History of Art Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Student Journalists, 2023-24

Our EDI Student Journalists have put together some brilliant articles exploring art, culture, and identity through fresh perspectives and stories that celebrate diversity and inclusion.

art museum

Contents:

Profile: Anastasia Velikova

An instax image of a young woman with long blonde hair in front of la sagrada familia

Hi! My name is Anastasia, and I am a second-year History of Art student with a subsidiary focus in Philosophy. I’ve lived in London for two years, but had spent my entire life in Sofia, Bulgaria where my love for art was cultivated and sprang through constant exploration. My parents took me to museums around the world, which allowed me to compare the art scene in my own country and the scene surrounding us. I realised that unfortunately, our artists are not well known, and underappreciated – both at home and outside. 

I love exploring the London art scene through a feminist lens, examining how women are represented, and what topics seem to remain taboo, hidden or unspoken of. Strolling around a London museum, with a pen and paper in hand, it is intriguing to see what narratives are created within an exhibition. Once we step into that space, we seem to lose our perception of the space as specifically curated and absorb feelings and ideas that we believe are our own, when in fact every single element in that space is specifically and strategically chosen. 

My background as a Bulgarian international student who moved to a different country as an undergraduate, and as a young woman, has shaped my journey in navigating the Western art world. In my EDI journal, I would like to explore the important topic of who gets to see art and who controls the narrative of seeing, alongside the journey of transition between two spaces of origin. Come along as I discover ways in which London accommodates (and excludes) both narratives of women’s bodies, and the Eastern European point of view. 

EDI Festival: The Importance of Open Conversations - Anastasia Velikova

The UCL History of Art Department’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Festival was held 20-22 March, 2024 and was a wonderful opportunity for students and staff to engage in a discussion about accessibility in the field of art history. The three-day festival included three different forums that encouraged students and staff to share personal experiences, ideas and opinions, to explore the struggles of being in this discipline and gain perspective on how to widen participation in the department. There were three main events: ‘YOU REALLY NEED TO READ THIS’ a forum discussion on literature that had impacted the staff and student’s lives, no matter if academic or not; ‘Affordable Art History’, a student-led (Charlotte Wilcock and Lakshmi Tran, MA History of Art) forum discussion of elitism within the field, which aimed to provide a space for the discussion of class and highlight the benefits of diversity for the department; and finally the ‘EDI Forum’, an informal discussion of general accessibility issues and ideas on how to highlight diversity and employ inclusion within the department. 

As a student journalist, I attended the last event on March 22, which proved to be an insightful conversation in which students and staff engaged in a thoughtful exchange of opinions and ideas about issues related to EDI that being part of the UCL Art History Department has raised. A topic that was brought up in the conversation was the usual ‘gap’ between students and staff that remains invisible, yet ever-present. However, in this room, this gap was bridged by a common interest in a productive discussion of student and staff needs in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion. Two of the main issues discussed were accessibility issues in terms of mobility within the department buildings, and financial accessibility related to potential gallery visits during a course. 

The first issue raised at the forum was the inaccessibility of the departmental buildings. The two five-story buildings on Gordon Square with no elevators, which house all the teachers’ offices, and some classrooms, create a clear barrier between students and staff with mobility issues. As was noted by one of the participants, the building does not feel welcoming and poses a problem, especially for prospective students for whom that may become a factor that dissuades them from joining the department. Most of the History of Art classes are held in seminar rooms and lecture halls scattered across campus, so a visit to the History of Art building may be rare. However, even if that is the case, it can still create a sense of ‘not belonging’, of not being a part of your own course and a sense of alienation. It also limits some students from receiving in-person office hours, since most of the staff have their offices in the two buildings in Gordon Square. It may even prove a problem for staff to reach their own offices. However, this issue is difficult to be resolved, since these issues must be raised with Camden City Hall, which slows the process down considerably. 

As the discussion and conversation kept going, a solution was found to one part of the problem, which is the constant need to flag accessibility issues as a student or a member of staff. Since most of the classes are held outside of the department, mobility and accessibility issues can be flagged by an individual for a certain class’s location to be changed, which in recent years has become quite a fast process, with an immediate response generated by UCL. However, there remains the issue of self-identifying multiple times instead of only once. At the end of the discussion, it was resolved that though the department may not be able to change accessibility in the History of Art department buildings, they can work towards a system that allows a person to flag accessibility issues only once, without having to ask for additional requirements every time. Additionally, it was noted that perhaps the issue can be flagged to prospective students. However, it should be followed with the reassurance that everyone should feel welcomed in the history of art department, where all students will be treated with the same care and attention.  

The second issue raised was on financial accessibility, particularly about courses that include additional costs, like trips to a museum or a paid exhibition. It was discussed that planning far ahead for each term is not possible for staff, since some exhibitions that are on the topic of the course are announced after the start of the course and a tutor may decide to visit them halfway through the term. Thus, sometimes it is impossible to give a specific budget necessary for a course. However, the issue was not about the problem of cost, it was about flagging to the students a general, or a range, of costs that may be necessary for a module that has gallery visits and trips, so that students are not missing out on opportunities and are not disadvantaged. This is something that the Department has already taken into consideration. As some of the staff mentioned, the tutors always make sure that they visit free exhibitions, or that if a visit proves inaccessible for everyone, it is made optional and is not part of any of the assessments for that module. Additionally, on the History of Art page, there is information about potential additional costs, which acts as a guide for prospective students – for example, they advise getting the Student Art Pass. Everyone agreed that it was important to flag general costs and perhaps a range for each course, as much in advance as possible, to not put students at the disadvantage of missing out on an opportunity for a class or a visit. 

Though EDI problems are not easy to resolve, forums and discussions like these prove to be extremely important. Even though change may come slow, and not all issues can be resolved, to have a shared conversation around these topics, to have an open exchange between staff and students, to examine what is being done well and what could be improved is beneficial for creating a safe and welcoming environment, a space where feelings and wellbeing are taken into consideration, and ideas and feedback are welcomed.  

“WOMEN IN REVOLT! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990” - Anastasia Velikova

Tate Britain’s “Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990” curated by Linsey Young presented a comprehensive and versatile display of works related to the second wave feminist movement in the UK. The exhibition explored the works of more than 100 artists spanning over two decades, and showcased issues ranging from equal pay protests to inequality in the domestic sphere, the punk protests of the late 70s, the Greenham anti-nuclear march, as well as the lesbian and black feminist movements that had previously been excluded from the discussion.

The exhibition explored women’s lives and protests in and outside the home. It showcased works in various mediums and styles, from video installations, photographs, collages, sculptures, to sociological surveys, protest posters, performances and many more. It is one of Tate Britain’s largest exhibitions to this day and conveyed what it means to be a woman in protest. Some of the artists in the exhibition are well-known in the world of art, but it also explores some lesser-known artists. 

With that many artists and mediums in such a small space, the visitor could easily get lost in their admiration of the numerous themes that echoed across the gallery. At times, it felt like the power of some of the individual works had been diminished. However, on display was not the individual artist, but the collective display of the authentic female self – not the voiceless subject of the male gaze, but the empowered and loud true self. 

Spanning across two decades, the six rooms delved into a different subject of women’s protest. 

Room 1 followed the start of the second wave feminist movement and the fight for equal pay and equal rights. 

Room 2 explored the aftermath of the equal pay law in the workplace, and how inequality continued into the space of the home. The room also dealt with medical prejudices against women and the taboo around menstruation. 

Room 3 presented the punk and post-punk movement in which women used various media and mediums to convey the art of living, and how life is art. 

