Books

In The Contested Crown (Chicago, 2022), I meditate on the case of a spectacular feather headdress believed to have belonged to Montezuma, the last emperor of the Aztecs. I follow conflicting desires for this crown across continents, while exploring the possibilities for repatriation.

xxxxxx

xxxxx

“The work of Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, The Contested Crown, gives us a detailed social and historical cartography of the quetzalapanecáyotl. The book mobilizes its material history, to offer us an itinerary that goes from the fifteenth and sixteenth century history of its imperial appropriation and display in the Wunderkammer of the Castle of Ambras till its exhibition today in the vitrines of the ‘Weltmuseum’ in Vienna. While the museum is concerned with asserting the ‘authentic history’ of the quetzalapanecáyotl and its minute preservation, the book of Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll helps us to turn the quetzalapanecáyotl into an unsuspected mirror, one that reveals the history of the formation of the white gaze, of the regimes of ownership and representation that constitute and sustain the colonial difference. Carroll’s reflections on the vitrine, helps us understand how in the modern/colonial system of representation, the vitrine instruments the formation of the ‘white gaze’.”

Rolando Vazquez, from the Preface to the German translation of this book

Art in the Time of Colony, (Ashgate Press, 2014 / 2nd Edition Routledge 2016)

The Importance of Being Anachronistic, (Melbourne: Discipline, 2016)

Botanical Drift, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017

Bordered Lives: Immigration Detention Archive, 2020

I am interested in writing as a dialogic practise in which I am listening as a mediator for voices that are otherwise not heard.

I have written several scripts, poems, stories that I also perform live, and mostly non-fiction that experiments with the writing of history. I write the occasional piece of criticism but only from the position of choice about a piece that has moved me.

Each of these publications is freely available along with others not listed here but available on request.

Recent and soon forthcoming books

Tupaia, Captain Cook and the Voyage of the Endeavour: A Material History, (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2022).

The Contested Crown: The politics of Repatriation between America and Europe (Chicago University Press, 2022)

Mit Fremden Federn (Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2022)

Bordered Lives: Immigration Detention Archive (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2020)

Special Journal Issues and Books Edited

Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the invasive herbarium, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017. NOTE THIS IS SOLD OUT BUT I HAVE A FEW AUTHORS COPIES IF YOU ARE INTERSTED IN PURCHASING ONE

Artist and Empire, Third Text journal forum, 2017.

The Importance of Being Anachronistic: Contemporary Aboriginal Art and Museum Reparations, Discipline journal with Third Text publications, 2016.

The Vienna Zocalo, Vienna: Academy of Fine Arts Press, 2012.

Poetry

Aschley Painting at the Embassy & Penumbra Cadiz, (London: Molly Bloom, 2013)

Three Tiles of Text, In: Her Eyes and My Voice: A Relationship in Ekphrasis, Connie Butler and Lauren Godfrey (Eds), (London, Hato Press, 2012).

Interrogation at the Embassy, (Stuttgart: Edition Taube, 2010, 2nd Edition 2012).

Façades, In: The Harvard Dudley Literary Review, Volume 11, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005), 66-67.

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

‘Museopiracy: Redressing the commemoration of the Endeavour’s voyage to the Pacific in Processions for Tupaia’, Third Text, (2019). In press.

‘NonWest by North: Marianne North and William Colenso’s responses to plantlife and the classification of economic botany’, Third Text journal special Issue on ‘The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions’, Shela Sheikh and Ros Gray (Eds), (2018) pp. 290-310.

‘The Senses, Presences and Beliefs in Indigenous Art History: Towards a recognition of non-Western historiography and methodology’, with Damian Skinner in Furthering, nurturing and futuring Global Art Histories, special issue of Kunstlicht, (2018), pp. 72-80.

‘The Art of Dissident Domesticity: Julian Assange, King Prempeh and the Prison House’, with Jesse Shipley and Michal Murawski, Social Text, 133, 35, 4, (2017), pp. 113-152.

‘Art and Criminology of the Border: The making of the immigration detention archive’, with Mary Bosworth, Oxford Artistic and Practice Based Research Platform, April 2017.

‘Censorship and X-Ray of Malevich’s Black Square, 1915’, Third Text special issue on Decolonizing Colour, Natasha Eaton (Ed.), with Dina Gusjenova, (2019). Forthcoming.

‘Sartre’s Boomerang: The Archive as Choreographed Readymade’ in: The Importance of Being Anachronistic: Contemporary Aboriginal Art and Museum Reparations, special issue of Discipline, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (ed.), (2016), pp. 19-51.

‘Anachronismus oder Vitrinendenken’, Floorplan, online journal, (2015).

‘The Presence of Absence: Tommy McRae and Judy Watson in Australia, the imaginary grandstand at the Royal Academy in London’, World Art Journal, 4.2, (2014).

‘Fight the dragon long, the dragon you become: Performing Viewers in the Graffiti Monument’, Laboratorium, 2 (2013).

‘Koloniale Kunstgeschichte und die Ästhetik der Klassifikation: Wilhelm von Blandowski’s Encyclopaedia von Australien’, Mitteilungen des Freundeskreis für Cartographica, 22 (2013) 2-35.

‘Visualizing a Continent: Blandowski and the Encyclopaedia of Australia 1862’, Arcadia, online journal (2014).

…(excerpting collections) from a history of interventions, On-Curating: Reinterpreting Collections, (Zurich, University of the Arts), April 2011, 20-24.

‘The Very Mark of Repression: The Dismantling of the Palast der Republik and the New Schloss Berlin’, Architectural Design Journal, (Sept. 2010), 10-18.

‘Humboldt’s Meal Micropolitics: Exploring Ethico-Aesthetics’, Inflexions, 3, (2009)

‘Re-membering the Body, J.J. Winckelmann’s Ekphrasis’, Word & Image Journal of Verbal and Visual Inquiry, 21/3 (2005) 261-269.

Contributions to Books

‘Painting the Political in Oceanian Textile Cultures: Collectivity, syncretism and globalization’, in J. Harris (ed.), A Companion to Textile Culture, (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019). In press.

‘Art and Migration: On the Power of Movement’, Migration: Darwin Lecture Series, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. In press.

‘The Aesthetics of Classification Indigenous Classification and Enlightenment’s Taxonomy. Wilhelm Blandowski’s Encyclopaedia of Australia (1849–1859)’, in N. Zschocke (ed.), Productive Universals – Specific Situations. Analysis and Intervention in Art, Architecture and Urbanism, (Berlin: Sternberg, 2019) In press.

Appropriating Universal Centrality: Containing the World in Berlin’s new Humboldt Forum, in The (City) Centre Cannot Hold? New Monumentality, Neo-Modernity and Other Zombie Urban Utopias, UCL Press, 2019. In press.

‘Theatrum Botanicum: Restitutions to Nature’s Ghosts’, Shela Sheikh and Uriel Orlow (Eds.), Theatrum Botanicum, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018), pp. 237-243.

‘The Inbetweenness of the Vitrine: Three Paraerga of a Feather Headdress’, P. Basu (ed.), The In-Betweenness of Things: Materialising Mediation and Movement between Worlds ~ A Cabinet of Curiosities ~, (London: Bloomsbury, 2017) pp. 25-45.

‘Anachronically Archived: Time in Contemporary Art’, in I. McLean and Darren Jorgenson (eds.), The Archival turn in Australian Aboriginal art, (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2016) pp. 342-361.

‘Introduction’, and chapter ‘Marianne North, William Colenso, and Economic Botany at Kew’, Botanical Drift: Economic Botany and its Plant Protagonists, (Berlin: Sternberg, 2017).

‘Ready-mades for repatriation, poetic re-enactments, and comic performances for the camera’, Julie Gough, in Terri Ann White (ed.), (Perth, University of Western Australia, 2016).

‘Living Paint, even after the death of the colony’, in Mihnea Mircan (ed.), Allegory of the Cave Painting, (Milan, Mousse Press, 2015).

Object to Project: Artist’s Interventions in Museums. In: Sculpture in the Museum, Ed. Christopher Marshall, (London, Ashgate Press), 2012.

‘Curating Curiosity: Wonder’s Colonial Phenomenology’, in: Timothy Mehigan (Ed.), Frameworks, Artworks, Place: The Space of Perception in the Modern World, (Amsterdam, Rodopi Press), 2008, pp. 203-225. Reviewed by Eugenia Fratzeskou, Leonardo, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2008), Vol. 42, No.1, 86-87.

Critical Essays and Reviews

Sovereignty: Indigenizing and Decolonizing curatorial practise, Art Monthly, December 2016, pp. 36-39.

Everywhen: Interview with Stephen Gilchrist at Harvard Art Museums, Art Monthly, September 2016

Appropriating Universal Centrality: Containing the World in Berlin’s new Humboldt Forum, Calvert Journal, May 2016. Online

My Big Ugly Art World: Grayson Perry on Aboriginal art and how to be undiplomatic in the history wars, Art Monthly, November 2015, pp. 38-41.

Being in Detention: Media Arts at Colnbrook IRC. Border Criminologies, Oxford University, (2015). Online

Australia by Wilhelm von Blandowski, Australian Aboriginal Studies Journal (Canberra: Australian Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012), 1, 105-108.

The Object as Subject: dOCUMENTA 13, Artlink (Adelaide: Artlink, 2012), 32, 81-85

Breaking with Tradition. Artlink Indigenous, (Adelaide, Artlink), June 2011.

