Dr.  Zoé Samudzi will be giving a lecture at Bard College’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts on Friday, September 26th from 12-1:30pm.  Dr. Samudzi's talk is about an exhibition she curated at the Project Arts Centre featuring Zimbabwean artist Owen Maseko's series about Zimbabwe’s genocide, the Gukurahundi. 

On his way to Ireland for the artist’s talk in June, he was arrested at the airport in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe: this arrest came 15 years after the inaugural opening of the show in 2010, which was shuttered after just 24 hours. Owen subsequently faced a litany of charges (including "undermining the authority” of then-president Robert Mugabe) and the possibility of 20 years in prison for his dissident artwork.

The talk engages the aesthetics and memory politics of Owen’s work in the series “Sibathontisele” (which translates to “Let us drip on them” in isiNdebele) against Zimbabwe’s repressive historical myths and ethnopolitics.

More event information, including the registration link, can be accessed here: https://chra.bard.edu/event/sibathontisele-at-15

Dr. Samudzi is a Post-Doctoral Scholar in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University.