Associate Professor and Chair Paul Wilson and Dana Professor Jennifer Jolly of the Art, Art History, and Architecture Department each presented papers at the 2024 College Art Association annual meeting in Chicago.
Wilson presented “Tuli Mekondjo: Adopting the Ancestors You Need,” about the work of the contemporary Namibian artist. The paper examines how her mixed media artworks and performances use family and archival photographs to address traumatic national and personal histories but also to nurture a sense of self that is not defined by trauma.
Jolly presented “Excavating Racial Geographies: Afro-Mexican Visibility in 19th-Century Mexico,” examining the story of Don Feliciano Ramos, a Black Mexican born on a Mexican plantation who amassed a fortune and commissioned the Sanctuary to Guadalupe in Pátzcuaro, Michoacan. The paper argues that Ramos negotiated understandings of race grounded in geography in order to make a claim for belonging in Mexico.