Afro-Indic Archipelagos: searching for materialities, visual cultures and art practices on African heritages in Indian Ocean islands
Afro-Indic Archipelagos: searching for materialities, visual cultures and art practices on African heritages in Indian Ocean islands
by Prof. Dr. Pedro Sobral Pombo (Goa University, India)
Fri, July 2, 13:30 - 14, Zoom link will be announced (RS Arts and Aesthetics)
Abstract
My project aims at searching and connecting scattered archives and artistic productions on African inheritances and their contemporary materialities and visual cultures in the Western Indian Ocean islands. This proposal focusses on the diversity of heritages of African presences in the Western Indian Ocean islands, assumed as sedimentations of Afro-Asian circulations and historicities. Here, I use the term “Afro-Indic” to designate African origin communities that populate the oceanic space, responding to the term “Afro-Asian” which commonly embodies a mainland based approach.
The main question this proposal addresses is what are the possible repositories, museums or archives of African inheritances in Indian Ocean island societies and how they are, or can be, theme of art works that engage communities or discuss historical transformations that inform the contemporary. This intention recognizes that homespaces, words, intangible and material culture, visualities or social processes can enter heritage discourses, amplifying ideas of museographies and archives. Assuming a critical stance of ideas of museums, this project also closely follows, and aims to contribute, to the new Intercontinental Slavery Museum in Mauritius, in its installation phase.