Embodied Writing Practices

Art historians Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (University of Birmingham), Verónica Tello (UNSW) and Helen Hughes (Monash) address their shared interest in embodied writing practices and the significance of this method in relation to contemporary art history. As they discuss interventions in collections, the digital and the role of the replica in reiterating dispossession, they are guided by Khadija’s text ‘The Importance of Being Anachronistic: Contemporary Aboriginal Art and Museum Reparations’ (Discipline and Third Text, 2016). Their discussion will engage key terms that feature in the vocabulary Khadija developed for ethics, migration and genealogy, especially in relation to ‘El Penacho’, the object-biography featured in her new book, The Contested Crown: Repatriation Politics between Europe and Mexico (University of Chicago Press, 2022). The speakers will approach the questions demanded by settler colonial history through their respective projects on ‘bordered lives’, convict art and Latinx art histories.

Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll is an artist and historian currently leading the project REPATRIATES: Artistic Research in Museums and Communities in the Process of Repatriation from Europe. She is the Chair of Global Art at the University of Birmingham, and Professor of History at the Central European University, Vienna. Her films and installations have been shown internationally including at the Venice, Marrakech and Sharjah Biennales, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Manifesta 13 Versailles; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol; Extracity Antwerp; HKW, Berlin; Royal Museums Greenwich, London; Savvy, Berlin; LUX, London; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; St Kilda Film Festival, Melbourne; and the Casablanca Film Festival. She is the author of the books Art in the Time of Colony (2014); The Importance of Being Anachronistic (2016); Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the Invasive Herbarium (2017) and The Contested Crown: Repatriation Politics between Europe and Mexico (2022). She is the co-author of Bordered Lives: Immigration Detention Archive (2020) and co-editor of Third Text journal.

Dr Helen Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Art History, Theory, and Curatorial Practice at Monash University. She was a 2019–20 Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art. She is a founding co-editor of Discipline, and on the editorial boards of Memo Review and Index Journal. Recent publications include Double Displacement: Rex Butler on Queensland Art (co-edited with Francis Plagne, 2019), Tom Nicholson: Lines towards Another (co-edited with Amelia Barikin, 2019), and Mutlu Çerkez: 1988–2065 (co-edited with Charlotte Day and Hannah Mathews, 2018).

Verónica Tello is a Chilean-Australian art historian based at UNSW Art & Design, Sydney, where she is Senior Lecturer, Contemporary Art History and Theory. Verónica’s work is dedicated to engaging and animating queer and migratory archives in/across Australia and Latin America. In 2016, she published her first book Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art (Bloomsbury). Her second book, Future Souths: 8 Dialogues on Art, Place and History is forthcoming with Third Text Publications as a bilingual edition (Spanish/English, 2022). She is currently finalising a manuscript on the exhibition history of Art in Chile: An Audio-Visual Documentation (1986, co-curated by Juan Dávila and Nelly Richard) and the accompanying catalogue/book Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile Since 1973 with Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia.