed multiple cultural products such Africa House a physical structure with galleries, meeting rooms and café, but also e-assets such as Ijele an ejournal and West Africa Review among others.

Dr Nzegwu is a philosopher, art historian and the Chair, Africana Studies Dept, University of New York, Binghamton, USA. Her areas of expertise include African aesthetics, philosophy, African feminist issues. She is the editor of Contemporary Textures, Multidimensionality in Nigerian art and also Issues in Contemporary African Art. She is also the editor of Ijele Art ejournal, African World and West African Review.

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Saturday 19^th of July 2.00 pm – 5.30pm

Giulia Paoletti 2.00 pm -3.30pm

Title: Representation of the African Metropolis: A case study.

Giulia Paoletti will start with an introduction into some of the key questions surrounding the role of photography within the visuals arts. She will then talk about representation of the city taking the Nigerian photography collective Depth of Field (DoF) as a case study.

Giulia Paoletti is a doctoral candidate in Contemporary African art at Columbia University, New York, USA. She has also written for several leading international art magazines and journals.

Lisa Binder 3.45 – 5.00

Title: Lubumbashi in Layers: The Photography of Sammy Baloji

This talk will consider how to curate an exhibition about a place one has never visited. It will use as its point of departure Sammy Baloji's photography and video which are concerned with history and memory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Wastelands of Memory the artist digitally combined archival images of industrial sites from the 1920s and 1930s with current documentation of decaying towns in the same locations. The resulting works create visual collages of time and place.

An open discussion about curating exhibitions will follow the talk.

Lisa Binder is Assistant Curator at the Museum for African Art (MfAA) New York, USA. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of East Anglia (UEA),United Kingdom where her research focused on contemporary African art in the London art market.

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Wednesday of 23^rd of July 2008

Dr Kinsey Katchka 3.30 pm – 5.30pm

Curating art from “elsewhere”: American museums & global contemporary arts
Dr. Katchka will address American museums’ collection and exhibition practice with respect to work by contemporary artists from regions other than Europe and the United States. She will focus primarily on artists from Africa.

Dr. Katchka is Associate Curator of contemporary and modern art at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Her cross-disciplinary interests in art history, anthropology and cultural studies, along in-depth fieldwork on the continent, have informed past and current curatorial projects at the North Carolina Museum of Art such as Far from Home (2007-2008), Julie Mehretu: City Sitings (2008), Lalla Essaydi: Revision (2010-2011), Cairo Contemporary (2012) and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution (Insights: Selected Artists from the Contemporary Collection (2004); Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora (2003).

Venue

Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos
9 McEwen Street, Off Queen Street, Sabo,
Opp Methodist Church, Herbert Macaulay St, Lagos.

Telephone 0702 8367106