Panel: This Is Not an Archival Object
Participants: Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Deborah Dorotinsky, and Shoair Mavlian
Moderator: Ángeles Donoso Macaya

An heiress demands the restitution of the daguerreotype of her enslaved ancestor from the museum that preserves his captive image; a Tzotzil artist photographs objects, knowledges, and practices of her Indigenous community; a Greek-Armenian artist composes collages and film using found photographic and film materials produced by and for the United States and Western audiences. Resorting to the abolitionist imagination, decolonial approaches and methods, postcolonial theory, and feminisms, the presentations in this panel probe and interrogate the Archive as a space interconnected to racial capitalism, the establishment of settler-colonial states, and the sexual division of labor, from its very inception. If a practice is a provisional way of operating within dominant spaces, these archival, photographic, and artistic practices bring to the fore the notion that archival objects are not dead matter; on the contrary, they can—and should—be reactivated and potentialized in order to dismantle the Archive in its imperial form.
This program is presented thanks to generous support from Green Family Foundation.
About the Speakers
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is an expert in visual culture and photography whose research focuses on how history is told through visual media—photographs, film, drawings, and other visual elements. She is a film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions, and is a professor of modern culture and media, and comparative literature at Brown University.
Deborah Dorotinsky is a professor and full-time researcher at the Institute of Aesthetic Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (IIE-UNAM), where she previously chaired the Art History Graduate Program. Her areas of research include the history of Mexican ethnographic photography 1850-1950, visual culture and gender in Mexico 1920-1950, and popular arts throughout the twentieth century.
Shoair Mavlian is Director of Photoworks. She is responsible for the strategic vision and artistic direction of the organization through exhibitions, publications, digital content, learning, and engagement. Mavlian was previously Assistant Curator, Photography and International Art at Tate Modern, London, where she curated various exhibitions including Don McCullin and Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art.