The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art beyond Solidarity

A groundbreaking approach to writing art history that uses the language of geometry to explore the relationship between Black and Asian artists and the worlds they create through their work. By breaking down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories, Joan Kee offers new ways of understanding how artworks shape our lives and politics.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 16 May 2023
Publisher: University of California Press

A groundbreaking approach to writing art history, leveraging the language of geometry. How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority, outside of essentializing categories like race or hollow proclamations of solidarity? With this book, Joan Kee presents a framework for understanding the rich and surprisingly understudied relationship between Black and Asian artists and the worlds they initiate through their work. The Geometries of Afro Asia breaks down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Kee looks at the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s. Through geometry, a language of magnitudes and alignments, Kee opens up new ways of seeing how artworks shape our lives and politics by getting us to commit some of our most valuable resources—time and attention—to one another.

Weight: 771g
Dimension: 254 x 178 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780520392458