Documentary as Evidence?, In: Kaleidoscope, Ed. Joanna Fiduccia, (Milan, Kaleidoscope), 8, Sept. 2010.

Culture Warriors. Artlink: Blak on Blak, (Adelaide, Artlink) Vol. 30, 1, March 2010, 112-115.

Desert Visions Reach Across an Ocean, In: The Sydney Morning Herald, (August 25, 2007). Also printed as exhibition text at The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, (Charlottesville, University of Virginia, 2007).

Our culture’s still cringing, In: The Age, (July 25, 2005)

Within Without: Elisabeth Weissensteiner, Sculpture, 24, 3, April 2005.

Paul Capsis at home in Vienna, In: RealTime, 47, (2002), 30-36

Exhibition Catalogues

Bataille, Nieztsche, Clemens Wild: Portraits des Innenlebens als soziale Kritik, in: Clemens Wild: Outsider Artist, (Milan: Bolo Papers, 2016).

Ore Black Ore, in: Allegory of Cave Painting, (Extracity Kunsthal, Antwerpen, 2014).

The Artist as CV, in: Super Vero, (Vienna: Academy of Fine Arts), 2013.

The Rise and fall, with Alex Schweder, in: Chan, Carson and Nadim Samman (eds),Higher Atlas/Au-delà de l’Atlas, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012) 313-336.

Kranich Museum, (Hessenburg: Kranich Museum, 2011).

Le Musée comme la Silhouette, in: Jean-Charles Agboton-Jumeau (Ed.), Exposition 5-31 Janvier 2009, (Cherbourg-Octeville: Ecole des beaux-arts de Cherbourg-Octeville, 2009), 22-29.

Europe Lost and Found, in: Basekamp (Ed.), Plausible Artworlds, (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, 2007), 6-8.

The Graffiti Monument: Rotated History in the Balkan. Lexicon of Provisional Futures, Eds. Ana and Marc Djoric, (Amsterdam, Stealth), 2009, 2-5.

Living Monuments, with Azra Aksamija, in: Mihnea Mircan (Ed.), Memosphere: Rethinking Monuments, (Venice Biennale: Revolver Press, 2007), 4-6. Also published in an installation titled Living Monuments + Track Changes, in: Lost Highway Exhibition, (Ljubljana: Skuc Gallery, 2007), 10-12.

6: Six artists from the MIT visual arts program, (Cambridge, MIT Centre for Advanced Visual Studies and Space Other Gallery Boston, 2006).

Contributions to Conference Proceedings

‘Immigrate into your Shadows (or the border will eat us)’, Proceedings of the 9th SAR – International Conference on Artistic Research, Anya Lewin (Ed.), April 11th – 13th 2018, University of Plymouth, UK.

‘Wilhelm von Blandowski und der Versuch, indigenes Wissen von Australien zu verbildlichen’, Whose Heritage?, Anne-Marie Bonnet and Floorplan (Eds.), (Munich: Autopress, 2017), pp.126-163.

‘Partially Proclaimed: Pictographic Law in the 1830 Tasmanian Picture Board’, Postcolonial Justice, (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2016) pp. 73-90.

‘The beard: A lecture performance with Ludwig Leichhardt and Wilhelm von Blandowski, 1860|2013 re-enactment’, in: Leichhard: A scientist in a strange land, Lindsay Barrett, Lars Eckstein, Andrew Wright Hurley, and Anja Schwarz (Eds), 1001 Leichhardts, International Conference, 2013, published through Queensland Museum.

‘Wer performt Kunst? Die performenden Betrachter Innen’, This Sentence is Now Being Performed, (Vienna: Akademie Der Bildenden Kunst, 2010), pp. 31–5.

‘Vitrinendenken: Vectors between Subject and Object’, in: G. Ulrich Großmann and P. Krutisch (eds), The Challenge of the Object, Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, (Nuremberg: Germanisches National Museum, 2013)

Small Mirrors to Large Empires: Towards a Theory of Meta-museums in Contemporary Art (2008). Crossing Cultures, Economies of desire: art collecting and dealing across cultures, Proceedings of the 32nd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (CIHA), Ed. Jaynie Anderson, (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press), 2009, 1012-1017.

Artist Residencies held

2019 Sharjah Biennale with Nikolaus Gansterer

2018 Australian Embassy, Berlin

2017 Austrian Cultural Forum London

2016 Papermoon Theatre and Contemporary Art Jogjakarta, Indonesia

2014 Savvy Contemporary, Berlin

2013 Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne, artist in residence

2012 Wysing Arts Center, UK, escalator artist in residence
Riad el Fenn, Marrakech, biennale artist in residence with Alex Schweder
2011 La Cieba Grafika, Print Workshop, Mexican cultural forum artist in residence