Angelica Santos Bunoan (UCL) - 2024-25 Students
angelica.bunoan.22@ucl.ac.uk

Ensuring the Legacies of Diaspora Artists from the Global Majority in the UK through Artists’ Archives

This doctoral research seeks to examine the status of diaspora artists from the Global Majority in the UK and how their archives can be used to expand and decolonise art history. It will be centred around the following main research question: how can artists’ archives be activated and utilised affectively to ensure the legacies of underrepresented diaspora artists from the Global Majority living in the UK? It will also address the following sub-questions:

1.Where are the archives of diaspora artists from the Global Majority in the UK? What are the current policies and practices in place to support these collections?

2.How can we improve institutional archival systems and processes, particularly around cataloguing and description, and provide enhanced access routes to archives of diaspora artists from the Global Majority in the UK?

3.How can we apply collaborative and care-informed archival theories and practices to create an artist-centred model for creating artists’ archives, specifically those of diaspora artists from the Global Majority in the UK?

Recognising the importance of artists’ archives in the writing of art history and its potential for community-building and self-representation, the research will be grounded in the work of Iniva and its collection of artists’ files, which it aims to begin cataloguing in the coming year. Revisiting Iniva’s vision of a ‘New Internationalism’ in the arts, it will study how its collection was formed and explore how it can be activated and potentially linked with Iniva’s wider collection and other similar artists’ archives in other UK art institutions. These can include the Panchayat Collection at Tate, the African and Asian Visual Artists Archive at the University of East London, and other archives of diaspora artists in the UK, which will be mapped out in the course of the research.

Acknowledging the web of affective relationships in Iniva’s collection, the research will provide an opportunity to re-establish and strengthen the bonds between Iniva and the artists who have been part of its history. Exemplifying Stuart Hall’s vision of a ‘living archive of the diaspora,’ it will aim to connect the ‘past, community and identity,’ and help build solidarity and opportunities for collaboration and sharing of knowledge and resources between diaspora artists from the Global Majority and UK art institutions. Drawing from emerging multi-disciplinary studies on artists’ archives; person and community-centred archives; affect, radical empathy and care; alternative archive and museum cataloguing vocabularies and processes; and decolonial art history, it will develop and apply artist-centred, collaborative and care-informed guidelines and methods in archiving diaspora artists from the Global Majority, which can be used and shared by Iniva and other UK art institutions.

Primary supervisor: Dr Anna Sexton

Supervisor at partner organisation: Tavian Hunter

Partner organisation: INIVA – Institute of International Visual Arts