Art History, Epistemic Injustice and Ideological Violence.

Workshop organised by Hana Gründler and Joanna Smalcerz (a collaboration between the Research Group Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw).

The workshop looks at the concept of epistemic injustice or even violence and its relation to the art historical realm. We are interested in how the criteria of ‘modernity’ shaped the birth of the discipline and how the geographical foci of art history—and the assumptions that come with it—determine the discipline’s epistemologies, which, despite efforts to broaden perspectives and question the canon, often still involve epistemic injustice and violence. On one hand, our interest is informed by the epistemic injustices embedded in the past and present practices of art history and the wider cultural sphere; on the other hand, by the ideological violence exerted upon and through art history and its narratives within various political and social systems of the 20th century. We aim to explore the geopolitics of the art historical discourse from its inception until today, ranging from the distribution of academic interests and the perpetuation of established artistic geographies through research funding policies to the geopolitics of musealization. The workshop will address the following questions, among others: What has served as the basis for the critical evaluation of art historical production, and how have these criteria been shaped by the paradigms and geographies of modernity? What are the consequences of adopting a linear teleology of historical progress in the study of art? Which alternative ways of knowing art—such as those grounded in affective and sensory modalities— have been excluded or actively repudiated? And, finally, how can we confront art history’s ‘epistemological monoculture’?

This will be a hybrid event.
Location: Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Via dei Servi 51, 50122 Florence, Italia.
To participate online please register in advance via Zoom:
https://eu02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/JDsjdGSvReSz6kv1MAB_og#/registration
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

--

PROGRAMME

17 October 2025

14.00–14.20
Welcome and Introduction (Hana Gründler and Joanna Smalcerz)

Modernisms and Abstractions
Chair: Katharine Stahlbuhk

14.20–15.00
Valentina Bartalesi: Prehistory as Resistance and Discourse: Material Cultures between Anti-Authoritarian Stances and National Narratives in Anglo-American Modernisms

15.00–15.40
Max Boersma: On the Coloniality of Abstract Art

Break

Political Hegemonies
Chair: Hana Gründler

16.00–16.40
Itay Sapir: Introductory Paratexts in Exhibition Catalogues as a Tool of Nation Building

16.40–17.20
César Saldaña Puerto: Totality Repressed: On the Marginalization of Dialectical Thought in Postwar Art Historiography

Break

Geopolitics and Epistemic Biases
Chair: Alejandro Nodarse

17.40–18.20
Katrin Nahidi: Invisible Infrastructures: Oil, Coloniality, and the Epistemic Violence of Art History

18.20–19.00
Foad Torshizi: Of Passions and Obsessions: Contemporary Iranian Art and the Limits of Testimony

Dinner (For speakers only)

20.00–21.00
On the Traces of Art History’s Epistemic Violence. City Walk

18 October 2025

Ideological Framings
Chair: Vera-Simone Schulz

9.30–10.10
Nadia Ali: Writing Islamic Art History from the Closet: Oleg Grabar, Russian Orientalism and Affective Genealogies

10.10–10.50
Marco Pomini: Longing for Home: Attending to Islamic Graffiti in the Inquisitorial Prison of Malta

Curatorial Ethics and its Limits
Chair: Joanna Smalcerz

10.50–11.30
Damiana Otoiu: Displaying Epistemic Violence, Enabling Indigenous Voice: The Legacy of “Miscast”

11.30–12.10
Piotr Słodkowski: “We cannot look at these ugly pictures”. Memory of the Holocaust, “The Branded”, and Epistemic Injustice in Poland around 1955

Tea Time (For speakers only)

Modes of Resistance
Chair: Mimi Cheng

13.00–13.40
Frida Viktoria Sandström: Deculturalization: Carla Lonzi's Technically Refunctioned Feminism in 1970

13.40–14.20
Miguel Gaete: The Inverted Model: An Argument for an Art History Upside Down and from the Margins

--

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44
50121 Firenze, Italia
+39 055 24911-1
infokhi.fi.it

www.khi.fi.it
khi.fi.it/newsletter
instagram.com/khiflorenz
facebook.com/khiflorenz
bsky.app/profile/khiflorenz.bsky.social
@khiflorenz #khiflorenz