XClose

History of Art

Home
Menu

Book Launch: 'Lifework' edited by Moran Sheleg

08 October 2024, 6:00 pm–8:30 pm

book cover

A book launch for 'Lifework: on the Autobiographical Impulse in Contemporary Art, Writing, and Theory' edited by Moran Sheleg

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Queenie Lee – History of Art

Location

IAS Forum (G17)
South Wing
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

What does 'lifework' mean? In his 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author', Roland Barthes described Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu as a form of 'lifework' that changed how autobiography would be written forever. Barthes's words would prove prophetic, as the following decades saw a return to this much-derided genre, albeit through a string of artistic transformations that challenged, interrogated, and reimagined the notion of the 'self'.

Offering a set of approaches spanning art history, literary theory, feminist, Black, trans, and queer studies, Lifework takes the work of art and the process of artmaking as starting points for examining what a 'lifework' might constitute since the mid-sixties and what it suggests about the relationship - both historical and contemporary - between life and work. Featuring artworks by Moyra Davey and Susan Morris, as well as examples of autotheory by Teresa Carmody and Marquis Bey, the book doubles as a space in which different forms of life-writing take place.

With further contributions from Jo Applin, Lucy Bradnock, Alice Butler, Miguel de Baca, Rye Dag Holmboe, Margaret Iversen, Alistair Rider, Abi Shapiro, and Moran Sheleg, Lifework is a valuable resource that brings together a range of established and emerging voices.

To celebrate the book's publication, please join us for an evening of discussion with the editor Moran Sheleg and an array of fellow contributors, chaired by Briony Fer.