Room 4 saw a drastic change of themes. The room showcased works related to the women’s march at Greenham Royal Air Force base in September 1981, and the community that the women in the camp created. 

Room 5 explored the black feminist movement, and focused on themes such as discrimination, the colonial and male gaze, and police brutality. 

The last room was an exploration of the AIDS crisis, and the struggles of lesbian feminist groups under the misconception that women could not transmit HIV, and their exclusion from important discussions at the time. 

The exhibition presented a comprehensive display of the various ways women protested their place in society. Though some of the themes could have been explored more in depth, the voice of protest was a collective one and reminded the viewer of the importance of the conversation around women’s rights, their experiences and their truth. By listening to women’s manifold voices and giving them a space for expression, we move forward in abolishing the word “woman” that we place in front of “artist”, and creating a space of inclusion and diversity. 

pdf_anastasia_-_women_in_revolt_2.pdf

‘A Safe Space of Remembering – the Artists, Story and Space of the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale’ – Anastasia Velikova

Dirty dishes left in the sink. Bread on the kitchen table. Mosquitoes buzzing. The confusing sense of presence in a deserted home. A story left untold; a memory kept hidden is suddenly revealed. Who has authority over our memory? And what about our collective memory? Can you ever restore a past that was hidden or erased? 

The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale presents the complicated notion of memory. The Neighbours (2024) is an interactive multimedia installation created by Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, and explores the complex memory of the survivors of forced labour camps and political violence during the Communist regime in Bulgaria. A “must see” according to The Art Newspaper and The Guardian, the project is the fruit of twenty years of research by the three creators, and raises issues about the history of memory, trauma, and political violence. Curated by Vasil Vladimirov, the space is a solemn and powerful space of remembering and “un-silencing”. 

The theme of the 60th Venice Biennale is “Foreigners Everywhere”, and The Neighbours explores the idea of being a foreigner in your own country – the “neighbour” that we live next door to, yet actually know nothing about, as Butseva explains in her talk for the Sofia Human Rights Forum. The work shares stories about the labour camps that have been left untold and forgotten by the collective memory of Bulgaria. 

lamp on in a dark space

Image: The living room inside the Pavilion, Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, The Neighbours, 2024, multimedia installation, Venice, Italy. / Credits: The Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2024.
 

Inside the Pavilion is a recreation of a home with a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen. It is meant to represent the homes of the survivors, spaces which Butseva calls “vernacular memorial museums”. The space of the home is filled with ordinary items, with plates in the kitchen, food in the fridge, an old sewing machine and a record player. However, there are also unusual items, such as soil, water, stones and grass from the former camp sites of Belene and Lovech - the biggest labour camp sites. The space feels occupied and is filled with a cacophony of sounds - birds singing, mosquitoes buzzing, waves crashing. And, of course, the testimonies of the survivors. 

inside a bed

Image: Close-up of the bed inside the installation, Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, The Neighbours, 2024, multimedia installation, Venice, Italy. /Credits: The Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2024.

The work is the product of archival research, forty interviews and searching for hidden documentation. No one knew of the camps’ existence or the forced labour that was going on inside while they were operating. People were arrested and sent to the camps because they were believed to be a “threat” to the regime - this even included a person speaking a Western language and listening to Western music, or someone wearing skinny jeans. Allegations against the prisoners were unclear, unreasonable, and not put on trial. Once the camps were dismantled and prisoners were freed, after the fall of the Communist regime, there appeared to be no memory of the places, with no official memorial sites created by the government, and the camps left to crumble to the ground. Little to no documentation was left behind. All the survivors were left with were their own homes and their own stories. Their homes became vernacular museums or memorial sites, and their stories became a way to keep the memory alive. That memory remained rather private, silenced in the collective memory. For a while at least.

trees and shadows

Image: Detail of the kitchen counter, Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, The Neighbours, 2024, multimedia installation, Venice, Italy. / Credits: The Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2024.

Butseva is a visual artist, researcher and writer based in Sofia and in London. A senior lecturer in the University of the Arts London, she has spent most of her life between the Western and Eastern European world. Her works deal with political violence, traumatic memory and the official and unofficial histories of Eastern Europe. So, when ten years ago, while doing her Masters in Photography at the University of Portsmouth she discovered the story of the labour camps, she was intrigued as to why there were no official monuments or memorials for this horrific history. Soon enough she met Topouzova, assistant professor of History and Creative Nonfiction at the University of Toronto and documentary filmmaker, who worked with archival material about the camps. They met Chehirian, a multimedia artist and researcher, who is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science at Princeton University, USA, and works on post-war and transnational history, and the history of attention and psychotherapy. The three combined their research and began their journey into the hidden past. They found their information in dumpsters, archives, but mostly - in people’s homes. 

two women and a man, all with short dark hair stand closely together in a row

Image: Lilia Topouzova, Krasimira Butseva, and Julian Chehirian, photograph by Borislav Skochev

The “neighbours” as they call them are the survivors of trauma, they are the foreigners who were forgotten and unknown. A neighbour could be someone you live next door to and know everything about. Or you live next door to and rarely speak, until one day they open up to you. Or someone you share a wall with whom you know nothing about. You are strangers yet somehow intimately connected by space. 
 

items on 3 shelves

Image: Detail from The Neighbours, Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, The Neighbours, 2024, multimedia installation, Venice, Italy. / Credits: The Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2024.

Those seem to be the three types of “neighbours” present in the work, and they represent three different ways of remembering. In the space of the living room, we hear the testimonies by survivors who have been very vocal in their lives, have shared their stories with people and in documentaries - they want their stories to be heard, to be remembered. In the space of the bedroom, considered a more private space, are testimonies by survivors who have never spoken of their experience before - not even to their family or friends - but have decided to finally share their stories. The kitchen, the space of solitude, is filled with human presence, yet there are no voices, just ambient sounds - here are the “neighbours” who never got to tell their stories, because they were silenced, because they never made it alive to the time when they could speak. You feel their presence and feel connected to them, even though you cannot hear them.

kitchen in the darkness with blue light in the centre

Image: The kitchen, Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, The Neighbours, 2024, multimedia installation, Venice, Italy./  Credits: The Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2024.

The work representing my country at the Biennale is a frightening one. It opens one’s eyes to the true brutality of the Communist regime in Bulgaria and to one’s own role in this collective oblivion. This powerful space of collective healing is a step forward in creating an official memorial, a space of remembrance and acceptance. Laura Cumming from The Guardian calls it ‘the most delicate and elegiac expression of a terrible history’. The space lets you immerse yourself in the scent of the old furniture, in the multimedia projections of nature. It lets you in and invites you to participate in remembering. 

I felt honoured to be represented by such brilliant creators, and their call for reflection, conveyed through a safe space of intensity, is a powerful message to send on an international scene.

a sofa and sewing machine in the dark with two spotlights

Image: Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, The Neighbours, 2024, multimedia installation, Venice, Italy./ Credits: The Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2024.

Bibliography: 

Images source:

‘Press’ The Neighbours, Bulgarian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale (2024)  

Profile: Amelia Chukhnova

an instax image of a young woman wearing glasses and a red scarf creating a heart shape using her arms

Hey! My name is Amelia, I’m in my second year of art history, and I have not yet found the answer for what art has and can be for me. Surprisingly enough, prior to coming to UCL I was sure I would be met with some rather elitist art theory; thus, even more encouraging is it now to know history of art here as a polar opposite - full of diversity and inclusion.

