27/10/2016 Studium Generale lecture - Charl Landvreugd
Charl Landvreugd will elaborate on the colour black in his lecture for the Studium Generale at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). Aesthetically, politically, theoretically as well as practically, black is the base colour in his practice.
Landvreugd researches the visual strategies of Dutch Afro artists with a focus on the production of cultural citizenship. He argues that the discourse dominated by post-colonial theoretical frameworks does not always suffice in describing the Dutch and continental European Afro art production. At present, black serves only as an often-used borrowed denomination, without actual, concrete consensus on its meaning or applicability among members of the African diaspora in the Netherlands. Since a Black- or better still Afro-self-awareness is growing, naming all such subjects as black at this point in time is (possibly prematurely) advancing a case for recognition of a specific continental European Black condition. Landvreugd advocates for local European concepts and language that have the potential to speak about the sensibilities specific to the area.
Charl Landvreugd (Paramaribo, 1971) lives and works in Rotterdam as a visual artist. In his practice he mainly works with sculpture, performance, installation, photography and video. At Goldsmiths University in London he studied Fine Art and History of Art (BA). After that he continued his studies in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MA) at Columbia University in New York. Currently he continues his investigations at the Royal College of Art in London in the PhD programme Curating Contemporary Art, exploring black – with a small b, denoting colour rather than politics – and Blackness in all its different meanings and diversity. Also he has a wide experience as a curator and a writer, working in Europe, the Caribbean and the United States.
Students react to the topic of Charl Landvreugd's lecture 'Imagining Afropea'
Video by Niels Schrader and Pascal Schilp.
Promo video by Mind Design