Department: Tate Modern Curatorial
Hosts: Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art, Tamsin Hong, Assistant Curator
Tina utilised Tate’s collection of modern African art to investigate networks of pan-Africanism in the second half of the twentieth century and to disrupt the Euro-American canon of art history.
Tina’s research centred around charting out different pan-African modernisms on the African continent, allowing her to bring her particular specialism of Northern African art. Having spent a decade studying and advising on African art, particularly Morocco and Algeria, Tina’s research drew out pan-African connections across the region, in contrast to the pan-Arab history that is often presented.
Tina focused on two areas of interest: a group of Casablanca artists from the 1960s and 1970s, and French artists depicting the Algerian war for independence in the 1950s. Tina examined the Casablanca artists’ appropriation of women’s knowledge systems and indigenous artforms, comparing them to artists from West Africa who were active in the same time period and, though not in dialogue with each other, were creating similar works.
Joint press conference hosted by the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Algiers during the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival.
Biography
Tina Barouti is an art historian and writer based in Los Angeles. In 2022 she earned her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. She is currently a part-time faculty member at SAIC’s Art History, Theory and Criticism department.
In 2024 she participated in the Momus Arts Journalism Residency and is currently working on her first academic book, Resisting from Morocco’s Margins: Ahmed Amrani’s Protesta, 1969 (forthcoming).