Growing up in Russia, with family and friends scattered across multiple distant regions, I had a chance to notice how radically the living conditions change the further one moves from the ‘centre’. How much more alienated and silenced the local native people (of whom there are millions) become, how easily colonial attitudes towards minority cultures find their way into ‘modern’ life. 

That is why I find it crucial to advocate against a unifying, ignorant dismissal of the many unprotected non-dominant cultures under one umbrella term, one devised and curated ‘heritage’, one official language. I hope here, as an EDI journalist, to provide spotlight and due recognition to Eurasian minority cultures and to cross-sectionally interrogate the issues of historical and contemporary class and gender representation.

‘Affordable Art History’ as a Community of Sharing: a Local Guide - Amelia Chukhnova

London’s March has, quite unexpectedly, defied its annual rain rites during the ‘Affordable Art History’ forum of the History of Art Department EDI Festival. The leaders of the forum - Charlotte Willcock and Lakshmi Tran, two MA History of Art students - could not have been more supportive, generous, and optimistic in their opening speeches and the moderation of subsequent discussions. The idea of creating a forum for all members of UCL History of Art Department to share their experiences in and thoughts on elitism in the field of art history, in Charlotte’s words, grew out of their own friendly conversations. Here, then, an overarching idea materialised: you mitigate inaccessibility by initiating - and maintaining - the ecosystem of sharing. Of looking out for each other.

There were, as I have lately noticed, quite a few remarks about ’much’ and ‘worth’ and ‘less’ and ‘relative’ - it is, after all, (pick your own intensifying adjective here) expensive to study and engage with art history. In this ground-floor seminar room, too small for the greater than anticipated number of active, willing participants, were outlined some of the most pressing issues: the costs of the courses themselves, of occasional field trips, of unplanned exhibition spendings. Largely, it is these expenses’ unpredictability paired with wider economic shifts and downturns that makes them particularly acute. 

Focusing on question papers pinned to the walls, groups of five to eight circulated around the room and considered how and why our art history journeys have been affected by inaccessibility and elitism, what the prospects are for the graduates in the art-related industries, and what our own Department can do to ensure the accessibility of art history to its members. Four colourful stickers hung at eye level had, by the end of the session, turned into webs of sticky notes with questions and answers and new questions. One (beginner to upper-intermediate art historian, tally ho!) could not miss an allusion to a gallery space with its white walls, interpretation-prompting exhibits, and relative silence. Yet during the EDI forum there was not silence but active chatter: étudiants, carefully, openly, meaningfully acknowledging the conditions and presuppositions of their études. 

Among the final points was an inevitable acknowledgement that some financial burdens are rather pertinent to the economy and the education sector as a whole, that career prospects may at times look bleak, that structural inequality stretches far beyond the words ‘art history’ and ‘university’. However, in the process of sharing personal experiences - so genuinely connecting in their sincerity - we, too, searched for our own roles in shaping a better, more accessible future for the field of art history. One could start from, for example, acknowledging that almost everyone has experienced some form of inequality or elitism in the field. From there, slowly but steadily will take form a sense of a community: an understanding, supportive, caring one - one ready to listen and embrace. A reassurance, that there is a potential for positive impact of our own EDI and visibility initiatives and that hope is to be found in the future. This hope lies, in part, as Dr. Jess Bailey has kindly suggested, in the grass-roots initiatives and local focus. In drawing strength and resilience, once again, from a like-minded, interconnected community. 

Towards the end, in the wrap-up section of the forum, every thought expressed was met with a round of applause and loud cheers: there was physically no more room for paralysing loneliness. The windows were open, at last, and the fresh, sun-drenched breeze filled this compact yet inexplicably comfortable place with faintly visible glitter. So too, glowed softly the forum’s powerful, resonating statement: one is never alone in their struggle. At UCL History of Art a community is always there - just around the corner, in the adjacent seminar room, in every shared conversation, in every friendly smile. 

Our supportive community, we say, is here.

‘Hecho a Mano Review: The Traditions of Splits and Bounds - Amelia Chukhnova

At least two of the artworks were already fragmented and tucked into standard boxes for moving on to the next show by the time I entered the exhibition on the pre-closing day. The technician and his systematic work took up one (of the two) rooms and, by doing so, turned Hecho a Mano [translation: ‘handmade’] into a meta-commentary of its own kind.

Taking place from the 22nd of February to the 22nd of March 2024, Hecho a Mano at Cecilia Brunson Projects showcased eight modern and contemporary Latin American artists working across multiple media. It aimed to diversify and de-colonise mainstream narratives about textile art - those of misplaced fascination with the ‘craft’ and ‘pre-Colombian’, primitive references. The gallery, overall, advocates for the idea of a more sustainable and reciprocal link between Latin American and European art, while also championing the independence and self-sufficiency of the former for its own local context.

First of all, the exhibition presented some curious splits of space and gravity. Within the physical gallery plane, artworks were separated from the plain white walls by the necessarily wooden frames: their colourful noise and delicate materiality stood out starkly, almost alive. Johanna Unzueta’s work, Pipe (2010) connected two walls and the floor in a single mass of hand-stitched indigo felt, turning itself into a haptic locus of the room. Seeming both fragile and unapproachable through its looming materiality, it, like a spider’s web, nevertheless drew one in and contorted the physical space.
 

two white walls with five frames on the left, a blue cross bar in the middle and another framed piece on the right

Image: Installation view, Hecho a Mano, Cecilia Brunson Projects, 2024. Photography by Lucy Dawkins.

Yet the visual focus of the exhibition resided in the Contradanza (2024), a piece by Fátima Rodrigo (b. 1987 in Peru). Here, the spatial inconsistency manifested itself in a juxtaposition of statics and dynamics within the artwork - such was the case with another few of the artworks, too. Contradanza - a reference to a Latin American dance designed to mock the conquistador’s courtly dances - split its quilted fabric in numerous ways: with colours, squared stitching, and metallic threads. Together they created a sense of constant movement - but also a confusion about where or in which direction the movement was unfolding. Nocturnal ouroboros snakes, ruby-eyed panthers, golden stars and silver suns - all blended together with emerald stitched sea-weed and appliqué flies. ‘Contradanza’ in itself evoked a transfer and a give-and-take between the local landscape/culture and the ‘foreign’: the processes of appropriation and re-appropriation materialised in spatial contexts here. Same as other artworks with geometric patterns and weaving in the exhibition, Contradanza strove to extend beyond its surface - so that space immediately outside of the artwork felt charged and further on - curiously lacking (what an absence to behold!).

 

white walls with a blue and brown quilted artwork on the right and a small green and black image on the left

Image: Installation view, Hecho a Mano [Untitled (Acervo 8, Concreto) & Contradanza], Cecilia Brunson Projects, 2024. Photography by Lucy Dawkins.

Another central theme of the exhibition was the non-linear relationship between tradition and contemporary practice. About seventy years (1953 to 2024) of manifold Latin American practices were hanging side by side, directed at the viewer as much as at each other. The exact relationship outside of the geographical context between them, therefore, seemed unclear. As a result, Hecho a Mano presented an overabundance of themes ranging from commentaries on mass production and industrial labour to queer and cultural discrimination critiques to explorations of intimacy and the mystic. It managed to simultaneously promote the inclusion of female artists such as Judith Lauand into the narrative of Brazilian modernity while also celebrating Feliciano Centurión (a male artist) taking on the female tradition. One might have asked - how should be appropriation defined? And above that, how to keep practical integrity in the reflections on all the nuances and implications of appropriation? Hecho a Mano suggested the question, yet leaped over two middle steps and rather broadened the direction of the final point. In short, for a space so compact and dense, such a titanic overall theme took away from a coherent narrative (even if the said narrative was an attempt to diversify the narratives). By extension, it under-developed the multiple narrower themes its artworks brought up and therefore left artworks disjointed and ideas free-floating, somehow ineffectively.

