Beyond Theory: Mapping Feminist Practices in the Contemporary

This conference was held on 24th-25th March, 2023 and is now over. In case you couldn’t make it to the conference this year, here’s a chance to explore all ideas that were discussed. You can either read summaries of all panels and events held during the conference, documented by Rukmini Swaminathan, here. Alternatively you can view the video recordings of each panel via the Youtube playlist below.

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The Museum of Art & Photography invites you to its first annual conference in conjunction with the three-year-long, inaugural exhibition at MAP, VISIBLE/INVISIBLE: Representation of Women in Art through the MAP Collection.

The conference, Beyond Theory: Mapping Feminist Practices in the Contemporary, picks up on themes of the exhibition and expands upon them by moving back in time and simultaneously taking stock of how the sector is being shaped in the contemporary moment. We aim to bring forth, re-look and re-question, and thereby reorient existing frameworks that surround discourses on gender identities and gendered politics within creative practices. The aim is to also address the need to re-evaluate questions of power and how power operates within gendered relations especially for and within the broader cultural sector.

Drawing from the various thematic threads of the collection, the exhibition highlights questions and frameworks in order to broaden the arguments within feminist discourse. Showcasing almost a hundred and thirty artworks, the exhibition is divided into four sections, following the exhibition narratives: Goddess and Mortal, Sexuality and Desire, Power and Violence and Struggle and Resistance.

By expanding on the dialectics of the exhibition, the conference is centred on what constitutes feminist practice in the contemporary milieu. To do so, we zoom into the various modalities of what constitutes the word “practice” in today’s time. This includes artists’ practice, curating exhibitions as productions, writing as practice, archival and research-driven practices and practices of organising or coming together that foreground making and research.

The formats include panel discussions, artists’ presentations, and conversations, concluding with a performance. Please click here to view the full programme and list of speakers.

We hope that the conference becomes a space where prevalent ideas are challenged, new networks are formed and lastly, present the convening as a space to find common ground.