Kobena Mercer
Kobena Mercer (born 1960)[1] is a distinguished British art historian and writer on contemporary art and visual culture. His writing on Robert Mapplethorpe and Rotimi Fani-Kayode has been described as "among the most incisive (and delightful to read) critiques of simple identity-based politics in the field of cultural studies."[2]
Life and work
Mercer was born in London in 1960. He was educated in Ghana and England and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Saint Martins School of Art. He gained his doctorate by completing a PhD at Goldsmiths College in 1990.[3]
Much of Kobena Mercer’s writing has focused on the work and cultural context of black British artists, including monographs for Keith Piper, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Hew Locke[4] – as well as on contemporary and modern art of the African Diaspora more widely.[5] He has contributed essays to numerous anthologies in the fields of cultural studies and contemporary art, including his own, groundbreaking volume, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, published in 1994.[6] Mercer was commissioned to contribute "New Practices, New Identities: Hybridity and Globalization," the closing chapter in the epic series The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume V, The Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 2014).[5] In 2006, he won the inaugural Clark Prize for excellence in art writing.[7] Alongside his work as a writer, Mercer also has a distinguished international career as an academic, teaching first at Middlesex University and, more recently, as Professor of History of Art and African American Studies at Yale.[3]
Selected bibliography
- Kobena Mercer (1994). Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. Routledge. ISBN 9780415906357.
- Kobena Mercer; David Chandler; Gilane Tawadros (1997). Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains. InIVA. ISBN 978-1899846108.
- Kobena Mercer (2003). James Van Der Zee 55. Phaidon. ISBN 978-0714841694.
- Kobena Mercer, ed. (2008). Exiles, Diasporas and Strangers (Annotating Art's Histories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives in the Visual Arts). The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262633581.
- Kobena Mercer, ed. (2005). Cosmopolitan Modernisms. Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA). ISBN 978-1899846412.
- "New Practices, New Identities: Hybridity and Globalization" in David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr, ed. (2014). The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume V, The Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press.
Notes
- ↑ "Kobena Mercer - Writer", Iniva.
- ↑ Tinkcom, M. & Villarejo, A., 2001. Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, pp. 24, Psychology Press.
- 1 2 Durden, M., 2013. Fifty Key Writers on Photography, Routledge.
- ↑ Mercer, K., 2011. Hew Locke: Stranger in Paradise, Black Dog Publishing.
- 1 2 "Kobena Mercer page on Yale website".
- ↑ Walcott, R., 1996. Book Review: Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, by Kobena Mercer, New York: Routledge, 1994. Critical Sociology, 22(2), pp. 141–144.
- ↑ "Clark Prize winners".
External links
- Yale website
- InIVA website
- Clark Art Institute website