 

two small framed prints, a pair of red hands on a stand and a larger brown woven print on the right

Image: Installation view, Hecho a Mano, Cecilia Brunson Projects, 2024. Photography by Lucy Dawkins.

On a more reflexive note, still, Hecho a Mano has surely allowed the artworks to have a conversation of their own. Detailed, delicate, and unique in their crafted individuality, multiple in their media and execution, not at all matching in their sizes and techniques, these artworks have retained their independent voices. Here, the relations between the artworks have produced a multiplicity of questions, answers, and perspectives both contextual and novel. Such were, for example, inter-medial encounters between Lucia Pizzani’s Cascaras Lava #3 (2015) - a print of a figure wrapped in geometric stitched fabric -, Claudia Alarcón’s naturally dyed weaving The Day’s Work (2023), and video performance of manual de-colouring of dyes in the rapid by Sandra Monterroso (2016). Those were, too, the almost aerial yet horizontally laid out patterns on Eduardo Terrazas’ Tabias 2.61 (2015) alongside (or rather complexly far away from) the vertically-aspiring yet fluid direction of Alarcón & Silät’s Journey in the Sky and Moon (2022). Within the space of the exhibition, thus, it was the unique relationship between artworks that contributed to the idea of tradition and contemporaneity as an equal exchange. Hecho a Mano revealed the diverse shifts in textile practices - those going back and forth, to the East and to the West, between one and many - and therefore asserted their agency. More precisely, the artworks have generated their own contextual agency - artworks, idiosyncratic and self-sufficient in their (empowering) dialogue.

Now, those various divisions and continuities that Hecho a Mano has outlined are crucial for understanding the precarious lines between exchange and appropriation. Namely, it is recognition and combination of the origin and temporal evolution of an object (artwork) that foster more of a sustainable cultural exchange. Further, details and differences preserved in the sheer materiality of textiles entangle them with their occupied space, too - changing the category of context, exceeding the ‘retrievable’, abstracted value of the artwork itself. Hecho a Mano argues, thus, for diversity and inclusion, for a break with automatic generalisations and cultural hierarchies - for an open, nuanced, attentive engagement.

In-between the Memories and Frozen Landscapes of the Gulag Camps - Amelia Chukhnova

‘The larch is a very serious tree. It is the tree of knowledge of good and evil - no, it wasn’t the apple tree, nor the birch! - the larch was the tree standing in the Garden of Eden before the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise.

The larch is the tree of Kolyma, the tree of the concentration camps.’

                                                                                                                                                                     V. Shalamov, The Resurrection of the Larch

It is mainly in the setting within and right outside of Sevvostlag - a ‘North-Eastern’ forced labour camp in Kolyma region in Russia’s Far North - that Varlaam Shalamov wrote his memories of camp life (of camp lives, of camp deaths). Spread over the whole of the Soviet Union for more than thirty years, governed separately from the 1930 to the 1960, labour camps have in total contained approximately 18-20 million people. Such a vast number of internees was ensured by mass political repressions: anyone, be it a high-ranking party official, a CER construction returnee, a university professor, an already arrested citizen’s spouse, or an indigenous farmer, could fall victim to the infamous, broadly formulated Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code, that of conducting counter-revolutionary activity.

The camps were designed for crude labour exploitation, fuelling ambitious projects of the new Soviet state and its government. Such was, for example, the Trans-Polar railway of around 1320 km from Salekhard to Igarka - abandoned half-way through for being poorly planned and not exactly needed, its rails still float over Siberian swamps, sink deeper with the melting snow, pass by thousands of its forced builders’ graves. The type of labour, though, varied significantly - from building railways to sewing clothes, digging canals between seas, mining coal and gold. By themselves unrealistic productivity expectations were perpetuated by severe malnutrition and weak legal and humanitarian frameworks. Simultaneously, any expression of such toil would be censored: in the eyes of the official state magazines (e.g. USSR in Construction), detainees were classified as the ‘enemies of the people’ and thus had a road of ‘reforging’ ahead of them. Thus, the reality of forced labour in its raw, cruel form, was glossed over for the ‘free’ citizens en masse - and the art of the gulags would either serve as the concealer or remained concealed. Landscape, therefore, in its human-like expressivity could serve as a record - a physical way of conveying an otherwise censorable experience of the labour camps.

Naturally, in such restricted conditions, art was produced on its own distinct terms, for the nature dictated the culture. The landscape and its local peculiarities crept into the sheer materials available for the production of art, into the multiple landscape-sensitive theatre set designs (mostly for the governors’ purposes), into the visuality of casual drawings. On the contrary, the state sought to ‘tame’ the land, to bring it again into the reign of the human culture. Both internees and the land were seen by the government as projects, as something to be ‘reforged’, as Aglaya Glebova argues. Such treatment by an external (overbearing) force speaks now to a parallel, thus, between the surrounding land and the detained people: a parallel in which human is put into the context of the natural, the eternal. The landscapes where camps stood provide a material, visible space for memory - for human memory was denied and silenced in the post-GULAG decades. 

There is a term, famous in Russian language-centred literary studies - ‘psychological parallelism’ (психологический параллелизм) - which suggests a transfer of human emotions onto the nature, an affinity between the two. Such reflexivity is evident in a1940 watercolour-gouache painting Golgotha by Viktor Sigismundovich Toot, a Hungarian-Soviet painter imprisoned in Kargopollag in the 1938-1946 [Figure 1]. It depicts a brownish snow-covered field with a leaden cloud looming in the upper-right corner; a sight both regular and ambiguous in its nature. Toot’s Golgotha visualises what is, officially, invisible - the human vulnerability and suffering, both physical and mental. Here an expanse of nature and skies accountable only to themselves are free and unbound - yet overwhelmed by the unsettling, almost physical weight of the half-visible cloud. It translates through the uncertain direction of the cloud’s movement - is it past or will it soon be future? What exactly does it behold? The fearsome nights of the waiting for the doomed names of the soon-to-be-executed passed as a red thread through the labour camp experience, and Toot was not an exception, writes Valentina Tikhanova, the editor of the only existing catalogue of the Gulag art. Golgotha testifies to the mental torment that an unpredictable, unstoppable threat of death imposed on the internees.
 

snowy bare trees against a murky sky

Figure 1. Golgotha, Viktor Sigismundovich Toot, 1940. From International Memorial Society catalog Art and Life in the Gulag (Moscow, Izd-vo “Zven’ia,” 1998). Image courtesy of International Memorial Society, Moscow.

Further, in the camps, the weather itself was often a cause of frequent, violent suffering. The weather, as if a derivative of the land, puts the grass, the ‘lifeless air’ in Golgotha to the test, yet Toot reveals the former’s extraneousness and transience. The field is stable, solid, it was - and will remain - earth; the tormenting clouds and the snow, however pertinent and cyclical, are merely layered over. The vastness of the landscape, not exhaustible by a frame, mediates the immediacy of the human context, and changes the category of time. In Kolyma, Shalamov writes, it was the freezing cold that killed the internees, yet, too, the millennia-old nature that preserved the memory about ‘the millions of corpses’. Similarly, in The Gulag Archipelago, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn begins with a story of ancient tritons conserved by the ice in the permafrost - he compares the tritons to the forced labourers’ stories; thus, history continues and takes shape through the land. The earth preserves the human - a dichotomy of imminent mortal threat and eternal memory: ‘For you are dust, and to dust you shall return’.
 

bare trees in the snow

Figure 2. Chelyabinsk. Golden Mountain Mines, Tomasz Kizny, 2009. Picture taken from the GULAG History Museum, Moscow.

