The ALA Lecture Series presents

Àṣẹ Aesthetics
Nkiru Nzegwu

SUNY Distinguished Professor, Department of Africana Studies, Binghamton University, NY

Saturday, September 25, 2021 at 11:00 AM EST; London, 4:00 PM; Lagos, 4:00
PM; Johannesburg, 5:00 PM; Nairobi, 6:00 PM

Join us on the ALA YouTube Channel:
 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaYYHGM8iraoQF48xeCnMKw

Nkiru Nzegwu is Chair of the Board of SUNY Distinguished Academy and the founder of Africa Knowledge Project and author of Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture (2006), co-editor of The New African Diaspora (2009); and editor of Onitsha at the Millennium: Legacy, History and Transformation and His Majesty Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe: A Ten-Year Milestone (2013). She has published extensively on African aesthetics, art, feminism, and philosophy.

Àṣẹ aesthetics appears when the hegemonic veil of Western ideology is pulled aside. The revealed aesthetics manifests in a polychronal spatiality that is anomalous and constant, where past and future are inscribed in the present. “Infinitely generative,” artforms are concretized àṣẹ and come alive when activated. So, what is ‘àṣẹ’? What does “àṣẹ aesthetics” state about artforms and the relationship of art, human creativity, and reality? My talk examines these fascinating questions as I define the features of this aesthetics. I conclude with an aesthetic evaluation of the iconic George Floyd Mural in Minneapolis and the BLM Routine of the Diversity Dance Group of Britain.

 

For more information:

Professor Akinwumi Adesokan at adesokan@indiana.edu
Professor Mohamed Kamara at KamaraM@wlu.edu
Professor Matthew H. Brown at web@africanlit.org