Nicola Setari
Nicola Setari discusses the issues surrounding the work he did for Visionary Africa and his collaboration with architect David Adjaye on GEO-Graphics. The presentation focuses on the itinerancy of Visionary Africa in different African capitals and on the many questions surrounding the representation of African culture within contemporary European institutions. Setari discusses the controversial notion of cultural restitution between European and African countries as well as the politics of working with existing ethnographic collections in Europe.
Synthesis
Visionary Africa · Bruno Latour · Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art · The whole question of iconoclasm in contemporary culture has been a theme of reflection and investigation · Expand…
Visionary Africa · Bruno Latour · Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art · The whole question of iconoclasm in contemporary culture has been a theme of reflection and investigation · Brussels: BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts and the Tervuren Museum · An opportunity to reflect on the problem of relations between European museums, ethnographic museums, and the African continent · On one side there was the theme of heritage and on the other side there was the question of visual stereotypes · British-Ghanaian architect, David Adjaye · Book: African Metropolitan Architecture – fifty-four capitals are reorganised according to climate zones on the continent, therefore liberating them of their national identity · The Atlas Research Project: a timeline mapping a hundred years of the evolution of policies on the management of culture on the African continent · GEO-Graphics: part of the bigger project Visionary Africa · Two main exhibitions: GEO-Graphics and A Useful Dream · Using colour codes and labels to decontextualise national identity
Short biography
Nicola Setari, researcher, curator, editor, and professor of visual anthropology at the Milan New Fine Arts and Design Academy. Expand…
Nicola Setari, researcher, curator, editor, and professor of visual anthropology at the Milan New Fine Arts and Design Academy. He was an agent of dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, contributing to the artistic and educational programme. He also co-edited part of the dOCUMENTA (13) catalogue – The Logbook (2012). Between 2006 and 2009, he was editor-in-chief and publisher of the cross-disciplinary art magazine Janus. In 2010 and 2011, he was co-curator of the Visionary Africa platform for the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels and co-editor of David Adjaye’s GEO-Graphics: A Map of Art Practices in Africa, Past and Present (2010).