In collaboration with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library of the New York Public Library, ICI hosted curator and writer Sara Raza in conversation with Margot Norton (Allen and Lola Goldring Curator, New Museum) on the occasion of Raza’s recently-published book Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion (Black Dog Press, London).
The book grows out of Raza’s almost two-decade-long engagement with artistic practices in the former USSR, exploring transcultural ideas of revolution, rebellion, nonconformity, and postcolonialism across the unique geography of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and by proxy the Middle East and North Africa. In this program, Raza and Norton explored how the aesthetics, attitudes, and histories of Punk and Orientalism can act as new tools for researchers in contemporary art to rethink dominant narratives of these under-researched regions. The curators also discussed how the book itself is a curatorial project, built upon Raza’s deep engagement with the experiences and works of a range of artists living in diverse post-Soviet and postcolonial realities.
A version of the video with ASL interpretation is available here.
