This double issue aims to provide an "out of placeness" by looking beyond Western-centricity to a transnational, pluralist horizon, exploring the new imaginaries created by artists and thinkers from the "Global South", from Brazil to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Today, in mainstream art media, there is no shortage of artists from the Global South and whose practice engages Decolonial ideas. As a non-profit platform, operating between the art world and academia, what distinguishes us and what our hybridity, our non-compliance to standards and standardisation, our preference for heterodoxy, enable us, is to maintain a distinct approach and a singular position. Participating in different spheres of artistic and cultural discourse without fully belonging to any, disciplinary border-crossing, exiles, both real and epistemological. To some extent, all things considered, it is a position similar to
Edward Said's, encapsulated in the title of his memoir –
Out of Place.
This out of placeness is perhaps also a condition for the love of all places and for the recognition of differences to shape our common world. Editorially, this translates as a concern and attention to artists, works and discourses inviting us to complicate and reflect on our understanding of artistic pluralism, in a drive to rethink the transnational beyond Euro-American centrism. In this regard, several contributions in this double issue feature artists and thinkers active in Brazil and the DRC, for whom we wish Afterall to be a shared platform and with whom critical reflections on histories repressed by Western rationality as well as new imaginaries can be articulated, and it is our hope that this issue will contribute to shape, in Said's words, "a rich fabric of some sort, which no one can fully comprehend, and no one can fully own".
Featuring: Filipa Ramos and Nav Haq on
Jonathas de Andrade, Elvira Espejo Ayca on the Mutual Nurturing of the Arts, Lorraine Leu and Jareh Das on Rosana Paulino, Charles Stankievech on Clarice Lispector and
Lygia Clark, Hyunjin Kim and Chloe Ting on Lotus L. Kang, Corina L. Apostol on the Coloniality of Botanical Entanglements, Felix Kalmenson on the Gutta-Percha Trade, Artist Inserts by Marwa Arsanios, and Sinzo Aanza, Maxa Zoller on the Habib Gorghi Workshop, Melissa Gronlund on Feryal Matar, Mi You on Ashkat Akhmedyarov, Baudouin Bikoko on Congolese Photography, Célestin Badibanga ne Mwine on the Emergence of a New Congolese Art, Lotte Arndt on the 7th Lubumbashi Biennale, Ailton Krenak on Ideas to Postpone the End of the World, Interview with Richard Mosse, Ala Roushan and Charles Stankievech on Shaping Atmospheres, Stephanie Bailey on Sin Wai Kin.
Published twice a year,
Afterall, a journal of art, context and enquiry founded in 1998 by Charles Esche and
Mark Lewis, offers in-depth analysis of contemporary artists' work, along with essays on art history and critical theory. Edited by Elisa Adami, Amanda Carneiro, Nav Haq, Mark Lewis,
Adeena Mey, Charles Stankievech, and Chloe Ting,
Afterall is published by Central Saint Martins in research and publishing partnership with M HKA, Antwerp; the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; and in association with The University of Chicago Press.
