Join curators Karen Milbourne and Carol Huh and artist Anawana Haloba in a discussion about “AfricAsian” intersections in three of Haloba’s recent projects. Melding visual art and material culture with poetry and sound, Haloba probes the fraught dynamics of colonialism, globalization, power, and resistance. As a 2013 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Haloba examined the role of women in African and Caribbean liberation movements. Her ongoing practice is invested in post-independence sociopolitical realities in their evolving complexity, including, notably, the role of China in the Zambian economy and nation building, which she explored in her 2016 installation A Dragon King in Sleepy Pride Rock. This program is offered as part of The Studio, the National Museum of Asian Art’s contemporary art virtual space.
Anawana Haloba (b. 1978, Livingstone, Zambia) lives and works in Oslo, Norway, and Livingstone, Zambia. She is a graduate of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is currently completing a PhD in artistic research at the University of Bergen in Norway. Haloba’s work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, the ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany, and biennials in Sharjah, Shanghai, and Venice, among many others.
Dr. Karen E. Milbourne has been a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art since May 2008 and has been a senior curator since October 2019. Currently, she is working on the exhibitions Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits (2021) and From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya with Ayana V. Jackson (2022). Dr. Milbourne received her PhD in art history from the University of Iowa and was previously associate curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Carol Huh is curator of contemporary art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Huh focuses on current artistic production related to Asia through exhibitions, acquisitions, and public programs.
Image courtesy of Anawana Haloba.
