Arti, antirazzismo e accademia: tra vecchie criticità e nuove riscritture, il caso di Research as Vocality a Napoli
Alessandra Ferlito
Abstract
From the perspective of artistic and curatorial practices in Italy, 2015 can be seen as a pivotal moment in the emergence of the “postcolonial” as a critical framework. Academic initiatives such as the conference Archives of the Future. The Postcolonial, Italy and the Time to Come (University of Padua), together with major cultural events such as the Venice Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor, contributed to bringing these debates to a wider public and encouraged artists and cultural institutions to engage with postcolonial questions. In the years that followed, this growing attention produced ambivalent and sometimes controversial outcomes. Although critical scholarship had already laid the groundwork for a radical interrogation of “white privilege” decades earlier (Chambers and Curti 1997), the postcolonial was frequently adopted as a thematic framework while only rarely embraced as an ethical orientation capable of reshaping curatorial and institutional practices (Cippitelli and Frangi 2021, 14). A survey of exhibitions produced since then confirms this tension, suggesting that the present moment is characterized by the coexistence of multiple and often contradictory forces, whose outcomes remain uncertain (Mbembe 2015). Against this backdrop, and at the intersection of academic and artistic research, some practices have approached the postcolonial as a process of dismantling Italian “whiteness,” foregrounding the importance of positionality.
This article, titled “Arts, anti-racism, and academia,” reflects on the interdisciplinary project Research as Vocality. Tracing the African Presence in Naples (2022–2025), which explored the potential of art as an anti-racist discourse and practice.
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postcolonial Italy, white privilege, arts-based research, anti-racist curating, positionality, reappropriation
Pages
35-48
DOI
10.25430/2531-4130/V18-004