Dorota Głowacka – lecturer at King’s College University, Canada. Author of books:
Po tamtej stronie: świadectwo, afekt, wyobraźnia (Warszawa 2017) and Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimonials, Ethics, and Aesthetics (Washington 2012), and also the editor of Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (Nebraska 2007) oraz Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries (Albany, NY 2002).
She has also published dozens of articles in the fields of continental philosophy, Holocaust and genocide studies and Polish-Jewish relations after the Holocaust.
Master lecture, 6 February 2023, More information >>>
On Monday (06.02) at 18:00, we invite you to a master lecture by prof. Dorota Głowacka from the University of King’s College in Halifax (Canada) entitled “The Sovereign Imagination and the Political Dimension of Contemporary Painting by Canadian Indigenous Artists.”
The lecture will take place in room 208 at the Institute of Cultural Studies ( ul. Szewska 36).
Although Canadian Indigenous artists depict experiences of injustice caused by colonial violence (Kent Monkman, Cree; Rebecca Belmore, Anishinaabe), they simultaneously deviate from a government-sponsored victimological narrative. I posit that the visual art of contemporary Indigenous artists in Canada expresses a demand not only for aesthetic but also for political sovereignty. Thus, their work participates in a project of resurgence (resurgence) and persistence (survivance) (to use G. Vizenor’s well-known phrase), oriented towards the renewal and shaping of Indigenous traditions. Expressing what I call the “sovereign imagination”, Indigenous artists actively participate in the political project of self-determination, demanding recognition of their rights both culturally and politically. The creation and dissemination of Indigenous visual art is thus inextricably linked to demands for a return to ancestral lands, as well as the right to manage water and other natural resources (Norval Morriseau, Anishinaabe; Alex Janvier, Dene). The work also expresses bodily sovereignty and resistance to a regime that treats the bodies of Indigenous people as expendable (Quill Violet Christie-Peters, Anishinaabe; Christie Belcourt, Métis; Annie Pootoogook, Inuit). It is also significant that the visual art of Indigenous artists demonstrates the entanglement of Eurocentric aesthetic notions and ideas, as well as institutions dedicated to art collecting, in the colonial project, and thus their active complicity in violence over the centuries.
