Art historian and critic Claire Bishop presents Ancestral Avant-Gardes
The Art Research Group at Manchester School of Art invites you to a conference organised by Professor Claire Bishop from The Graduate Center, City University of New York and the Visiting Chair on Campus 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University
Friday 21 March 2025, 9:30am-7:00pm – The Holden Gallery
The Art Research Group at Manchester School of Art invites you to a conference organised by Professor Claire Bishop from The Graduate Center, City University of New York and the Visiting Chair on Campus 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University
This event addresses the resurgence of interest in “ancestralism” among performance and visual artists, who hark back to traditional, pre-modern or indigenous forms of collective knowledge, often in the form of ceremonies, rituals, and invocations. The reasons for an artistic interest of healing and ritual are important, and perhaps all too obvious: the global climate crisis, white supremacy’s systematic oppression of Black and indigenous life, and the failures of Western rationalism.
These issues need to be articulated and reiterated. At the same time, difficult questions arise: whose ancestors are being invoked, and to what ends? What differences can we observe across historical periods and geographical regions? And how might we develop a critical vocabulary for approaching a body of work that often requires not just participation, but also an openness to the spiritual?
This one-day event, organized by art historian and critic Claire Bishop, will offer a range of artistic approaches to ancestrality in contemporary art and performance.
The Art and Performance Research Hub brings practice- and text-based research together. We work locally and internationally through exhibitions, seminars, conferences, screenings, events, performances and publishing. Our models for creative and critical practice include everything from performer training to curating.
We contribute to the overall research culture and expertise at Manchester School of Art through the local and international profiles of our staff.
The event is supported by AHEAD (Arts and Humanities Engagement And Dialogue) is the public engagement programme of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University.
