Skip to content

An Alternative History of Abstraction
manuel arturo abreu 

Video

2020
Length: 118:56 min.
Language: English

The dominican non-disciplinary and non-binary artist and poet manuel arturo abreu will contribute three works to the Study Room – two moving image works and one textual work. Ephemeral sculpture, text-based performance, and a concern with new connections between cultural expressions are central to the artistic practice. Language is understood as an abstract means of artistic expression that abreu uses to question conventional interpretations and canonizations of artistic manifestations.

In this new performative lecture (presented as a screen recording with sound), manuel arturo abreu follows Suhail Malik’s call for an exit from contemporary art and its historicism. Suhail Malik is vice-rector of the Institute of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University, London. An important part of this exit is the realization that abstraction is not a European phenomenon. abreu points out that the phenomenon of the abstract goes back a long way in time and illustrates this with examples from very different cultural backgrounds. For example, abreu discusses Muslim aniconism (prohibition of material representations), West African polyrhythms and fractal patterns, and the medieval philosophy of Ethiopia. abreu takes an interdisciplinary approach that understands abstraction as fundamental in its function for everyday life. The germ” of abstraction seems to be the tongue, according to abreu, because language and its articulation are abstraction par excellence.


manuel arturo abreu (*1991, Santo Domingo, lives in Portland, Oregon) is a non-disciplinary and non-binary artist and poet. Works were included in shows at the AAILA Gallery, Los Angeles; Paragon Gallery, Portland; and the New Museum, New York, among others. Writings were published in magazines such as Rhizome and Art in America.