Ambra D'Antone
Dr. Ambra D'Antone
The Warburg Institute (september 2022)
Vita
Dr Ambra D’Antone is a historian of Surrealism and Modernism, with a particular focus on early to mid-twentieth century historiography of Turkey and the South-Eastern Mediterranean. Having recently completed her PhD at The Courtauld and Tate, she is now Research Associate of the Bilderfahrzeuge International Research Project, based at The Warburg Institute in London. Recent publications include “Looking Past: Turkish Surrealism in Translation”, in Surrealism in North Africa and Western Asia: Crossings and Encounters, edited by Monique Bellan and Julia Drost (Ergon, 2021) and “Taking Time: Fateh Moudarres’ Works on Paper and Syrian Chronology between Modernity and Contemporaneity”, in Hiwar: Sense and Intuition. Edited by Mouna Atassi and Shireen Atassi (Kaph Books, 2022). In 2022 she has been awarded the Gerald D. Feldman travel grants of the Max Weber Stiftung for archival research in foreign countries, and is doing research at DFK Paris in September 2022.
Research focus
The Persistence of Memory: Revivalism as Nationalism in the South-East Mediterranean.
At the intersection of the historiography of Surrealism and modern art in the South-East Mediterranean, this project charts the emergence of ‘the surreal’ as a critical historiographical term between the 1930s and 1960s in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. Translated from Surrealist discourses, ‘the surreal’ in these quarters complicated a univocal relationship between art making and rationalist epistemes and was employed by art historians in projects that sought to ‘rewrite’, revive or otherwise recircuit their national art production in writing, motivated by political and nationalist debates. Across different outputs, the project’s case studies include: the articulation of a Surrealist vocabulary through scientific methodologies in 1940s Syria; the writings on shadow theatre in 1940s Turkey by Ismayıl Hakkı Baltacıoğlu (1886-1978); the formulation of a Renaissance in Turkish art history by Mazhar Şevket İpşiroğlu (1908-1985).
Contact
