Panel discussion with Adeze Wilford, Dionne Sparks and Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani

Howardena Pindell’s art is often divided into those works which are ‘abstract’ and those which are ‘issue-related’. This panel discussion examines and complicates this dichotomy, asking to what extent Pindell’s abstractions, and abstraction in general, can be political.

Curator Adeze Wilford (Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami), artist Dionne Sparks (Royal College of Arts, London) and Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani (University of Edinburgh) discuss abstraction as activism within and beyond the practice of Howardena Pindell. Chaired by Catherine Spencer (University of St Andrews).


Dr Catherine Spencer is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on the modern and contemporary period in the US, Latin America and Europe. One of her current research projects addresses how artists have negotiated the intersections of politics and abstraction from the 1970s and ‘80s through to the present.

Adeze Wilford is a Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. As an Assistant Curator at The Shed, New York, she curated Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water (2020), which juxtaposed Pindell’s overtly activist work with her recent abstractions. Wilford contributed to the publication that accompanies Howardena Pindell: A New Language at the Fruitmarket.
Dionne Sparks is a London based artist whose painting practice explores abstraction and the transformation of materials to create objects of contemplation. She gained her BA Hons in Fine Art from Liverpool John Moores University in 1989 and is currently studying on the MA Painting programme at the Royal College of Art. Her current research addresses the practices of Howardena Pindell and Jack Whitten. Dionne is a recipient of The Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award 2021.
Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani is Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, before which she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for British Art. Her research interests include transnationality and diaspora, and the politics of postwar abstraction and visual culture in Britain and beyond.

Title taken from Howardena Pindell, ‘The Aesthetics of Texture in African Adornment’, in The Heart of the Question: The Writings and Paintings of Howardena Pindell, pp.85–86.
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