Posted on Apr 22, 2005

Lorraine Cox,  assistant professor of visual arts, presented a paper, “Survivalist Aesthetic or Interventionist Strategy: Collage in the Work of Chris Ofili, Pepón Osorio and Siona Benjamin,” at the Collage as Cultural Practice conference, sponsored by the University of Iowa's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies in Iowa City. The paper, part of a developing chapter of a book project, analyzes collage in relation to critical race theory as a strategy for disrupting essentialist assumptions about race and ethnicity while also serving as a survivalist aesthetic of cultural expression. The three artists incorporate collage as a strategy for confronting their post-colonial realities and the ability of the work to prompt the viewer to do the same.