The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference

Anchored in artistic practice, this vibrant collection of essays and writings spans a period from 1992-2017 and the work of leading artists such as Adel Abdessemed, Richard Avedon, Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling, Omer Fast, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Alfredo Jaar, Glenn Ligon and Shen Yuan. A key figure in British and international art, Gilane Tawadros draws difference to the surface, recuperating it as a potentially radical frame through which to understand contemporary art and the everyday world. Playing with forms of writing, from critical analyses to fictional narratives, the book functions as a practice-based meditation on how to write about contemporary art.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The Leftovers of Translation 1. But What is the Question? Art, Research and the Production of Knowledge 2. Extra-Extra: Interview with Raul Ortega Ayala 3. Dissonant Chorus 4. Shen Yuan: The Leftovers of Translation 5. Voices Off: Interview with Susan Hiller Part II: The Banality of Difference 6. ‘We are the Martians…’ 7. Van Leo: Self-Portraits 8. Shirani Shahbazi: The Banality of Difference 9. A Case of Mistaken Identity: Notes from the Scene of the Crime 10. Electrifying Eve Part III: Re-siting the City 11. The Real Me 12. Vladimir and Estragon are still waiting 13. Alfred’s Favourite Tree 14. The Leopard 15. Maps of Desire Part IV: Studies in a Post-colonial body 16. The Revolution Stripped Bare 17. Studies in a Post-colonial Body 18. Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art Part V: Relocating the Remains: History and Representation 19. Strangers and Barbarians: Representing Ourselves and Others 20. Telling Tales: Keith Piper’s Relocating the Remains 21. Sweet Oblivion 22. Godville: Interview with Omer Fast Part VI: Going Global 23. Going Global: 4th International Istanbul Biennial 24. Detonations: Jonathan Hernández and the Rongwrong series 25. Modern Europeans 26. Slipping Away (or Uncompliant Cartographies) Part VII: Transmission Interrupted 27. Interruption in Four Acts, or Disappearing Irises, Broken-down Buses and Ceramic Citroens 28. Egypt at the Venice Biennale: 1967 and The Year That Changed Everything 29. From Zero to Infinity: The Work of Adel Abdessemed 30. Reading (and Curating) from Right to Left 31. Dissonant Divas: Sonia Boyce, Sound and Collaboration 32. A Thousand and One Index

About the Author :
Gilane Tawadros is a writer and curator. She was the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in London which, over a decade, achieved an international reputation as a ground-breaking cultural agency at the leading edge of artistic and cultural debates nationally and internationally. She has written extensively on contemporary art and curated a number of important exhibitions in the UK and internationally. In 2012, she was the first art historian to be appointed to the prestigious Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She is Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation.