Dream Painting and the De-Territorialisation of Democratic Politics

The Visual Politics Strategic Research Program invites you to a seminar with Dr Lola Frost. Originally from South Africa, Lola currently lives in the UK and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies, KCL. Work from her art exhibitions can be found in major public collections in South Africa and solo exhibitions in UK. Lola has published papers on politics, ethics and aesthetics. In 2019 she is a Visiting Fellow at both ADFA, UNSW Canberra and the Centre for Law, the Arts and Humanities at ANU.

This paper explores what is at stake in a politics and ethics of representation in contemporary art and politics. As a foray away from the western tradition of sublime landscape painting, the paper draws on the author’s own de-territorializing art and also ventures into the terrain of Australian Aboriginal art. In doing so the paper builds on the ethos of dream-painting to engage the nexus between power and knowledge in the context of representational democracy.