Conference
Absence as Artistic Strategy in Contemporary Art
- Date
- Wednesday 11 June 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.18 & 0.20
While representation of presence forms the basis of most of the art historical canon, in this symposium we will focus on absence instead. We will study the absence of representation and the representation of absence. What happens when art erases, leaves out, or hides things? When it refuses to close a narrative arc, suggests a presence that is not there, or overrepresents something to the point of making it invisible?
During the symposium we will look at contemporary artworks that incorporate some form of absence as a key artistic strategy. These are not artworks that are about absence, i.e. only in terms of their meaning or context, but works in which absence is a fundamental aspect. Famous examples are Rachel Whiteread’s casts, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s theatre series, Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios, and Gillian Wearing’s Trauma.
Join us in Leiden on June 11 to hear nineteen art historians and artists present their research and discuss various examples of absence in art from the 1970s to the present.
The one-day symposium is organized by Stephanie Noach, Paula Harvey, Felipe Martinez Sevilhano and Laura Bertens, all affiliated with the Art History department of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The symposium is supported by LUCAS and takes place in the newly constructed Herta Mohr building in the city centre of Leiden (Witte Singel 27a).