Homi K. Bhabha + Melissa Chiu in Conversation
SUN • MAY 8 • 11am–12pm
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Art Building Auditorium
2535 McCarthy Mall
Honolulu, HI 96822
Parking is free on campus.
We’re thrilled to welcome postcolonial scholar Homi K. Bhabha to Honolulu. Bhabha (Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the English and Comparative Literature Departments at Harvard University) will be in conversation with HT22 curatorial director Melissa Chiu (Director of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC). On the occasion of the closing of Hawai‘i Triennial 2022 (HT22) and the launch of the HT22 catalogue, the pair will continue their ongoing discussions of constellated cultures, in-betweenness, and the fluid concept of a Pacific Century. Guest moderated by Susan Acret, managing editor of the HT22 publication.
FREE and open to the public. RSVP required.
HT22 Catalogue • Book Launch
Attendees will have the opportunity to purchase the HT22 catalogue—a 284-page, full-color hardcover book entitled Pacific Century – E Ho‘omau no Moananuiākea—at a special discounted price. Learn more about the catalogue.
Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the English and Comparative Literature Departments at Harvard University. He was founding director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University from 2011-2019 and director of the Harvard Humanities Center from 2005-2011. From 2008-2019, he held the inaugural position of Senior Adviser on the Humanities to the President and Provost at Harvard University and from 2005-2008 served as Senior Adviser in the Humanities at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
Bhabha is the author of numerous works exploring postcolonial theory, cultural change and power, contemporary art, and cosmopolitanism. His works include Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture, which was reprinted as a Routledge Classic in 2004. His next book will be published by the University of Chicago Press. Bhabha has written on contemporary art for Artforum and has written a range of essays on William Kentridge, Anish Kapoor, Taryn Simon, and Mathew Barney, amongst others. He is a member of the Academic Committee for the Shanghai Power Station of Art, advisor on the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (CMAP) project at the Museum of Modern Art New York, and Curator in Residence of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Bhabha served on jury for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and the 2018 Sharjah Biennial. In 2019, he was honored by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London for his influential work in studies of colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization.
With the support of the Volkswagen and Mellon Foundations, Bhabha is leading a research project on the Global Humanities. In 1997 he was profiled by Newsweek as one of “100 Americans for the Next Century.” He holds honorary degrees from Université Paris 8, University College London, and the Free University Berlin. In 2012 he was awarded the Government of India’s Padma Bhushan Presidential Award in the field of literature and education and received the Humboldt Research Prize in 2015. In 2018 Bhabha received an honorary doctorate at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa.
Dr. Melissa Chiu is a renowned international curator, who is currently director of Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Among Chiu’s many professional accolades, including serving as museum director and senior vice president, Global Art Programs (2001–2014) at Asia Society in New York, she is recognized for realizing landmark exhibitions by Shirin Neshat, Robert Irwin, Yayoi Kusama, Charline von Heyl, Zhang Huan, Yoshitomo Nara and for co-curating One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now (2006–8) and Art and China’s Revolution (2008). Chiu has authored and edited books and catalogues on contemporary art, including Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader (MIT Press, 2010), and has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the Museum of Modern Art, and others.
