Sweden and South Africa find themselves on the opposite sides of the global North-South divide as defined by UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), but an ongoing conversation between visual studies scholars and practitioners in both countries revolves around issues of mutual concern. They include A) contestation about public art and of the memorialization of controversial historical figures, structures and sites, B) an indigenous activism/
artivism in the context of colonial structures and monuments, and calls for decolonization, and C) debates about race and gender in the identitarian politics of both countries. Race and racialization, especially, is gaining increasing traction as a contested interpretative framework for social histories and relations in Sweden. And even though Apartheid gave way, in 1994, to a new democratic South African polity, racial categories continue to inform political agendas and reveal enduring structures of social inclusion and exclusion.
This workshop gathers current scholarship on visual imagery for social change at the intersection of social and artistic research and practice. A focus of our conversation will be on social divides
within the two countries, indicative of unexpected similarities between them, ones that call into question the relevance of global development discourses, past and present.
The workshop links up in direct and indirect ways with a series of conferences organized by Schmahmann, Löfving and colleagues at Karlstad and Johannesburg since 2019. Each conference expands the network of scholars nationally in South Africa and Sweden, and internationally. This can be exemplified by the SASUF Goes digital panel of 2022 –
Photography and Visual Heritage in Sweden and South Africa – and the conference at the San Cultural Heritage centre, !Kwa ttu, in South Africa in 2023 –
Indigeneity and Visual Sovereignty. These events saw the participation of researchers from the universities of Pretoria, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela University, and Södertörn, Linnaeus, Mid Sweden, Umeå, Gothenburg and Karlstad, and they were also open to students from the universities of both Johannesburg and Karlstad, and to practitioners from museums, galleries, and public archives. Selected papers from
Indigeneity and Visual Sovereignty are currently being developed into a special issue of the journal,
Critical Arts.
Time: Thursday 16 May, 2024, 14.00-16.00
Venue: Crafoordsalen, Articum
Convenors: Brenda Schmahmann, Professor and South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, University of Johannesburg, and Staffan Löfving, Associate Professor, Department of Language, Literature and Intercultural Studies, Karlstad University, and Visiting Associate Professor with the SARChI Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, University of Johannesburg
Programme:- 14.00 Confronting gender based violence in the works of Diane Victor Karen von Veh, Professor Emerita, Art History and Theory and past Head of the Visual Art Department, University of Johannesburg
- 14.30 Affect and care in Sámi artist Katarina Pirak Sikku's engagement with the archive of racial biology in Uppsala, Sweden Erika Larsson, Senior lecturer, Art History and Visual Studies, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University
- 15.00 The Sol Plaatje wing of the Vroue Monument Museum: Sharing marginalised stories of the South African War Shanade Barnabas, Assistant Professor, Cultural Heritage and Identity, University of Groningen, and Visiting Associate Professor with the SARChI Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, University of Johannesburg
- 15.30 Returning Mmakgabo Sebidi's lost artworks from Sweden Kim Berman, Professor, Visual Art, University of Johannesburg
