Recent calls to ‘decolonise’ university curricula, museums, and public spaces have inspired a reckoning with the complicity of art and art history in the practice and legacy of empire. Responding to these debates, this year the Aberystwyth Art History Research Seminar Series provides a forum for those working in and alongside art history to reflect upon ways in which we might transform and broaden our practices. Zehra’s talk, Heights & Hubris? will focus on mountain scenery in Indian and Welsh paintings, which are often identified with the search for the Sublime as well as the rise of nationalist sentiment. The paper will include a discussion of Abanindranath Tagore’s alpine paintings and touch on Welsh nationalism’s fascination with mountains (for instance, the craggy peaks of painter John Kyffin Williams).
Seminar Series: Aberystwyth Art History Research Seminar Series, Decolonial and Transnational Approaches to Art History & Visual Culture
