Art in the Time of Colony

Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll is Professor of Global Art at the University of Birmingham. An expert in contemporary art and colonialism, the history of museums and collecting, she wrote her M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. Her films and installations have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Extracity Antwerp, Savvy Contemporary Berlin,Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Marrakech Biennale. She has been the curator of various international exhibitions and has held British Academy, Sackler-Caird, and Humboldt Stiftung fellowships. She is an editor of the journal Third Text and of the edited volumes Botanical Drift and The Important of Being Anachronistic.www.kdja.org

• Contents: Introduction; Mimesis of tradition; The picture proclamation; The encyclopaedia Terra Cognita; Anachronistic mapping; Telling race in silhouette; Conclusions and other performances; Bibliography; Indexes.

'Art in the Time of Colony is an absorbing, experimental interrogation of colonial art and encounter in Australia. The book is notable on many grounds, not least for its fresh research on the intriguing mid-nineteenth century scientific traveller Blandowski, almost forgotten until very recently, but above all for its perspective on art history, from the vantage point of contemporary art. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll's voice is distinctive and compelling.' Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge, UK 'History would have it that there are people without history. Or as Hegel wrote, they were natural cultures that had to perish as soon as the spirit of the West approached. The spirit of Hegel is a temporal spectre for Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll in her Art in the Time of Colony, and its inevitable teleology is brought into question by what she leads us to see in Australia’s fragments of visual historical reckoning. Thus the artistic engagement in the nineteenth century between Australian inhabitants and European colonists is not just the subject of this original, passionate and beautifully written book, but it is the means of inquiry about the nature of time and perception and the arts of Australia today, reinserting a claim to history and aesthetics that is too often still denied to too many.’ Thomas B.F. Cummins, Harvard University, USA 'In this captivating book, historian, artist and curator Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll draws on contemporary Australian Aboriginal art to challenge historical blind spots and re-think stuffy conventions of art criticism. In exploring encounters between colonial visual cultures, her surprising, fresh and delightful juxtapositions bring new ideas and objects into view, and allow us to see familiar things anew. This book tackles the important task of reclaiming Aboriginal practice from anthropology for art and in doing so, challenges outmoded notions of colonialism, media, art, and even time.’ Jane Lydon, author of Eye Contact and The Flash of Recognition'In her stunning study, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll takes her readers beyond the armchair enchantments of conventional accounts of Indigenous art, dissolving boundaries among art history, anthropology, history of science and contemporary art. She shows that resistance to white norms can take many and subtle forms, both in the nineteenth century and in the present. Readers of this book will see how Indigenous cultural traditions - in this instance Australian, however artificial that concept may be - though mutable and adaptable, perdure and interact with settler values in unexpected ways. Carroll's distinctive art history thereby brings pasts to light - Aboriginal and white - that would otherwise have remained obscure.'Ivan Gaskell, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York, USA 'The fascinating premise behind Khadjia von Zinnenburg Carroll's Art in the Time of Colony is an examination of how contemporary art has been used to stand in for gaps in the historical record of Indigenous Australians'. Kelli Cole, University of Adelaide In: Artlink journal Indigenous Issue 'Art in the Time of Colonyis an experiment in writing history and generating new knowledge via the discipline of fine art practice, asking what happens if the relationship between art and history is reversed? Instead of history being written to understand art, art becomes the paradigm through which to navigate our understanding of history... One of the achievements of Art in the Time of Colony is its articulation and embodiment of art practice as generative of knowledge. The book is an instance of an artist writing about both art and history as art, reflecting cogently and intelligently on her own practice and that of others, as well contextualising this practice in wider historical narratives. In doing so, Art in the Time of Colony demonstrates that art can be understood as a knowledge-forming discipline.' Alana Jelinek, University of Cambridge; In: Journal of Museum Ethnography'This is a stunning and ambitious study of cross cultural encounters which reveals their nuanced and unexpected poetics and violence. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll's self proclaimed 'museum in a book' employs a creative and highly original way of thinking about the time of the colony through anachronism and how the arc of colonial time might be best thought of as being like the boomerang. Her stark juxtapositions and subtle weaving together of Aboriginal and colonial nineteenth-century art create emotive and acute alignments that are fascinating and timely. Rigorously researched, Art in the Time of the Colony is a seminal study that will change the way in which scholars approach visual culture and the postcolony. A tour de force.'Natasha Eaton, University College London, In: Art History: Journal of the Association of Art Historians