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African Ceramics Across the Continent

Pages from Allison Martino's Form and Surface
Pages from Allison Martino's Form and Surface

There’s a new book out about one of the most significant collections of African ceramics in the U.S. Form and Surface, released in 2023, comes from Allison Martino, the Laura and Raymond Wielgus Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and Indigenous Art of the Americas at Eskenazi Museum of Art. The artifacts in the collection were collected by William M. Itter, Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Indiana University. Form and Surface dives into issues of cross-cultural exchange, cultural diversity, embodiment, temporality, and spirituality. In our interview, Martino and I discuss immoral archaeological practices, her favorite female ceramicists, and more.

Alex Chambers runs WFIU’s arts desk, and produces and hosts WFIU’s Inner States, a weekly podcast and radio show about arts, culture, and ideas from southern Indiana and beyond. He’s the co-creator of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about the present, produced in partnership with Indiana Humanities. He has a PhD in American Studies, with a dissertation called Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge, and a book of poems called Bindings: A Preparation, about domestic life and empire. In his spare time, he teaches audio storytelling at the IU Media School. When he’s not in the woods gathering sound, you might see him out for a run on the streets of Bloomington.