Faculty Profile

Bio

Professor and Interim Dean of Graduate Studies. Education: MA, 2004, Arizona State University; PhD, 2010, Emory University. Publications: Convocarte, Third Text, Critical Interventions, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, ISEA Conference Proceedings, Art South Africa, African Arts. Awards: Resident scholar, Wits Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa, Johannesburg; Mellon Decade Fellow, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, CASVA Visiting Senior Fellow, 2020.

Books

• Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020)

Articles/Essays

• Repainting the Walls of Lunda: Information Colonialism and Angolan Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016)

Selected Articles

• Coeditor with Robyn Farrell, inaugural issue of the Art Institute Review, “Instability.” (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, (Fall 2021)
• “Body and Flesh: Camila Maissune’s 3x4” in Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Mozambique and its Diaspora (Lisbon: Hangar, 2020), 193-198
• “The Miscegenated Interface: Functionality in Fatimah Tuggar’s Working Woman (1997) and Broom (1996),” in Davis Museum, Fatimah Tuggar: Home’s Horizons (Davis Museum of Art, 2019)
• With Marissa Moorman, “Medium and Media in Angola: expressive practices in context,” introduction to Contemporary Art in Angola and its Diaspora Today (Lisboa: Hangar, 2019)
• "On the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and Art's Exceptionalism" Art Africa (March 2017), 170–176
• "Sona Drawing's Geometric Discourses and its Implications for Global Art History" Convocarte (April 2017)
• "Dogon Ceremonial Adze" in Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Lost Bodies: Brendan Fernandes (Kingston, Ontario: 2016), 90–94
• "Obsolescing Analog Africa: a Re-reading of the 'Digital' in Digital Art" Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture (Winter 2015), 1–11
• "Suspension Before Closure: 'Steve McQueen: Works' at the Art Institute of Chicago" Nka (Fall 2014), 136–139
• "Malangatana Ngwenya" entry for Routledge Enclyclopedia of Modernism, 2016
• "The Tacet Mark as Blackness," ISEA Sydney Conference Proceedings, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (Winter 2013)
• "Accessing the Ancestors: The Re-Mediation of José Redinha's Paredes Pintadas da Lunda" Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture (Spring 2012), 122–140 
• "A 'New Man' for Africa: Some Particularities of the Marxist Homem Novo Within Angolan Cultural Policy" in Fabio Lanza and Jadwiga Pieper Mooney, eds., De-Centering the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2013), 187–206
• "'All I Am Is a Son of the Cold War': Nástio Mosquito's Embedded Videos" Art South Africa (Fall 2011), 32–33
• "The Reception of Nationalist Art: A Response." Dialogue Section, African Arts (Winter 2008), 8
• "The Displacement of National Art in a Transnational Artworld." Dialogue Section, African Arts (Autumn 2008), 10–11

Current Interests

I'm currently researching the history of new media and old media in art production in Africa.

Recent Thesis Advisees

Sarah Sundstrom (2021), “Chto Delat and a New Socialist Sincerity”