Please Explain: Do Colonial Objects Still Hold Power

Program Moderator: Dr Mikala Tai Program
Speakers: Damian McDonald, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Professor Mary Roberts

4A’s series Please Explain invites presenters to rethink, recharge and reimagine contemporary issues through the arts and academia. In this edition of Please Explain, as part of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art exhibition Nusra Latif Qureshi: Strategies of Intent, speakers discuss the mobility of meaning and challenges presented by historical objects and imagery in a post-Orientalist world. Taking the work of artist Nusra Latif Qureshi and the text Networked Objects (2013) by Mary Roberts as a starting point, this discussion will ask whether Colonial objects still hold potency today in institutions and artistic practice; and investigate how artists and curators can work to challenge and engage with constructed histories of objects in shifting contexts.