Dr Nadine Siegert from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, is visiting Rhodes University as a Writer in Residence with the Residencies for Artists and Writers (RAW) programme.
Dr Siegert is a researcher, curator and publisher with a focus on modern and contemporary arts of the Global South. Currently she is the Deputy Director of Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth and member of the research project Revolution 3.0 at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies. She has been a Research Associate with the Rhodes Fine Art SARChI programme since 2018 and is a member of the ACASA Board (2017-2020). Her residency runs from 10 August to 21 October 2018, and she will continue with her current research “the mapping of connections and relations of African artists with the socialist sphere during the cold war”.
Since 2015, Dr Siegert has been leading the project African Art History and the Formation of a Modernist Aesthetics that explores the history of the art collections at Iwalewahaus, the Museum of World Cultures (Frankfurt) and the Makerere Art Gallery (Kampala).
Dr Siegert received her doctoral degree from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies in 2013. In 2016, she published her PhD (Re)mappining Luanda. Nostalgische und utopische Zugänge zu einem kollektiven Bildarchiv (LIT). In 2018, Dr Siegert was Brooks International Fellow at Delfina Foundation and Tate Modern, and in 2017 in residence at Vila Sul, Goethe-Institute, Salvador de Bahia.
Her research cuts across modernism of the Global South, in particular in the context of the Cold War, socialist aesthetics and socialist modernism, contemporary arts with a focus on Lusophone Africa, curatorial and museum studies.
At the University of Bayreuth, Siegert teaches modern and contemporary African arts and curatorial studies, and curates the artist in residency program as well as the Iwalewa Art Award.
Dr Siegert is the second Writer in Resident to be hosted this year following Dr Patrick Oloko from the University of Lagos, Nigeria who visited from April to June 2018. Oloko collaborated with Artist in Residence, Professor Peju Layiwola who is also from the University of Lagos. Artist Moffat Takadiwa from Harare, Zimbabwe recently completed his artist’s residency (25 June – 26 August 2018) with an exhibition at the RAW Spot Gallery titled “framed in colonial lenses”.
The Residencies for Artists and Writers (RAW) programme has been running since 2014. For more information about the programme please visit /artsofafrica/programme/residenciesforartistsandwriters/