Allan deSouza

  • Artist Allan deSouza works primarily in photography and multi-media, his practice seeks to develop a decolonial aesthetic, engaging with issues of migration, diaspora and relocation in his work. This decolonial aesthetic manifests in what he calls a restaging of “colonial-era material legacies through counter-strategies of humor, fabulation, and (mis)translation.” His 2010 DisCourses of Empire saw the artist stage a collection of family photographs on the gallery floor, only for visitors to trample and damage them. His 2014 Ark of Martyrs is a film presenting deSouza’s rewriting of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness, juxtaposing images and accounts of ‘civility’ from Conrad to the present day. In 2018 deSouza published a book entitled How Art Can Be Thought (Duke, 2018), examining art pedagogy, and proposing  decolonizing artistic, viewing, and pedagogical practices that can form new attachments within the contemporary world through an analysis of traditional categories for judgement.

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Allan deSouza

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Artist Allan deSouza works primarily in photography and multi-media, his practice seeks to develop a decolonial aesthetic, engaging with issues of migration, diaspora and relocation in his work. This decolonial aesthetic manifests in what he calls a restaging of “colonial-era material legacies through counter-strategies of humor, fabulation, and (mis)translation.” His 2010 DisCourses of Empire saw the artist stage a collection of family photographs on the gallery floor, only for visitors to trample and damage them. His 2014 Ark of Martyrs is a film presenting deSouza’s rewriting of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness, juxtaposing images and accounts of ‘civility’ from Conrad to the present day. In 2018 deSouza published a book entitled How Art Can Be Thought (Duke, 2018), examining art pedagogy, and proposing  decolonizing artistic, viewing, and pedagogical practices that can form new attachments within the contemporary world through an analysis of traditional categories for judgement.