RENÉE MUSSAI ON AUTOGRAPH ABP // CURATING IN AND OUT OF THE ARCHIVE

IN ‘CHRONOPOLITICS’, A THEMATIC SEMINAR FOR THE MASTER OF FINE ART BY NANA ADUSEI-POKU

Time: Wednesday March 26, 11.00 – 13.00
Location: Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art, Karel Doormanhof 45, Rotterdam
Admission: free

Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Maternal Milk, c. 1986. Courtesy of Autograph ABP

Renée Mussai will present an illustrated lecture on Autograph ABP, introducing works from the archive, different curatorial contexts and associated exhibitions. Established in 1988 with the mission of advocating the inclusion of historically marginalized photographic practices, Autograph ABP is a London-based arts agency that works internationally in photography, cultural identity, race, representation and human rights. Photographs in the archive bridge continents from Africa to the United Kingdom and range in genre from critical fine art practice, social documentary to constructed high street studio and vernacular photography. A collection deeply rooted in the cultural politics of identity/identification and difference, Autograph ABP's living archive highlights a series of ‘missing chapters’ in dominant histories of photography.

Bio Profile
Renée Mussai is Curator and Head of Archive at Autograph ABP where she manages a diverse collection of photographs and global program of exhibition, publishing and research initiatives. Over the past ten years she has lectured and organized numerous exhibition projects internationally, including mostly recently, a solo retrospective of Rotimi Fani-Kayode at Iziko National Gallery of South Africa (2014), and co-curated – together with Mark Sealy MBE – When Harmony Went to Hell: Congo Dialogues, Alice Seeley Harries and Sammy Baloji. Between 2009-13, she was non-resident fellow and guest curator at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, USA. As an independent curator, she recently co-curated, with Ruti Talmor, the exhibition ‘Glyphs: Acts of Inscription’ at Pitzer Art Galleries in Claremont, California. Mussai is presently a PhD candidate in Art History at University College London (UCL).