To this day, GULAG camps retain gaps in their visual history; gaps that often cannot be filled. Activists search for mass graves and abandoned barracks, for mere rotting decks as remnants of past lives spent behind the concentration steel. Post-GULAG photography, too, cannot avoid those gaps - and thus shows, at last, the freezing absence of life, an absence powerful in its statement of non-presence. That is the case with, for example, Tomasz Kizny’s Chelyabinsk. Golden Mountain Mines photograph of 2009, which presents a location of a mass grave of the executed people, thrown into the old golden mines [Figure 2]. It shows neither the transformed land nor the human remains; but the air, the forest themselves are ripe and dense with the untold stories. This photograph, thus, merges the past with the current memory of it - metaphorically suggests death to not be the final point, reverse-pointing to the idea of life, continuing.

Nature, share the mementos of the camps, perseveres, resurrected and untamed as it is - withstanding the snow again and again and again.

Bibliography:

Profile: Hermione Killian-Dawson 

a close up image of a young woman with long wavy blonde hair, wearing a black long sleeved top with white buttons

I am a second year History of Art BA student, with a subsidiary in archaeology. I am Head of Student Engagement for Art for Young Futures, a charity project in collaboration with UCL’s Art Society, that aims to raise money for children’s charities through an art auction later this summer. While I have lived in the UK for many years, my childhood was spent in the United States where I was exposed to a wide variety of art and architecture from a young age. 
 

My current academic interests are focussed within medieval Europe, including religious architecture and manuscript illuminations. I am curious about perceptions of the past, particularly related to contemporary political, social and economic considerations and beliefs, and am interested in how art functions within these spheres. My particular passion for architecture originated in many visits to English country houses with my family, notably Wentworth Woodhouse, Blenheim Palace and Osborne House. Acutely aware of their history of wealth and privilege, I was subsequently inspired me to look more broadly into different artistic communities, such as the Gutai Art Association, who operated in 20th century Japan. My work as an EDI journalist largely aims to champion underrepresented voices in the art world. I wish to explore these artists’ work through different mediums, including photography and film, to diversify the scope of this position and communicate information in a more accessible manner.  

Sediment embodied: Maren Hassinger’s steel River - Hermione Killian-Dawson

Maren Hassinger (b.1947), an African-American artist who grew up in Los Angeles, offers the viewer an open-ended interpretation of River (fig. 1), a mixed media instillation that pools out across the gallery floor in a careful imitation of a river’s natural progress. A possible interpretation of this work can be found in the sculpture’s form, which suggests an implicit presence of sediment, a complex organic process that becomes a fluid metaphor to interrogates humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The work also invites the viewer to consider our complex layered histories through its dynamic ephemerality, deliberating how this may be seen as a memorial to the atrocities experienced by enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage. 

River currently resides in the Studio Museum in Harlem, where it oozes out in a tumble of bright steel and coarse rope onto the floor. The serpentine, languid curves of the tightly woven rope and steel compress the piece as it lies unmoving, shaped into the natural form of a river. The bright, interrogatory spotlights in the gallery bounce off the dull metallic rings of steel in alternating sections of dark and light, creating soft shadows that are enhanced by the natural fibres woven within the chains as they absorb the remaining light. Conceptual sediment lives throughout the sculptural form, existing in the tightly coiled and tidily placed piles of rope at either end while also being pushed along the length of interwoven rope and steel through the viewer’s continuous movement and perusal around the piece. Caught within these neat coils are escaped fibres as the rope frays and breaks apart at points. A river is uncontrollable and powerful – like the rope, it will not be subject to the whims of human design. The heavy chains weigh down the piece in an evocative manner, like stubborn mud being pushed downstream. For Hassinger, it is important that her works “offer an experience to look and to see, to contemplate”; for this reason, circumambulation of the sculpture is encouraged. 
 

chains on the floor of an art exhibition

Image: Maren Hassinger, ‘River’, 1972/2011, Mixed-media installation with steel chains and rope, 7 × 89 × 358 in., The Studio Museum in Harlem
 

River offers a continuous interrogation of the relationship that we have with the natural world. LeRonn Brooks, an academic and curator at the Getty Research Institute, describes how Hassinger “performs in an awareness of the bonds between nature and culture”. The artist was a keen dancer prior to her university studies and this love of movement carries through in her work, particularly in her metal sculptures where she bends, weaves, frays and welds the materials to create a structure that resembles the natural world. Her minimalist approach is pertinent to the intangibility of rivers for if you stand in one spot, you never see the same body of water as the liquid is continually replaced through the act of flowing. While Hassinger’s sculpture does not flow in the traditional sense, the work still gives an impression of movement through its gentle curvature and interwoven materials. The work is continually renewed through each viewer that reflects on the piece. 

“The black body is acted on, cut down, too often, too easily erased”. LeRonn Brook’s words should ring in the ears of the spectator as they view River. Hassinger did not identify as an activist artist, nor did she overtly refer to her race or identity in her works, preferring for the viewer to form their own thoughts. Maureen Megerian, when writing for the Women’s Art Journal, described Hassinger’s works as “both understated and powerfully suggestive”. The Studio Museum in Harlem, where the work is displayed, describes the instillation as evocative of the historical terror and exploitation of the Middle Passage through its use of chains and rope; the symbolic river could also be suggestive of the long, muddy rivers and estuaries where the voyages, carrying enslaved Africans and trading goods, started. This work, therefore, may be seen as a memorial to the horrific brutality of those expeditions, and the blood of slaves that much of America’s wealth was built upon. Inevitably, the steel chains will rust and the rope will decay, although its memory may still linger, like the memory of our complex, layered, colonial past. Thus, the metaphor of the instillation: a river carves its identity into the landscape in which it flows, its sediment leaving behind tracks that will linger in the river’s path long after the water dries up or changes course. Hassinger’s sculpture may show how the repercussions of the slave trade rippled like shockwaves into the future, tracking its sediment forwards as the burden which today’s generation hold. Thus the progress of River is not only evocative of water flowing downstream, but also perhaps of time passing, with generational memory passed downstream, in regard to the metaphorical sediment. 

The idea of embodied sediment in the sculpture is a product of the artificial relationship created between Hassinger’s manmade sculptural form and the natural world it imitates. This sediment is conceptualised in the liminal space between illusion and reality where Hassinger’s sculptural river is contrasted with the watery depths of a natural river. Her sediment is metaphorical; it is not the thick, gritty mud that a river displaces but a viewer’s circumambulation of the sculpture, where one is encouraged to think externally of the sculpture and gallery space and let their thoughts flow like sediment down a river, their eyes following the weighty chains and thick rolls of rope twisting around the meandering structure. Hassinger’s materials ground this theoretical concept. Her early pieces are primarily concerned with nature, particularly when she was at UCLA where her studies in fibre formed the foundation of her later works and also where she started incorporating steel wire into her projects. River represents this early voyage into exploring new materials as it is a combination of Hassinger’s early graduate studies in fibre and the later steel which came to define her style. 

The dichotomy between the natural form of River and its manufactured materials reflects the tension between human activity and our environment. The representative use of rope and chains to create River as a reference to the transatlantic slave trade creates traction between past and future. The futility of our production is finalised in River’s snake-like course that finishes with a pool of rope. The metaphorical sediment: Hassinger’s reminder that nature will always prevail over the cruelty of humankind. Thus, Maren Hassinger’s River shows how our preconceived notions of the natural world can act as a metaphorical tool within artwork. In this piece, the idea of a river’s sediment becomes conceptual as the viewer is invited to embody this natural process. 

