School of Art Faculty Member, Students Curate Program for Opening Week of Venice Biennale

Dr. Janine Sytsma, assistant professor of art history in the School of Art in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, recently curated "1922 Revisited: A Live Arts Program" during the opening week of the 61st Venice Biennale, one of the world's most prestigious art exhibitions.

School of Art graduate students Michelle Kamanga, Delaney Rumsey, Elise Boulanger and Bolu Ezra Ikuemonisan assisted Sytsma in executing the program, which was hosted by Third Space Art Foundation in collaboration with the African Art in Venice Forum and the European Cultural Centre. "1922 Revisited" drew attendees from around the world and brought together numerous artists from Nigeria, Italy, Ghana, the United States, Cameroon, France and Ethiopia. Among the artists included were Tsedaye Makonnen, Jermay Michael Gabriel, Zora Snake, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Victoria Udondian, Wilfried Nakeu and others. 

Through movement, music and video, artists revisited and reimagined the Biennale's 1922 exhibition of African sculpture, exploring themes of environmental sustainability, identity and tradition across Africa while restoring cultural context long absent from the works.

Recently featured in The New York Times, the program builds on Sytsma's scholarly research on contemporary art of Global Africa and the history of African participation in the Venice Biennale. Co-produced with Cynthia Post Hunt, curatorial producer and curator of performance and artists-in-residence at the Momentary in Bentonville, "1922 Revisited" featured processions, multidisciplinary performances and panel discussions.

Sytsma described the program's focus: "In 1922, the Venice Biennale displayed African sculptures while describing them in the derogatory, reductive language common to that era — acknowledging their merit on one hand while dismissing them on the other. '1922 Revisited' is intended as an invitation to reckon with that history and to engage alternative frameworks centering diverse African modes of knowing."

School of Art graduate students at the Biennale were also able to connect with an international network of curators, artists and arts organizers. For Kamanga, one of the organizing students from the School of Art, the timing was especially significant. She - alongside a couple of other attending students from the school - celebrated her graduation from the Master of Arts in art history program while abroad and was among those selected to participate in "Waves of Ash," a work by interdisciplinary artists and curators Tsedaye Makonnen and Jermay Michael Gabriel exploring migration, memory archives and the limits of Western epistemology.

"I appreciate Dr. Sytsma's encouragement and support in allowing me to be part of this project," Kamanga said. "This experience has allowed me to think about my participation as a global citizen, a student and an emerging art historian."

School of Art Director Rachel Debuque mentioned that the project exemplifies the school's commitment to providing opportunities for students to engage with the international art community while also championing faculty's projects. "Dr. Sytsma's work at the Venice Biennale reflects our faculty's dedication to scholarship, mentorship and global collaboration. This project is what arts access and research excellence look like in practice."

Sytsma is completing two manuscripts: The Decolonial Project: Contemporary Art at the Ife Art School and The Politics of (In)visibility: Africa at the Venice Biennale. Her writing has appeared in edited volumes, including African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility, edited by Moyo Okediji, and journals including African Arts; Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture; and TOJA: The OYASAF Journal of Art.

Her research has been supported by numerous fellowships, including a Venetian Research Program Fellowship from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, a CIC-Smithsonian Institution Fellowship at the National Museum of African Art and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. Sytsma holds a Master of Arts in art history from the University of Denver and a doctorate in art history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The program was hosted by Third Space Art Foundation of New York in collaboration with the African Art in Venice Forum and the European Cultural Centre. Institutional partners included The Africa Center in New York; the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, Nigeria; the Foundation for Contemporary Art in Accra, Ghana; and the art history program in the U of A School of Art.

For more information about the School of Art, visit the school's site, and to learn more about the performance art program, visit the 1922 Revisited page.