In a world in which “truthiness” has entered the Oxford English Dictionary, how are artists responding to the newly malleable condition of fact? Art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty has categorized the recent strategies of contemporary artists to creatively play with the conventions of storytelling and history as the parafictional. Neither pure invention nor just the facts, today artists are employing archives and historical material to produce new stories in unprecedented ways to engender skepticism, doubt, and hope on the part of the viewer. Within such works, the notion of history and the belief in truth undergoes destabilization but not obliteration. Join us on the occasion of Zoe Beloff’s solo exhibition in the James Gallery for a discussion on the fictional, the parafictional, and the seemingly fictitious but true in contemporary art.
This event is presented as part of Mediating the Archive, an interdisciplinary research group that employs public humanities practices and explores narration as a guide for social change. The group is supported by the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research. For more information or to join, email [email protected].
Cosponsored by the Art History Department and the Mediating the ArchiveMellon Seminar for Public Engagement and Collaborative Research
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