Bibliography 

  • Brooks, LeRonn P., “NATURE’S A GOOD PLACE TO BEGIN A STORY ABOUT MAREN HASSINGER”, Callaloo 39, no. 1 (2016), 76–79
  • “Maren Hassinger, River, 1972/2011”, Studio Museum in Harlem, Accessed January 22nd 2024
  • Megerian, Maureen, “Entwined with Nature: The Sculpture of Maren Hassinger”, Woman’s art journal 17, no. 2 (1996), 21–25
  • O’Grady, Lorraine, Interview of Maren Hassinger by Lorraine O’Grady, New York, NY: Hatch Billops Collection, 1993
  • Stanger, Arabella, “Bodily Wreckage, Economic Salvage and the Middle Passage”, Performance research 24, no. 5 (2019), 11-20
  • Tani, Ellen, “Hassinger, Maren”, In Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, 2022, 1-6

Threads of Thought: An Interview with Philomena Epps - Hermione Killian-Dawson

I interviewed Philomena Epps, a current PhD student in our department, to discuss her research and personal journey going into academia. 

I would like to start by asking about your personal journey into doing a PhD and could you offer any guidance to those of us who may be considering this path? 

I did my undergraduate degree at Sussex University in English Literature and graduated from my BA in 2012. Then I took a year out where I did an internship at White Cube and one at the Barbican, when I decided that I wanted to do an MA. I undertook the History of Art MA at the Courtauld and finished in 2014. After my MA, I worked for Third Text journal, then initiated an independent career as a writer and editor. In 2020, I began considering applying for the PhD. Some advice I would give is that it is so important to find the right supervisor. The application process can be quite mystifying because not only are you applying to the university, you are also applying for the funding which is awarded by a separate body, and can be very competitive. You have to really think about what the academic structure can offer your research that you can’t do somewhere else. 

Your PhD largely focuses on the work of three female artists: Rose English, Alina Szapocznikow and Hannah Wilke. Let’s start with how you narrowed it down to these three women and what in particular fascinates you about their work? 

I narrowed it down to Szapocznikow and Wilke and that was my main research proposal. For me, there was a kind of commonality in their use of sculpture, their collapsing of the corporal, and the way they were using the body that was embedded in their material explorations. Very soon after I started the PhD, I realised it’s quite complex to just do a PhD project on two artists because you have this thorny issue with comparison and they become at odds with each other. So, I added Rose English to the project. I was aware of her practice and adding this third artist allowed me to examine the relationship between fetishism and sexual difference in a broader, more productive way. My project extensively engages with performance and sculpture, and the slippages between the two. There are various touchstones. I have my main characters and a subsidiary cast of other artists, such as Sarah Lucas, Helen Chadwick, and Linder, that I use in generative ways, contextualising them as part of a broader intergenerational lineage. You can create quite an interesting dynamic and interactions. 

You mentioned the body earlier. Considering the female body in the 20th century, how is this concept helpful in your research? 

The female body in performance art is a vast and varied topic. Sometimes the work can seem slightly dated or this idea of the ‘nude female artist’ that has been closely associated with 1970s feminist practice. I’m interested in moving beyond some of the more essentialist ideas around the body and how that subscribes to certain forms of identity or gender. I’m thinking about the body as material and the body as a vehicle for something, as opposed to representative of. Lots of the artists that I’m working on use humour, mimicry, the carnivalesque; there’s a kind of playfulness. There is a sort of send-up of this idea of the masculine reading of what the feminine body means or what it can represent. 

A group of young women dancing outdoors

Image: Quadrille, 1975 performance at Southampton Horse Show - Rose English
 

This idea of the perversity of the body that you allude to links to the psychological aspect that your research looks at, particularly with Freud.

Absolutely. The construction of the fetish in Freud is essentially a denigration of the female body at its core. And I wonder what it means to work with this as a strategy, as a feminist artist? Not all these artists identified as feminist. I’m working with Freud and against Freud constantly, which is an interesting position. 

You have a long history of writing, being a founding editor of independent publication Orlando as well as having art criticism published in numerous academic journals including Artforum, ArtReview and Frieze, to name a few. More recently, you have an article coming out about Rose English in Object, our department’s postgraduate research journal. Using this article as a starting point, how do you consider your writing to have directed your relationship with art?

I see my relationship with writing and art as being in tandem, one informs the other. With Object, the articles are formed by the upgrade papers that we submit [as part of the PhD]. It was quite useful working on all those things at the same time because I was really having to think about my ideas for English. It’s also really good to publish something like that because there’s not a lot of scholarship on English, which is another reason I was interested in her work. I think doing a BA, an MA and enjoying writing, led me to carve out a writing career. But there’s always adjustments, a different tone. There are certain magazines that really like an academic tone, certain ones that are more informal. You’re always having to modify. I started Orlando after the MA. Everyone was making magazines at the time, around 2015-2016. I did an issue a year and I ran a series of events that fundraised for the magazine. I would email people and ask if they’d like to write about ‘this’ and I was so surprised that people were so generous. Artists would write about their work or interviews, and it was very experimental. 

Just one final question: Now that exam season is over for most of us and we hopefully have a bit more free time in the summer, would you recommend any exhibitions? 

I would say the Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind exhibition is really good, which also feels appropriate as we’ve been talking about performance and the multidiscipline. I knew a lot of her early work, but I’d never seen it and it was great to see, for example, Cut Piece. In terms of gallery shows, I’m also hoping to check out a few exhibitions in central London in July, including Kiki Kogelnik: The Dance at Pace Gallery and Lynda Benglis: Knots and Videotapes at Thomas Dane. 

Exhibition Review: ‘Tropical Modernism - Architecture and Independence’ - Hermione Killian-Dawson

Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence at the Victoria & Albert Museum offers a refreshing perspective on the impact of colonial architectural styles, exploring how Modernism was developed into a style that was subsequently reclaimed by former colonised countries such as India and Nigeria in the 20th century. The exhibition consisted of four spaces, starting with the first seeds of colonial powers planting Modernist projects in their colonies and ending with a documentary projected in the final room, exploring the themes of the space and the impact that Tropical Modernism left on these newly independent countries several decades later. 

The space was bright and clearly organised with a range of media, including photography, sculpture, architectural models and plans, video footage and sound. The effect was an immersive exploration of this brief period in architectural history, with images accompanied by large text on the wall that explained significant political movements and figures. Although the exhibition was not highly politicised itself, it offered a much-needed insight into a fraught period in history and highlighted the far-reaching nature and deep-seated impacted that colonialism has to this day on populations. The final note that the exhibition ended on was a musing about the future, considering how we could learn from the principles of Tropical Modernism to re-evaluate our approach to building in the current climate crisis. This exhibition is open until the 22nd September 2024.

 

Watch Exhibition Review: Tropical Modernism – Architecture and Independence on YouTube.
 

Profile: Charlotte Borthwick

An instax of a young woman in a cream jumper taking a selfie on a red phone

My name is Charlotte and I will be approaching my final year of my BA in History of Art this Autumn (2024). I have lived in England my whole life, situated just outside of London in Berkshire. I was first introduced to Art through my Nana who was and still is a brilliant artist herself. Inspiring my creativity, I studied art throughout school, attaining an Art scholarship going into my secondary school. It was my parents, however, that really broadened my artistic understandings, bringing me into the world of art history. Taking me to museums all around the world, I was able to gain insight into art that went beyond my initial, Eurocentric knowledge of art. 

