Editors’ Introduction
Our newest issue of SEQUITUR explores ideas around historiography, representation, and canonization through the theme “re/vision.” The essays and exhibition reviews in this issue reflect on varying tactics that expand the thematic and temporal variety in art and architectural history. Moving from gender politics to mass-housing policies, environmental crisis to archeological reproduction, the range of topics explored reflects the commitment to rebuild narratives prevalent in current trends of art and architectural history.
In the first of two feature essays, Maria V. Garth investigates the ways photography and photorealist painting reveal their radical potential to represent gender expressions. Through the works of Franz Gertsch and Lissa Rivera, the essay problematizes the dichotomous understanding of fact and fiction, and seeks tactics to subvert normative power structures. The next essay explores the 2016 Istanbul Design Biennial’s contextualization of design as a reverse operation of archeology. In this essay, Ecem Arslanay centralizes design to examine the contemporary condition of human experience and environment. By bridging the gap between organic and synthetic systems and futurism and nostalgia, Arslanay offers a design-centric view on death and destruction.
In his research spotlight, Stephen Kerr challenges the methodologies in looking at interwar mass housing developments in architectural history. Through oral histories, Kerr reveals the political significance of interior decoration in shaping collective memory, adapting an integrated research methodology for architectural historiography.
Naz Onen’s visual essay utilizes the cyanotype photography printing technique to communicate the plastic-waste problem in the marine environment. By utilizing photography’s indexical capacity to preserve the past, the artist articulates the plastic evidence as the fossils of the Anthropocene.
This issue includes four reviews that survey exhibitions covering a broad range of temporalities and geographies. Laura Stowell reviews an exhibition of body-oriented sculptural works by Alina Szapocznikow, held at Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York City. Chloe Lovelace discusses spolia, noting the different forms of reproduction and reuse of archival material in an exhibition held at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Constanza Robles and Althea Ruoppo review an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which seeks to revisit the narratives of 20th century American art by elevating the work of women artists, offering an institutional framework towards a more inclusive canonization of art. Lastly, Kimberly Windham weaves a connecting thread through David Levinthal’s varying photographic practice and critiques the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s institutional position as perpetuating the myth of the American West.
In this issue our authors bring a spectrum of perspectives to the concept of re/vision while reminding us of the urgent need to provide multi-temporal, inclusive, and diverse strategies within art and architecture historiography and canonization practices. At SEQUITUR, we are delighted to hold an open platform where dominant institutional narratives are challenged, and histories are multiplied, becoming more porous and mobile, inviting participation in a discourse that is as varied and inclusive as possible.