Book Launch – Donald Rodney: Art, Race and the Body Politic by Richard Hylton

Please join Richard Hylton for a discussion and celebration to mark the launch of his book Donald Rodney: Art, Race and the Body Politic.

Donald Rodney (1961-1998) was one of the most gifted, perceptive, and innovative contemporary British artists of his time. A protagonist from the first generation of Black British-born art students in the early 1980s, Rodney and his peers brought a new dynamic to British art – a hitherto unseen interplay between aesthetics, politics, humour and Black consciousness. Donald Rodney: Art, Race and the Body Politic is the first book-length study of a protean practice which spanned the early 1980s to the late 1990s and included a prodigious output of work across painting, photography, collage, assemblage, sculpture, installation, and new technologies.

• Introduction: Dr Ida Hadjivayanis, SOAS University of London.
• Chair: Dr Indie Choudhury-Courtauld Institute.
• Respondents: Professor Eddie Chambers, University of Texas at Austin and Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani, University of Edinburgh.

About Contributors

Eddie Chambers is holder of the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History at University of Texas at Austin. He is the editor of the recently published Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History.

Indie A. Choudhury is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, specializing in the art, sonic, and literary cultures of the Black Atlantic.

Dr. Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani is Lecturer in History of Art, Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in modern and contemporary art of the global diasporas, currently focussing on the postcolonial histories of African, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Black British art in Britain and beyond.

Dr Ida Hadjivayanis is Senior Lecturer in Swahili (Education) in the School Of Languages, Cultures And Linguistics, SOAS, University of London.

Dr Richard Hylton has since 2021 been Lecturer in Contemporary Art at SOAS, University of London.

Registration

This event is free and open to all, but registration is required. Please register via the link at the top of this page.

Image: Donald Rodney, Flame of the Soul (detail) mixed media, 1988. Courtesy of the Donald Rodney Estate.