I am delighted to be a student journalist for the department’s EDI journal. I have always loved writing as a medium to express my thoughts and opinions. Through my studies at UCL, I have cultivated a passion for a more methodological study of art history. I believe the UCL history of art course is really like no other. Rather than focusing teaching on specific periods of art or individual artists, UCL has curated a syllabus that centres around developing our minds, pushing us beyond visual analysis, taking us through the challenging process of truly unpacking genres of art. Throughout my second year, I really feel as if my understanding of what the term ‘art history’ actually means has evolved greatly.  I look forward to applying this newfound understanding, focused on the theorising of art, to the EDI board journal, sharing my own personal relationship with the art world.
 

‘Art History is a Posh Girl Subject’ – Charlotte Borthwick

I believe there to be about 4 men currently in my History of Art BA degree. The rest, girls. Additionally, many History of Art A-Level classes are reported to be fairly female-heavy. Statistically, under 20 state schools are said to currently offer History of Art as an A-level, whereas over 100 private schools offer this same A-level. Despite being approximate numbers, they do support the conclusion that History of Art is a posh girl subject. 

Here is why I think this should be changed. 

History of Art is a niche subject, with a misconception that it limits one’s post-graduate opportunities. This perception, in my opinion, could not be further from the truth. When taking a summer course at The Courtauld University, a university solely offering History of Art, my lecturer said these words to me when explaining why I should pursue a degree in Art History: 

‘History of Art is everything everywhere, it is the spine of culture and the visual centre of our world History. How could this be useless?’   

Let’s break this down. ‘History of Art is everything, everywhere’. What does this mean? This can mean something different to everyone. To me, it translates to my everyday experience. I wake up in the morning, sunk into my memory foam mattress, held by my antique French framed bed, the style of such encompassing the romantic Rococo Boudoir, a type of room design that emerged during the 18th century. The boudoir became the epitome of the secluded room, associated with the female gender, conveying notions of delicacy, softness and roundness, with a hint of the mysterious. In other words, a part of art’s historical significance.

Wandering down the historical streets of London, past Notting Hills pastel-coloured terraces and twentieth-century Brutalist architecture, I make my way to the UCL campus. A thesis by Spencer Amy Louise, an architectural historian at UCL in 2021, writes on the visual history of this building. Tracing back to 1825, the buildings ‘first architectural expression was the neoclassical building constructed in 1827-9 by Willian Wilkins’. This astounding building was built by a group of radical thinkers, ‘set about to establish a secular, non-residential metropolitan university’. Creating an institution away from traditional, religious beliefs was a huge step in academic history and being a part of that shows how art/ architecture is intertwined with our educational history.

A portrait of a woman painting with two female students behind her

Image: ‘Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carraux de Rosemond (1765–1788)’ - Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1785)
 

Outside of the everyday, I also find my degree very applicable to culture and current affairs. At UCL, we are offered various methodology modules within our History of Art BA. These typically include teachings from notable thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft. Ideas we learn and use to apply to art can also, very easily, be applied to real-world problems and discussions. Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, changed how women were viewed and valued in academic discourse, a huge step for the feminist movement. In these modules, tutors help us to break down such texts and theories that accompany such radical movements. Understanding these is essential for us to carry on social growth, continuing the work of these profound thinkers. One could apply such thinking to areas in politics, or journalism, both extremely respectable careers, showing how transferrable a degree in Art History can really be.

When we look at traditional teachings in Art History, tutors teach us tools such as visual analysis, critical engagement, and academic writing - all valuable to our professional future. A student looking to enter a business-focused profession, such as logistics or consulting, would benefit hugely from these skills. Breaking down dense, complicated sources and documents, as well as writing up important proposals is necessary when understanding and translating difficult language and views presented - a skill practised and perfected within a History of Art degree. Visual analysis is also applicable to professions such as advertisement or event planning. Having an idea of how aesthetics, proportion and placement can influence how a viewer receives an image or exhibit is an excellent skill when creating content for companies wanting to widen their audience. Overall, we can see that each of these components can apply to a variety of different fields, not necessarily centred around traditional art, making it a valuable education to showcase when applying to post-grad jobs.  

I believe the push, and availability of History of Art to state school students is limited due to this conception that it’s not a worthwhile degree when aiming to make money and build a comfortable life post-grad. Underprivileged students are typically encouraged to choose subjects with higher-paid graduate routes such as business or law. However, this idea is not true. According to ‘WhatUni’, employability for a business degree after graduation is 80% with a base salary of around £24,000 per year. History of Art also has an 80% employability with a £20,000 start salary. This is only a £4000 difference, equating to £333.33 difference per month, not a lot …

So why do I think my degree is good to take? I believe I can use brilliant examples such as my academic writing, research and analysis abilities, my organisation and the value of visual analysis when tempting future employees. Yes, I may be heading towards more creative roles such as journalism or gallery curation, but I equally believe you could use such examples to secure management roles, advertisement and PR roles, alongside many others. 

I also think increasing the student diversity would benefit the course content and lecture engagement hugely. Human beings have such different views and perspectives, differentiating even more depending on background. Discussing subjects within greater contexts is a skill extremely applicable to real-world careers and situations. 

I believe History of Art is currently taken by mainly posh girls and middle to upper class, but I do not think the subject is a ‘posh girl subject’. I believe it has gained that reputation due to its inaccessibility amongst state schools and the perpetuated opinion that the arts are typically more feminine, meant for ‘the gays and the girls’. 

Review: ‘Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles and Art’ at the Barbican – Charlotte Borthwick

During May, I attended the up-and-coming exhibition at the Barbican, ‘Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles and Art’, on show from the 13th of February to the 26th of May 2024. I had heard many things about this exhibition from peers who had visited it, however, friends outside of History of Art primarily made such comments so they were limited to visual commentary based on colours and disbelief that an actual person could create such large works of art installations. Despite this, I felt the sheer popularity of the exhibit warranted a view from myself, a classically trained art historian (although I recognise I am a fairly junior art historian) to go and have a look as to how this exhibition has been curated, what was included, and what emotions and thoughts I felt it provoked for me. 

As I entered the open-plan space, I quickly noticed the sparseness of artworks on show. The industrial-like warehouse fitted in the Barbican for such exhibitions did not help. I immediately felt a sort of ‘unfinished’ look to the display (this however would be explained as we drifted through the different segments). Similar to the ‘Women in Revolt exhibition’ on show at the Tate Britain earlier this year (2024), large bodies of texts accompanied each piece, as if the notations were a part of the physical art on show. A trained eye does know however to often ignore these accompanying texts as it steers away from the visual analysis and experience of visiting a gallery. However, I found the texts to be overwhelming, with my eye drawn to them as opposed to solely the art. I noted in my initial thoughts that I felt these would have done better if made smaller rather than so large, almost surrounding the pieces. In my opinion, the scale made them seem slightly out of place and took up unnecessary space. 

However, with this being said, I do also believe that the space was utilised in other ways, this being that the curation meant we could view the works from multiple different areas and viewpoints, allowing for multiple perspectives and adding to their overall effect. There were two floors to the exhibit with an open banister giving you the freedom to look down (or up) on the pieces on the other level. Having this also meant getting a more rounded view of the sculptures, successfully showing them in their 3D form, and giving them the true exposure they deserved.

