{"id":61159,"date":"2019-11-07T16:16:55","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T21:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=61159"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:15:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:15:56","slug":"arts-role-in-changing-how-we-think-about-the-world","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/arts-role-in-changing-how-we-think-about-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Art\u2019s Role in Changing How We Think About the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Art\u2019s Role in Changing How We Think About the World\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

In Great Britain, it\u2019s personified by Nigel Farage. In France, Marine Le Pen. In Japan, Shinzo Abe. In Canada \u2014 briefly, before a federal electoral flameout in October \u2014 Maxime Bernier. And south of the border . . . well, who doesn\u2019t know about Donald Trump?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The populist nationalism these leaders embody is on the rise across the world, leaving many wondering how to tackle an ideology they believe poses a threat to liberal democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet for Carmen Robertson, the answer is simple: art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Carmen Robertson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn some ways it\u2019s the job of politicians, but artists do it better because they speak to us at a different level,\u201d says Robertson, Canada Research Chair in North American Indigenous Art and Material Culture<\/a> at Carleton University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking at their work and feeling something about it helps connect us in ways that the rhetoric of politicians can\u2019t because they\u2019re not really so concerned with us. Art is the best vehicle for that kind of healing conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robertson is among academics having discussions at the intersection of Indigeneity and the global during \u201cWorlding the Global: The Arts in the Age of Decolonization<\/a>,\u201d a three-day international conference from Nov. 8 to 10, 2019 co-organized by Carleton faculty members Birgit Hopfener, Carmen Robertson, Ruth Phillips and Ming Tiampo with graduate student collaborators Victoria Nolte, Emily Putnam and Eui-Jung McGillis.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Worlding the Idea of the Global<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The conference is a collaboration between Carleton University\u2019s Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis<\/a> and the Carleton University Art Gallery<\/a>, the Korean Cultural Centre<\/a>, the National Gallery of Canada<\/a>, SAW Gallery<\/a>, Galerie UQO<\/a>, and the University of Ottawa<\/a>. It brings together artists, curators and scholars from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe to provide multiple perspectives on the global.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is staged to coincide with \u00c0badakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel<\/a>, the National Gallery of Canada\u2019s exhibition of contemporary international Indigenous art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Birgit Hopfener<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis conference on the global takes as its starting point the perspectives that we have here Canada, situating our discussions at the intersection of global, diaspora (immigrant) and Indigenous discourses,” says Hopfener, associate professor of Art History<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to try and \u2018world\u2019 the idea of \u2018the global\u2019 \u2014 to think about this critically important concept from multiple perspectives at a time when it\u2019s only being understood as top-down, West-centric, neo-liberal, market-driven phenomenon,\u201d says Tiampo, Art History professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe consequences of this lack of perspective are dire, and have fuelled the rise of populist nationalism worldwide, which is why it\u2019s important to us to shift the public discourse, to push back against the voices that seek to blame the effects of neo-liberal capitalism, such as inequality and loss of jobs, on refugees and immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Ming Tiampo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The conference is the first official event organized by the Transnational and Transcultural Art and Culture Exchange (TrACE), an international network of six universities \u2014 Carleton University, Concordia University, Heidelberg University, University of Amsterdam, University of the Arts London and Vrije University \u2014 created in April 2018 during an inaugural meeting hosted by Carleton to study arts and culture from critical transnational and transcultural perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Enabling Student and Faculty Mobility and Research Collaborations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Four more conferences are planned for Amsterdam in 2020, London in 2021 and, jointly, Heidelberg and Berlin in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton, Concordia University, University of the Arts London and Heidelberg University will sign a memorandum of understanding formalizing the TrACE partnership to enable student and faculty mobility and research collaborations. The ceremony takes place at the Carleton University Art Gallery starting at 2 p.m. on Nov. 11. Vrije University and the University of Amsterdam will sign the memorandum at a later date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TrACE colleagues agreed about the network\u2019s raison d’\u00eatre when it was formed 18 months ago: use art to change the way people think and talk about globalism and, in the process, push back against the worldwide rise of populist nationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But can art actually change public perceptions of globalism? Victoria Nolte, an art historian and a PhD candidate in Cultural Mediations<\/a> at Carleton who is helping to organize the Ottawa conference, believes it can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArt opens new ways of understanding lived histories and cultural world views,\u201d she says. \u201cThe \u2018Worlding the Global\u2019 conference takes the view that art-making constitutes a form of world-making, which is crucial for perceiving \u2018the global\u2019 not simply as globalization or westernization, but as a process of living together, one that\u2019s mindful of the heterogeneity of the world and its entangled histories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nolte\u2019s academic assessment isn\u2019t average water cooler conversation, but Tiampo notes that each conference is designed not only for scholars but for museum professionals and the general public too. \u201cWe have museum partners at every conference and we work with them to translate the ideas being discussed into actual museum displays and a language of public engagement,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Robertson, that idea is key. \u201cI like that this isn\u2019t just for ivory tower scholars,\u201d she says. \u201cConnecting with the public through panels like the one I\u2019m on at the National Gallery on Saturday is really valuable. When there\u2019s space made for their questions, it becomes a larger conversation that gives everyone the opportunity to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Great Britain, it\u2019s personified by Nigel Farage. In France, Marine Le Pen. In Japan, Shinzo Abe. In Canada \u2014 briefly, before a federal electoral flameout in October \u2014 Maxime Bernier. And south of the border . . . well, who doesn\u2019t know about Donald Trump? The populist nationalism these leaders embody is on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":61169,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1920],"class_list":["post-61159","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/61159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/61159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97792,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/61159\/revisions\/97792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=61159"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=61159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}