In this lecture, professor Azoulay addresses the impossibility of decolonising colonial museums, such as the Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa, without decolonising the world. Addressing how stolen art, regime of documents and contemporary refugeeism are historically connected, she provides a transnational perspective on decolonisation.

Following the lecture, the student platform wedecolonizevub will moderate a panel discussion with Dr. Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans (VUB) and a Q&A with the audience.

Program

19:00-20:00 - Lecture by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: Museums in Europe are not European - Unlearning Together at Their Thresholds

20:00-21:00 - Panel discussion and Q&A

Tickets and registration

Ticket prices for this event are available at three different levels: €12, €8 (suggested price), or €5. GET YOUR TICKET.
Free admission for Sint Lucas students and researchers, but registration is required. REGISTER HERE.

More information here.

Bio

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is an author, curator of anti-colonial archives, film essayist, and theorist of empires and its various technologies (from partition to photography). She is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. Her work focuses on unlearning imperial histories, engaging with archives to generate anti-colonial knowledge and generate potential histories.

Travelling sources

This evening is part of 'Traveling Sources' - a three-day art & reflection program on communities traveling imperial borders carrying endangered sources of storytelling. An established academic accompanies the audience in reconciling with the tales and voices of worlds silenced by imperial history. In the 2023 edition, we invite Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to guide us on an academic, cinematographic and narrative journey on stolen art exhibited in imperial museums. Azoulay invites us to reimagine how displaced communities fleeing into Europe are historically connected to the stolen objects exhibited in European colonial museums.

Curators: Hari Prasad Sacré, Arshia Ali Azmat & Hoda Siahtiri

• Hoda Siahtiri is an audio-visual and performance artist and researcher. Her artistic and educational background is in cinema and performing arts. She defines herself as a storyteller who narrates and mediates voices that have been silenced in the past. Siahtiri’s work centers around the feminine body, knowledge and ancestral heritage. She conducts a PhD-research on the singing tradition of Bakhtiari women in the west of Iran at Sint-Lucas Antwerp and University of Antwerp.

• Hari Prasad Sacré obtained a doctoral degree in educational sciences from Ghent University with his dissertation entitled Reading Illiteracy. His research discusses new forms of illiteracy arising in displaced communities travelling imperial borders. Overall, his academic and artistic work explores cultural translation as a pedagogical project for dialogue, solidarity and emancipation.

• Arshia Ali Azmat is a graphic designer, community organiser and researcher affiliated with VUB. Her artistic and graphic work focuses on linking personal and global histories through storytelling and archival explorations. She is also contributing to a research project on vacant spaces in the city and their transformation from temporary occupation sites to permanent social infrastructures. 

| production Kaaitheater  | co-production VUB Crosstalks & Cinema Palace | with the support of Sint-Lucas Antwerp, Constant