In concerns to my prior mentioning of ‘sparseness’, looking to being unfinished, as I wandered through the rest of the exhibition, I learnt that this was on ethical issues, with certain artists withdrawing their pieces from the exhibition. Noted where there appeared to be missing pieces was an explanation reading “an act of solidarity with Palestine”. Artists that pulled their work include Mouniraal Solh, Diedrick Brakens, Yto Barrada and Cian Dayrit alongside three other lenders. This was following an alleged censorship scandal. In February, the Barbican cancelled a lecture by Indian writer, Pankaj Mishra, after being made aware that his lecture would be addressing Israel’s war on Gaza. Since this event, there have been many discussions surrounding censorship and museums. Historically, museums have tended to remain politically neutral (as far as ‘neutral’ can be achieved). However, artist Barrada urged instead for these institutions to ‘hold space for free thinking and debate’. Interestingly, this occurred as the exhibit itself has the word ‘politics’ in its title. For me, the censorship the Barbican have indulged in is showing us that they will only display and hold areas for difficult conversations when it suits them and whose opinions they agree with, rather than being open to this idea of ‘total free speech’. 

Moving back to the curation, it is interesting to note the impact on simple aspects such as the colour of the walls, and the order of content exhibited in each separate room. I note in my initial thoughts the impact of the ‘dark blue walls exhibiting the rougher, more violent pieces’. Utilising the arts successfully in this way acts as a brilliant accessory. The dark walls are symbolic of the dark subjects explored, creating an ambience unescapable by the viewer, almost engulfing them in not only the art itself but also within the artist’s mind and the events that inspired the works. Like an accessory to an outfit, it is what pulls the whole ‘look’ together. 

Also important to note is the order in which the different themes are explored. Some rooms seemed to be paired one after the other as they both shared darkness and brutalism to their content, whilst others seemed to almost be mismatched, having a particularly heavy room followed by a much lighter, ‘happier’ room. This was odd to me as again there seemed to be no fluidity present. However, I can also acknowledge the curator’s attempt to break up subjects, possibly aiming to give the viewer a break from the emotional violence portrayed in many of the rooms. 

Overall, I thought the exhibition to be very hard-hitting and impactful, supported by my mother’s viewing who also agreed that “the exhibition was very thought-provoking and interesting”. However, as mentioned in the essay, I do have some reservations about the curation of the exhibition which did impact my overall experience. My mother, who for this conversation represents a member of the general public, explained that she thought “the art wasn’t something that I would normally gravitate to, but I was glad I attended”. I also agree that I was glad I attended, regardless of the artworks not being within my typical area of interest. However, it was not an exhibition I would run back to, and I would warn any other visitors of the heaviness displayed, leaving out my notes on curation which I would keep reserved for my fellow art historians visiting.

An interview with PhD student Cora Chalaby – Charlotte Borthwick

I chose to interview Cora due to her brilliance in teaching my methodology seminar during the second term. Cora’s unjudgmental yet challenging methods of teaching inspired me to get more involved in the History of Art department at UCL, pushing my thinking beyond the course, making her the perfect candidate to interview.

Cora’s academic background

If you have not had the pleasure of meeting Cora or learning about some of her work, let me provide a brief background on her experience while studying History of Art. 

Cora has a First Class BA in History of Art from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge and a Distinction in MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art.  In 2023, Cora participated in the Yale-UCL Collaborative Doctoral Exchange Programme and spent three months as a Visiting Scholar at Yale University. Notably, Cora assisted with research and public programmes for Dulwich Picture Gallery’s 2021-2022 exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty, an experience which she says was transformative to PhD and longer-term research interests in printmaking by women artists. Cora has won several prestigious scholarships including a UCL Graduate Research Scholarship, a Terra Foundation for American Art Research Travel Grant, and most recently a Getty Library Research Grant. These allowed her to spend extensive periods undertaking first-hand archival research and visual analysis in the United States. In our interview, Cora talked about how important archival research is to her work. Cora has also published articles including in the Journal of Contemporary Painting and forthcoming in the Archives of American Art Journal.
 
Cora’s research explores American abstract painting and printmaking by late modernist women artists, with a specific focus on the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Alma Thomas. She also expressed a deep love for the first-hand study of objects and archival research – she told me that throughout her PhD she has spent 24 weeks doing archival work! 

What is History of Art?

As I listened to Cora, I realised how much there is still left to learn and this is not something to fear but instead something to be excited about. Cora explained that there is a lot that goes into succeeding in the History of Art. We learn so many things beyond the degree brochure. What we choose to read and study outside of our essential readings and lectures is what will shape what this degree means to us. For example, Cora talked about being first introduced to the work of Helen Frankenthaler during a project with Kettle’s Yard Museum in her second year of University. This experience changed the course of Cora’s academic trajectory. Cora became fascinated by Frankenthaler’s work and more widely the women of abstract expressionism. Cora subsequently won a scholarship to undertake archival research on Frankenthaler and wrote her BA Dissertation on Frankenthaler. Frankenthaler’s work is now at the heart of Cora’s PhD, and Cora tells me she hopes to write a monograph on Frankenthaler following the completion of her PhD.  I realised we have the opportunity to work hard and grow not only as art historians and academics but also as professionals, learning skills that we can use to tackle the professional world when we arrive at its doorstep. 

a black and white image of a woman laughing

Why should you study History of Art and how can you use it after you graduate?

This is one for those unsure about taking a degree in History of Art, and who are confused as to what career can lead after undergrad. For me, I knew I wanted to study Art History. I knew I loved art, and I loved history, and that was pretty much it. But that is not to say I did not also feel the pressure from teachers and family members to take something more conservative and applicable to a specific career. It is known all too well that subjects like history of art get a bad rep around post-graduate employment rates. 

Here is a list of transferrable skills learnt in a History of art degree that both Cora and I believe to be useful in any professional field:
-    How to look and read a wide range of forms of visual information. 
-    How to develop an argument and write with specificity and rigour. 
-    The ability to move between thinking about the macro and micro – from the minutiae of the brushstroke to the macrocosm of society. 
-    Forming strategies for writing including the use of visual metaphors.  
-    How do you slow down and fully grasp concepts and given pieces of information? 

While Cora hopes to pursue a career in academia, she also explained that many of her friends had used the skills from their art history degree to pursue careers in a wide range of fields including law, the Civil Service, film production, advertising, journalism and consultancy. 

Navigating your degree

For those who either have decided on taking this degree or are in the middle of completing it, I gained some keywords of advice as to how one may navigate this challenging subject. First and foremost, Cora explained that the key to getting to know your degree and the content you will begin to cover is learning through time spent looking. Spend time in art galleries, discovering new artists, and new mediums, however, you must ‘not read the wall description by the side of a piece of artwork, it will not help you!’ With that said, follow what you find interesting, not what you think you should find interesting; you will only get so far if you force yourself into a genre you don’t truly love and are passionate about. Cora tells me that her work is motivated by the question, ‘what do I find interesting and more importantly why?’  Read outside of your syllabus and read critically, find joy in grappling with difficult concepts and read the art historians whose writing you admire as a way of learning. 

When it comes to essay writing, break things down into manageable chunks. Be realistic, aim to write 500 words a day, and remember, the first draft is not the final. Set aside time to review and edit as much as you can. A good piece of advice Cora sticks to is that writing is thinking and editing is writing.

I am truly grateful to have been able to talk to such an interesting art historian. Cora’s insight was not only helpful, but it has inspired me to keep pushing and exploring the art world to find what I truly love. Whether you are a budding art historian, a tentative student unsure what to study, or simply an interested reader, I hope this article has helped you in one way or another to understand the real beauty behind this subject and has inspired you to get more involved in the medium we call art.