PLACE Seminar: Activating Histories through Artistic Practice
In this final PLACE seminar, artist-filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker (Goldsmiths University) and visual artist Nina Mangalanayagam (HDK-Valand) will present their practices and works in progress, followed by a moderated conversation with Professor Jyoti Mistry (HDK-Valand).
The discussion will explore how exhibition practices draw on scenography and filmmaking to extend into installation, and how casting and the “ghosts of the archive” can activate hidden histories. Through methods such as casting, (re)construction, and (re)enactment, the speakers will consider how artistic processes reveal the deliberate nature of visual histories and open up multiplicities of form.
Both artists engage with how technologies of image-making influence meaning—addressing colour in film and photography, and how these processes shape representations of race and gender on screen and in the image.
Nina Mangalanayagam is a visual artist and Senior Lecturer at HDK-Valand. She is currently developing a research project on Swedish colonial history in St Barthelemy (Caribbean), focusing on ‘free black’ women during Swedish rule. Her multiscreen moving-image installations expand into the exhibition space through photographs, wallpapers, and sculptural elements.
Michelle Williams Gamaker is an artist-filmmaker whose practice centres on Fictional Activism—restoring marginalised film stars of colour as central protagonists who challenge the injustices of imperialist cinema. She reworks British and Hollywood classics to subvert casting politics and reclaim narrative agency. Her forthcoming project, Strange Evidence (2025, with Matt’s Gallery), explores actor Merle Oberon’s story of racial passing through body horror and film noir, using the gallery as both film set and exhibition space.
The seminar is organised through PLACE – Public Life, Arts and Critical Engagement at the Artistic Faculty, University of Gothenburg. Snacks and Refreshments will be served.
Programme
- 16:00 – Introduction to event and speakers– Onkar Kular
- 16:10 – Screening of films by Michelle Williams Gamaker
- 16:45 – Presentation: Michelle Williams Gamaker
- 17:15 – Break
- 17:30 – Presentation: Nina Mangalanayagam
- 18:00 – Conversation: Jyoti Mistry, Michelle Williams Gamaker & Nina Mangalanayagan
- 18:45 – Summative comments and observations: Onkar Kular
- 19:00 – End