Forest Field and Street, Book Talk with Silvia Bottinelli and Leah Modigilani, 3/5

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CHAT would like to invite you to a special event on March 5. Dr. Silvia Bottinelli and Dr. Leah Modigliani will introduce and discuss major themes and connections in their books, Artists and the practice of agriculture: politics and aesthetics of food sovereignty in art since 1960 and Counter revanchist art in the global city: walls, blockades, and barricades as repertoires of creative action­, respectively, both published by Routledge in 2023.
 
Leah Modigliani is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture. She is an artist and scholar with transdisciplinary engagements informed by fine arts, art history, critical geography, urban studies, and politics. Modigliani’s work represents the liberatory potential (right to the city) and neoliberal revanchism (displacement, punitive laws) of urban experience. In artwork she has dwelled upon eviction ("How long can we tolerate this? An incomplete record from 1933-1999," 2016-2017); cities destroyed by war ("The City in Her Desolation," 2017) and natural disasters ("Cities of God" series 2021-22), and protests against injustices enacted in cities ("Washington D.C., 1939; Basel, 1957; Berkeley, 1969; Chicago, 1969; London, 1969; Windsor, 1982...," 2015-2018). While often sculptural, her work increasingly cites the form and history of photography, especially photography's role in constituting and deconstructing historical narratives.
 
Modigliani's writing can be found in academic journals and contemporary art magazines such as Platform Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts, Prefix Photo, Anarchist Studies, and Mapping Meaning, The Journal. Her book, Engendering an avant-garde: the unsettled landscapes of Vancouver photo-conceptualism, was published by Manchester University Press's Rethinking Art's Histories series in 2018. Her book Counter-Revanchist Art in the Global City: Walls, Blockades, and Barricades as Repertoires of Creative Action was published by Routledge in their Critical Studies in Urbanism and the City series in 2023. 
 
Silvia Bottinelli (PhD University of Pisa) is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Visual and Material Studies Department, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Dr. Bottinelli's expertise focuses on food and ecocriticism in contemporary art, as well as 20th and 21st century Italian Art. She recently published the single-authored books Artists and the Practice of Agriculture. Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 (Routledge 2024); and Double-Edged Comforts: Domestic Life in Modern Italian Art and Visual Culture (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021). In addition, her scholarly publications include: the co-edited volumes The Taste of Art. Cooking, Food and Counterculture in Contemporary Practices (with Margherita d'Ayala Valva, University of Arkansas Press, 2017) and Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art (with Sharon Hecker, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); the co-edited special issue on Food and Activism in Contemporary Art for the peer-reviewed journal Public Art Dialogue (vol.8 n.1, 2018); and several  peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, such as most recently for the volume Food, Media, Senses, eds. Christina Bartz, Jens Ruchatz, and Eva Wattolik (Transcript - Columbia University Press, 2024). Dr. Bottinelli's research has appeared in journals like Art Journal, Art in Translation, California Italian Studies, Humanities, Modernism/modernity, Public Art Dialogue, Palinsesti, Predella, Ricerche di Storia dell'Arte, and Sculpture, among others. Her work has been supported by the American Philosophical Society, Center for Italian Modern Art, Italian Council, Magazzino Italian Art, Terra Foundation, and Tisch College for Civic Life at Tufts University. Dr. Bottinelli is the recipient of the International Award for Excellence of the Food Studies Research Network. 

This event is open to all. For questions, please reach out to us at: humanities@tufts.edu.