Dr. Emilia Yang: "Aesthetics of Resistance" at CAA
Stamps Assistant Professor Dr. Emilia Yang will participate in the panel “Aesthetics of Resistance: Artists Respond to Armed Conflict at Home,” presented by the International Committee as part of the College of Arts Association (CAA) 111th Annual Conference, February 15 – 18, 2023 in New York.
The panel, chaired by Dr. Anna Sigrídur Arnar (School of Art, Minnesota State University Moorhead) and Dr. Tenley Bick (Department of Art History, Florida State University) will highlight the work of Dr. Emilia Yang (Central America), along with the work of Ukranian artists Katya Grokhovsky, Slinko, and Dana Kavelina, and will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Carol Becker (dean, Columbia University School of the Arts). A recording will be available online on Friday, February 17, 2023 at 9:00 AM.
How does creative practice resist war and undermine its roots? What can we learn from an aesthetics of resistance? In recent years, exhibitions around the world have showcased artist responses to armed conflict in different geographical and historical contexts, including Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11 (London, 2017), Never Again. Art against War and Fascism (Warsaw, 2019), and Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars, 1991 – 2011 (New York, 2020), underscoring art’s distinctive political agency to address armed conflicts past and present. Drawing its title from Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar’s invocation of an “aesthetics of resistance,” in which art is an agent of political action, this panel invites artists to share practice-based responses and expressions of resistance to armed conflict at home, in which “home” is broadly defined to include place of origin as well as ancestral or adopted homeland.
Special attention is given to artists working in international contexts and territories in dispute; this includes non‑U.S.-American artists who are based in the U.S., artists of refugee status, as well as Indigenous artists and others whose homelands are occupied. The panel recognizes that resistance assumes many forms, including but not limited to public interventions, documentation, coalition-building, expressions of solidarity, and creative reassertions of agency under repressive regimes. Sponsored by CAA’s International Committee, this panel convenes in solidarity with those affected by the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, and armed conflict more broadly, by inviting artists to share how their work operates as a means of resistance, survival, and resilience.