AWARE x WOPHA x PAMM: on the edge of visibility – an international symposium

Join us for the upcoming symposium, presented by AWARE, WOPHA, and PAMM. Explore the intersections of art, culture, and identity through a transcontinental lens, engaging with leading voices in the field.  

Hosted by AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions; Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA); and Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), this symposium offers a transcontinental approach and encompasses postcolonial, feminist, and queer perspectives. Topics discussed will consider the concerns and complexities of defining what it means to be a Black or Indigenous woman artist within different cultural settings. It also constitutes a reflection on past and current modes of knowledge creation. View the full program here! 

By exploring the notions of visibility and invisibility as they relate to visual practices and dominant power structures, this symposium examines proposed strategies of resistance as a means of reclaiming visual agency. It seeks to challenge existing academic boundaries—notably within the history of art and photography—through a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, questioning contemporary discourses and their genealogies, and considering the future of the discipline. 

Bringing together artists, researchers, curators, and thinkers, this international gathering is structured around three thematic sections.  

Section One | Fractals of Invisibility
This session questions the historical and structural reasons for the exclusion of Black and Indigenous women and non-binary artists from art historical narratives. It examines invisibility as an intersectional phenomenon rooted in colonial and contemporary history.

Section Two | Politics of Visibility
This session examines what strategies are effective in gaining institutional recognition and achieving socio-political goals. This section simultaneously questions the creation and replication of stereotyped representations of these artists within the dominant discourse.

Section Three | Poetics of Opacity
This session focuses on the notion of opacity, as theorized by philosopher and poet Edouard Glissant, understood as an impenetrable alterity that cannot be possessed, an epistemological notion that grants everyone the right to keep their psycho-cultural selves.

Symposium contributions are derived from a critique of visibility and transparency, with considerable input from recent feminist and queer theories, examine the potential of this concept as an alternative to Western ways of understanding, representing, and recognizing Black and Indigenous women and non-binary artists. 

This symposium is organized within the context of “The Origin of Others: Rewriting Art History in the Americas” program led by AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions. The program title references the series of essays by the author Toni Morrison, published in 2017.

About AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions 
AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions is a nonprofit organization, co-founded by art historian Camille Morineau in 2014, that works towards making women artists of the 19th and 20th century visible by producing and sharing free bilingual (French/English) content about their work on its website. This online resource presently contains more than 1,000 biographical texts and draws up to 75,000 visits per month. AWARE represents a diversity of voices with texts written by around 450 researchers, curators, feminist art historians, art critics, and activists from all over the world. To widely disseminate research on women artists, AWARE also organizes symposia, round tables, and seminars in collaboration with institutions, universities, museums, and other independent structures internationally, and edits its own publications. AWARE is located at the Villa Vassilieff (in Paris’ 15th district), where artist Marie Vassilieff set up her studio in the 1910s. Within this strongly symbolic space, AWARE has created a research centre entirely devoted to women artists and feminist art, and hosts events, talks and school workshops. 

About Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) 
Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by art historian and curator Aldeide Delgado to research, promote, support, and educate on the role of those who identify as women and non-binary in photography. Having begun as a dynamic database showcasing the unique stories of women-identified Cuban photographers, WOPHA has expanded its geographic scope to include photographers from around the globe. The organization is currently documenting the diverse artistic production of Latin American and Latinx communities, including photographers from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and artists of Latin American descent living and working in the United States.   

About Pérez Art Museum Miami  
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), led by Director Franklin Sirmans, promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture, and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. The nearly 40-year-old South Florida institution, formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM), opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, on December 4, 2013 in Downtown Miami’s Maurice A. Ferré Park. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab, and classroom spaces. 

The symposium will take place at PAMM from Thursday, October 19 through Friday, October 20. The full program schedule and RSVP link will be released in September.