On 29 September at 6 pm Libreria GRIOT will host ‘Specially placed to uphold a load: Reading & In conversation’ with Holly Graham, artist and BSR alumni, and Kwanza Musi Dos Santos, founder of the anti-racist organization ‘QuestaèRoma’.
Graham will read an extract from a work-in-progress text, a collection of short reflections on and responses to research findings gathered during the artist’s six-month residency at the British School at Rome at the beginning of 2023. During this time, Graham looked at the development of the motif of the blackamoor in Baroque Italian 17th and 18th century furniture design. The text takes the form of a series of fragments that aim to collectively consider ideas of the authority of imagery – of trope, motif and style; and how these in turn shape readings of race and otherness.
Graham will be in conversation with Kwanza Musi Dos Santos, an italian-afrobrazilian activist raised in Rome. She is an expert of Diversity Management and inclusion with a special focus on antiracism, environmental justice, and intersectionality, and she currently works as a consultant for both enterprises and non-profit organizations. She is co-founder of the cultural Association QuestaèRoma, created in 2013 by a group of young Italians of foreign background with the aim to erase any form of discrimination through culture and art.
The event is organised by On Site in collaboration with the British School at Rome and Libreria GRIOT.
This event will be in English.
