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Susuana Amoah, recently appointed as the University’s Stuart Hall Fellow for 2022, will lead a panel exploring de-colonial approaches in the context of contemporary artistic practice. This event, Making Space: Decolonial Interventions in Contemporary Art, is taking place as part of the Sussex Festival of Ideas at the Brighton Festival.

Bringing together the University of Sussex in partnership with the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust and the Stuart Hall Foundation, the panel discussion will cover a broad span of work, from digital projects calling out racism in public art galleries to the limits and possibilities of socially engaged curating. Showcasing an important area of contemporary cultural practice, the event will examine how a critical and creative interrogation of the past and present might lead towards more equitable futures.

The Sussex Stuart Hall Fellowship is offered to scholars with particular consideration towards areas of interest to Stuart Hall, such as Postcolonial and Diasporic Modernities; Cultural Studies; Race, Ethnicity and Visual Cultures; Radical Thinking on the Left; marking and extending Stuart Hall’s legacy as a major intellectual of cultural studies.

Susuana Amoah is a Brighton-based cultural activist, artist-curator, and PhD researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research project explores decolonial approaches to curatorial practice in public contemporary art galleries. This study maps the influence of European modern art theories within the development of conventional contemporary curatorial practices and examines how these ideologies and practices work to reinforce coloniality and cultural hegemony. Susuana is passionate about socially-engaged art, fugitive feminism, decolonial praxis and exploring creative ways of highlighting narratives and social movements by marginalised groups.

Susuana Amoah said, ‘this panel will be an amazing opportunity to explore some of the imaginative de-colonial strategies used by artists, curators and activists in recent years to address cultural inequity in public art institutions.’

Professor Ben Burbridge, Artistic Director or the 2022 Festival of Ideas, said ‘this event involves three key partners in the cultural sector: the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust, The Stuart Hall Foundation, and Brighton Festival. It aims to build an event organised in collaboration with Brighton Museum as part the 2021 Festival of Ideas, focused on decolonial perspectives on museums and curricula, and to establish solid foundations for future work based on our shared interest in ant-racism and the decolonial. Susuana has convened an absolutely stellar panel. I am really looking forward to their conversation.’

Making Space: Decolonial Interventions in Contemporary Art takes place on Monday 16 May at 7 pm in The Music Room, Royal Pavilion, Brighton. Tickets are £12/£10. For booking and more information please visit the Brighton Festival website.

Other Festival of Ideas events are also taking place as part of Brighton Festival including the Social Strike Game, a screening of I Get Knocked Down; a punk version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol telling the untold story of Leeds-based anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba and featuring Sussex’s own Lucy Robinson; finally, Sussex staff and alumni will seek to define a possible ‘cultural recovery’ in a panel discussion highlighting the University of Sussex’s active role in the local cultural economy.

Find out more about all of these events on the Festival of Ideas website.

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