Black Portraitures[s] II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories
Headquartered at NYU’s 57 acre, 15th century Florentine Villa “La Pietra” this conference Black Portraiture{s} II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories, will be the sixth in this series and once again, a collaboration between New York University (NYU) and Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. The conference will open in Florence, Italy on Thursday, May 28, 2015 and continue through Sunday, May 31, 2015. This years conference is organized by Deborah Willis, Ellyn Toscano, Awam Ampka, Ulrich Baer, Henry Louis Gates, Robert Holmes, Manthia Diawara, Thelma Golden, and Cheryl Finley.
Attendance is expected to be high with over 800 registered attendees, many of whom will also be visiting the Biennale in nearby Venice, Italy during the same time period.
The conference will once again bring together an international group of artists and scholars to continue an interdisciplinary discussion of historical and contemporary portrayals of the Black Body in Western Civilization.
This blog will report conference activities on a daily basis from locations in Florence. Our aim is to share the experience of attending the BLACK PORTRAITURE{S} II conference with people who would be interested but not able to attend in person. Throughout the conference we will photograph and write commentary on talks and discussions as they take place in the various venues in the city of Florence and at La Pietra, NYU’s 15th century Tuscan Villa overlooking the city.
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Stairway to the second level of the Rotunda at the Villa La Pietra
The most recent conference in the series, held in Paris, France in January 2013, attracted a diverse community of scholars, included over 400 attendees, and produced an outstanding body of work on the portrayal of the Black Body in the West. Many scholars, students, as well as non-professionals throughout the diaspora who have become aware of the Paris conference have shown a great interest in the scholarly work in history, art history, and art that has been produced in the past few years as depicted in these conferences.
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Black Portraiture{s} II: IMAGING THE BLACK BODY AND RESTAGING HISTORIES
THE EXHIBITION:
This year’s conference will also include an exhibition of a portion of the art collection at La Pietra, the historical Villa that is home to New York University at Florence, Italy. This
exhibition will be centered on depictions of the Black Body as “Blackamoors” within La Pietra’s art collections.
These ornamental sculptural representations of the Black Body have been held with some esteem for at least five centuries in many art collections throughout the Western world. Where and why did this practice originate? What does this dichotomy signify when European cultures that have sought to enslave, villainize, and dehumanize African people have at the same time, made them subjects of their ornamental art? “Often encrusted with gold and precious stones and typically immaculately attired in the costumes of their period, these highly prized and costly figures were in ancient times and still are today, placed in prominent high visibility areas in the homes, mansions, and villas of the moneyed elite across the western world. For the owner there is no dichotomy at all. The possession of the black body as represented in the Blackamoor is simply another signifier of the wealth, power, and status of the owner.”
THE CONFERENCE:
While the art exhibition in various museum venues throughout the city of Florence will feature the “Blackamoors,” the conference itself will engage wider discussions about the many ways in which the black body has been imagined in the West. “The art and politics of representing blackness has has been completely controlled and manipulated by non-african powers over the centuries.” The significance of this conference is powerfully expressed in the following statement by the conference organizers .
“Centuries of migration (whether forced or voluntary) encounters and exchanges shaped imbalanced structures of power and knowledge. Representation became, in the hands of those with power, a tool to reconfigure the identities of peoples engaged in these exchanges through various technologies of representation—literature, art, popular culture, etc. Constructs of race and sexuality defined these identities, setting precedents that continue to color our ways of seeing. More recently, the universality of black culture and its global presence have heightened the visibility of the black body in international sports, music, fashion, and the visual arts, with implications worthy of much critique. The conference will examine the ways in which the same technologies of representation can and are being used to contest that knowledge, and to offer counter-images.”
Conference Venues:
THE ODEON THEATRE: FLORENCE, ITALY
Registration and sign-in of all attendees will start on Thursday, May 28th – Day #1 from 5:00-8:00 PM at Villa La Pietra, Via Bolognese 120, 50139 Firenze, Italy. A reception and open house will follow immediately at the Villa Pietra from 6:30 – 9:00 PM.
Day 2 – Friday, May 29th Registration – 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Odeon Theatre which is housed in the fifteenth century Palazzo Strozzino in Metropolitan Florence at Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze, Italy.
MORE TO FOLLOW
