CONCEPT:

The panel brings focus to three often separately considered regions: Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean as a way to connect the global concerns with the personal. At the crossroads of diverging languages due to distances beyond geographical and time measures, current decolonial efforts point towards exciting trajectories, on the path from delinking structural national narratives to speculative fiction.

Four historians come in dialogue at this intersection:

• Magdalena Moskalewicz (US/Poland), 
• Valeria Ibraeva (Kazakhstan)
• D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem (US/Nigeria)
• moderated by critical geographer Zoltán Ginelli (Hungary)
• Panel introduced by Randi Hopkins (US)

The speakers will reflect on the works in the exhibition In the Words, In the Bones by artist Marina Leybishkis with “roots” in Central Asia (Uzbekistan), Zsuzsanna Szegedi-Varga in Eastern Europe (Hungary) and Nyugen Smith in the Caribbean (Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago) as they uncover their family histories, examine the contentious heritage of the colonial era and postcommunist ruptures and absences, as they reclaim, revive, and recalibrate narratives.

The panel pays honor to the legacy of artist and scholar Alice Van Vechten Brown at Wellesley. Between 1897 and 1911 Brown initiated the first art history program in the United States at Wellesley College and also a laboratory system for art historical studies, the Wellesley Method. As we globally experience the effects of pivotal shifts from an East-West to North-South mentalities, conversations that connect artists and arts historians are increasingly vital.