This paper examines the photographic work of British photographer John Claude White (1853-1918), celebrated for providing one of the early twentieth century’s most extensive and awe-inspiring photographic accounts of the Himalayas and of Tibet. While White’s images have long been admired for their striking compositions and their seemingly candid portrayal of Tibetan culture, this study shifts focus to the narratives embedded within the event of White’s photography, particularly those captured during the 1903-04 British Younghusband expedition. In analyzing White’s photographs taken at the Khampa Dzong, particularly his iconic image the Abbot at Kham-pa-Jong (1903), this paper explores the complex interplay between photographic representation – the camera as the property, tool, and thought experiment of the photographer – and Tibetans’ active presentation of their agency and autonomy. This approach challenges traditional photographic theory, instead emphasizing the dynamic relationship between the photographer, the subjects present at the event of photography, and the complex and ever-evolving socio-political power structures at play.

This argument requires one to acknowledge the significant gap in scholarly analysis regarding the agency and narratives of the Tibetans represented within White’s widely published image of the Abbot at Kham-pa-Jong. As such, this paper draws into discussion five of White’s previously unpublished photographs, now digitized by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Program. In analyzing these newfound photographs in tandem with White’s popular Abbot at Kham-pa-Jong, this paper argues that White’s photographs are not merely passive records of the Tibetans’ natural environment and culture, nor are they mere representations of White’s socio-political agenda as a British agent. Contrarily, these photographs are framed collectively as an impactful platform for visual communication, one wherein new patterns of relations were established, and involved parties constituted themselves in relation to their spirituality, to the political implications of their photographed actions, and to the proposition of Tibetan autonomy.

There exists a longstanding imperative to make sense of art. Especially pertinent within Southeast Asia, relative gaps within the region’s art history leads to a dearth of context. Trying to find meaning in such artworks, we reflect on its visual appearance and its resonance with personal subjectivities. Or, as art historians, we impose critical theory and align it with sociopolitical concerns. This process of meaning-making aligns with Roland Barthes’s outlook in The Death of the Author – who argues that insisting on authorial intent restricts productive interpretations. Oppositely, Susan Sontag, in her essay “Against Interpretation,” asserts that conforming artworks to anachronous concerns detracts from its true meaning. Both sides hold weight: a Barthesian interpretation tends towards conjecture, while one in line with Sontag – when artist intent is inaccessible – is purely formalistic and shallow.

Looking at the works of late Indonesian artist Sindoesoedarsono Sudjojono, they often lack explication, especially outside of his native language Bahasa Indonesia. However, his criticism and biography still survive alongside writing by his wife, Mia Bustam. This essay focuses on his paintings Di Depan Kelamboe Terboeka (Before the Open Mosquito net) (1939) and Sayang Saya Bukan Anjing (It is a pity I am not a dog) (1944), exploring how engaging with adjacent texts is crucial in making sense of Southeast Asian art. They provide a compromise between Barthes and Sontag, allowing us to come closer to the artwork’s underlying stories, and yet, remain far enough from a singular authoritative meaning. Furthermore, while the work’s meanings still elude us, writing about it captures a certain melancholy – an aesthetic of loss and unknowability that Michael Ann Holly describes in The Melancholy Art. This provides an opportunity to imbue a more personal element into theory and art writing: the perspective of the art historian and the unsettling ambiguity in partial recollection.

For André Bazin, what privileged cinema above other mediums was the ability of the camera to create an objective mechanical reproduction of the world (1960). The cinematic image, free from human intervention, has a unique epistemological role in constructing a view and model of the environment – a process which Adrian Ivakhiv terms “cinema as world-making.” The same year that Bazin articulated the representational power that the camera holds over our environment, the atomic bomb uncorked a new frontier of environmental and epistemological destruction on scales previously unimaginable. For Akira Mizuta Lippit, the “atomic disaster” resists epistemology altogether, posing the problem of “thinking the unthinkable.” How then can one approach a cinematic understanding of the bomb? What shapes might such a nuclear eco-cinema take? Two differing formal approaches arise in the works of Bruce Conner and Tomonari Nishikawa. Crossroads (1976, dir. Bruce Conner) surrounds the bomb in images, trapping it in a swarm of manipulated archival materials from the nuclear test detonations at Bikini Atoll. Sound of a Million Insects, Light of a Thousand Stars (2014, dir. Tomonari Nishikawa) rejects the visual apparatus of the camera altogether to produce abstract images which evidence an intimate material connection to the geographically specific situation of the Fukushima disaster. These works, in spite of their formal disparities, tap into a deeper understanding of the ways that nuclearism and its images have become embedded into the cultural and natural environment.

