Conversations in the Time of Corona: Live

An event at the Freud Museum London that continues dialogues from our Oral History Collection video series Conversations in the Time of Corona

5 December 2021, 7 pm
Freud Museum London
20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX

Courtesy Freud Museum London.

Update: A recording of this event is now available here.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we live – and the way we think. The sense of disruption it provoked has also served as a platform for reflection and dialogue. This can be seen in the issues that have been brought to the fore during this period, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the renewal in conversation surrounding colonial heritages and the role of public monuments.

More than a year after recording the online dialogues in our Oral History Collection video series Conversations in the Time of Corona, curator Fedja Klikovac meets again artists Zineb Sedira and Richard Wentworth – this time in person and in front of a live audience. They will be joined by Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. The event will also have virtual participations by representatives of art institutions in the Middle East: Dr Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, Director General of the Palestinian Museum, and Heba Hage-Felder, Director of Beirut’s Arab Image Foundation.

Conversations in the Time of Corona: Live will take place at the Freud Museum London, where the participants will continue exploring the broad impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and discuss the many cultural and political issues that have arisen during these difficult times. In line with the project’s broader mission to actively support a dialogue between East and West, the pandemic’s repercussions in different geopolitical circumstances will also be addressed. Topics of conversation will include approaches to collective memory, the future of museums, and our role in the production of cultural heritage.

A commentary by HE Hassan AL Balawi, First Counsellor at the Mission of the State of Palestine to the EU, Belgium and Luxembourg, will open the floor to audience questions.

Following the Event, Dan Hicks will be signing his latest book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, at the museum’s bookshop. Drinks will be provided.

Please book your ticket here.

Heba Hage-Felder has over 20 years of experience in development and institutional capacity building. Her work experience between 1996 and 2006 covered community development initiatives, production of knowledge resources, as well as eco-tourism. She worked with diverse local and international organisations such as Search for Common Ground in Washington DC and in Jordan, Save the Children in Lebanon, Arab Resource Collective in Lebanon, and UNOPS in Geneva supporting a peace building program in Rwanda, as well as being a co-founder and volunteer coordinator of Mada, a local NGO in Lebanon.

Dan Hicks FSA, MCIfA (born 1972) is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Dan has published eight authored and edited books, and has written articles, essays and op-eds for a variety of journals, magazines and newspapers. His latest work, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, was published by Pluto Press in 2020.

Fedja Klikovac is a curator and art advisor. Having lived in London since 1992, Klikovac worked for various art galleries. In 2002, he established the pioneering medievalmodern gallery in Marylebone, where he curated a series of exhibitions that saw contemporary artists work with medieval artifacts. He is currently the Director of Handel Street Projects, a gallery dedicated to promoting new British and international contemporary art.

Adila Laïdi-Hanieh is a writer and academic focusing on Palestinian art and cultural practices, modern Arab intellectual history and cultural spaces and processes. She was the founding director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre from 1996 until 2005. Dr Laïdi-Hanieh has published several books and essays, including the artist biography Fahrelnissa Zeid. Painter of Inner Worlds in 2017. She also published Palestine. Rien ne nous manque ici (Palestine. We lack for nothing here) in 2008, which explored contemporary Palestine from a critical cultural perspective.

Zineb Sedira is an artist who lives and works between Algiers, Paris, and London. Sedira’swidely-exhibited work, which has stemmed from research into her identity as a woman and her personal geography, is concerned with ideas of mobility, memory and transmission. Sedira is the founder of aria, a residency program dedicated to support the development of the contemporary art scene in Algeria. She will represent France at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.

Richard Wentworth is a British artist, curator, and teacher. He has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the 1970s. Wentworth’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions in major contemporary art institutions around the world, including Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, Paris, in 2017; Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2010; 52nd Venice Biennale, in 2009; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1994; and Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1993. He was awarded an OBE in 2011.