Textual Abstraction Within Transnational Modernism – Part One

Explore how artists experimented with script in North Africa, West Asia and South Asia in the wake of independence movements This symposium will bring together scholars and researchers to explore an artistic current that transformed Arabic (including Persian and Urdu) letters and script into abstract visual forms across North Africa, West Asia and South Asia in the wake of independence movements and the rise of avant-garde groups and schools. The discussions will take a comparative transnational approach to explore the ways in which artists engaged with the abstract and expressive possibilities of script either independently or through the formation of “schools” (Khartoum school, Casablanca Art School) and movements (Lettrism, Hurufiyya, Saqqakhana) at critical moments of transformation throughout the 20th century, particularly against the socio-political context of decolonization. This framework will open up questions around the development of transnational aesthetics of decolonization, as well as how these practices gesture at broader networks and spheres of affiliation, beyond national frameworks. Speakers: Professor Iftikhar Dadi (Associate Professor, Cornell University) Dr. Fereshteh Daftari (Independent Curator and Scholar) Organised by Professor Sussan Babaie (Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam, The Courtauld) and Nabila Abdel Nabi (Curator, International Art, Tate)