MOBILE SUBJECTS,
  CONTRAPUNTAL
MODERNISMS

Mobile Subjects: Contrapuntal Modernisms (1945-1989) investigates the circulation of artists from the decolonizing world through the colonial and artistic capitals of London and Paris. This tale of two cities considers how these capitals of decolonizing empires functioned as critical meeting places, anti-colonial hubs, and sites of exchange in the decades after World War II due to postwar mass migration.

It proposes a new analytical model that sees metropoles not as points of origin or as global training grounds, but as spaces of intersection and flow that allow us to understand the transnational condition of modern art. In 2017, the project received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, in 2018, a fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art in London (PMC), and in 2023, a SSHRC Insight Grant.

Among many presentations on the subject were the lectures Paris from the Outside In: Representation Under Siege at ici Berlin, Slade, London, Asia: Intersections of Decolonial Modernism at the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, and a co-publication of some of the project findings as Slade, London, Asia: Contrapuntal Histories between Imperialism and Decolonization, 1945-1965 (British Art Studies).