Abstract artist Jack Youngerman (1926-2020) explored non-figurative shape in various mediums throughout his career. With formative influences from Paris and New York City, he defied the boundaries of Abstract Expressionism and Hard Edge painting. This paper argues that through his production of fiberglass and steel sculpture, Youngerman manifested his philosophies on figure-ground relationships in three-dimensional space. Because Youngerman viewed this sculpture as the solution to his preoccupation with figure-ground relationships, this analysis demonstrates the slow transition Youngerman makes to this moment through his experimentation from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional with various mediums over decades. He does this through technique influenced by his viewing of exhibits on Japanese art and design in New York City. To understand Japanese influence on Youngerman’s artistic production, works in other mediums such as acrylic painting, wall relief sculptures, and embossed paper need to be analyzed. Through these works produced before his exposure to contextualized exhibits on Japanese art and design, one can trace an already present preoccupation with philosophical concepts about figure-ground relationships. As Youngerman found his missing link in the East, this paper argues that the slow buildup from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional in Youngerman’s oeuvre reveals a more complex relationship between figure and ground than previously studied, one that marks a release – a true separation of his painting and sculpture

In his critique of digital interactivity in computer-based art, Lev Manovich asserts that the structure of interactive digital works constrains the viewer’s agency, offering only an illusion of choice while subtly manipulating the viewer’s experience. He argues that interactivity functions as a form of totalitarian control. While acknowledging the validity of this critique, I challenge the idea that the structured nature of digital art equates to oppressive control. Instead, I posit that the constraints within interactive art can serve as a framework for meaningful engagement, encouraging a dynamic, reciprocal relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and the artist. Drawing on Alex Castonguay’s interactive video installation Portapak (2006), I argue that rather than limiting freedom, the constraints inherent in interactive art foster a space for creative exploration. Castonguay’s piece, which responds to viewer gestures in real-time, exemplifies how interaction is not about control, but about negotiation and collaboration. The viewer’s actions shape the artwork’s outcome, creating a feedback loop that enables ongoing engagement and personal interpretation. In reframing interactivity as a process of reciprocal reactions rather than top-down control, it presents a more nuanced view of digital art as a dialogical experience. It suggests that the artist’s role is not that of a manipulator, but of a creator who designs a system that invites active participation. So, through this essay I call for a shift in perspective, arguing that the structured limitations of interactive art are far from being oppressive, and instead create opportunities for co-creation, dialogue, and a deeper, more participatory engagement with the artwork.

Trevor Paglen’s Trinity Cube is a small sculpture made from glass found at the sites of two nuclear events. Its core is made from the Trinitite that was formed at the first ever test detonation of a nuclear bomb, in 1945; its outer layer is broken window glass collected from the Exclusion Zone at Fukushima, which was irradiated by the 2011 nuclear power plant meltdown. It is installed in a house in the Exclusion Zone, as part of an exhibition that, currently, nobody can visit, due to the radiation levels in the area. Nuclear disasters, history, and timescales are vast and hard to conceive of, but Trinity Cube uses nuclear materials to render its events and sites of origin thinkable, and comprehensible, tracing entanglements between different places and timeframes: America and Japan- 1945, 2011, and now. Reading the sculpture as material evidence by drawing on research in the field of nuclear forensics allows for consideration of the violence it indexes and crystallizes, and how it reformulates nuclear waste and ruins into art. But also, in its formal aspects and place of exhibition, the Cube suggests possibilities for how site-specific sculpture can deal with the subject matter of ecological and human disaster, which is a question of growing relevance in an era of relentless disaster imagery.

Afrofuturism is a phenomenon that aims to investigate and look at how black individuals can fathom the possibilities of a better future—ideally giving a chance to black individuals to be involved in the future of techno-culture and have a say in this area. Within its literature, Afrofuturism wholistically involves key Afrofuturist theorists who inform and contribute to the Afrofuturistic scope. My presentation makes the argument that the lack within Afrofuturism is because it cannot adequately capture authentic African narratives. I aim to give light to African stories, for African people, by African people as narratives that are deserving of being put at the forefront by advocating for Africanfuturism. Africanfuturism is a phenomenon that rids the idea of Western-infiltrated stories of the African future. Africanfuturism becomes a better suited approach to express African narratives and experiences as it includes those narratives specific to native African individuals as well. To better illustrate this argument, Kenyan artist, Cyrus Kabiru is argued to be the ideal embodiment of Africanfuturism through his C-stunners (2023) series as his artworks represent an Africanfuturist aesthetic used to tell an African narrative told from African perspectives. This research essay delves into an analysis of the C-stunners (2013) by discussing Kabiru’s artistic aims, and critically analyzing three of his artworks to thus prove that Kabiru is an Africanfuturist artist. Cyrus Kabiru is argued to serve as a fitting translation of how authentic African experiences and narratives of the future can be told without reliance on western notions of future-storytelling.

Throughout my paper, I explore the aesthetic parallels between the impressionist art movement in nineteenth-century France and the mumble rap movement coming out of Atlanta’s music scene in the mid 2010’s. Both artistic styles confront the once traditional approach to creating art by working through an abstract lens led by intuition and movement. Artists such as Claude Monet and Young Thug lead their respective audiences through evoking emotions and inspiring a sensory experience. Monet’s light brushstrokes that blur the distinction between line and color compares similarly with Young Thug’s unconventional approach to blending sounds with vocal distortions and rhythmic flows. The restraints of clarity and precision are disregarded to highlight intrinsic feeling and atmosphere. The final product embraces fluidity, whimsy, and natural emotion, and ultimately introduces a new development of modernity in art. The backlash and commentary received from both movements mirror each other – critics have stated confusion and frustration for the movement’s sense of rebellion. By emphasizing the similarities of the subversive movements, my paper positions Atlanta’s underground mumble rap movement within the context of art history