research/teaching

Nicola Lo Calzo, "The Queer Posture in Art: A Safeguard Against Essentialism", in The Conversation, 24th June 2025.

An unprecedented process is underway in the art world: the visibility of "subaltern" artists and marginalized narratives is becoming a central concern. In this context, the queer posture can serve as a means of resisting a return to identity-based essentialism.

A Queer and Marron Photography – Representing the Memories of Slavery in the Postcolonial Era
Thesis Defense – Thursday, June 5, 2025, at 2:00 PM
Ygrec Art Center – ENSAPC

Under the supervision of Sylvie Brodziak (CY Cergy Paris University) and Corinne Diserens (Hamburger Kunsthalle, ETH Zürich)
Jury members: Sylvie Brodziak (CY Cergy Parisi Université), Corinne Diserens (Hamburger Kunsthalle), Myriam Cottias (CNRS), Antoine Idier (Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye), Simon Njami (Sorbonne), Magali Nachtergael (Université de Bordeaux), Anne-Marie Petitjean (CY Cergy Parisi Université), Rafael Sanzio Araújo dos Anjos (Universidade de Brasilia).

This thesis brings together two complementary dimensions of artistic research: a photographic practice developed around the memories of resistance to slavery — particularly the memory of Nego Fugido in the community of Acupe (Bahia, Brazil) — and a theoretical reflection on the foundations of a “queer and marron photography,” envisioned as a way of “seeing from below” and “seeing askew.” The work explores the capacity of photography to convey subaltern memories and to deconstruct hegemonic imaginaries, at the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, and critical thought.

Limited seating, reservation required.

I am delighted to share with you the publication "Les Minorités au Musée" published by La Documentation Française, under the direction of Olivier Maheo. My contribution focuses on the issues of restitution in photography, based on a case study, the photographic series “Bundles of Wood”, on the Underground Railroad legacy in New York State.

Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Ensapc invited photographer and reseracher Nicola Lo Calzo and art curator Kathryn Weir to hold a new course on relation between art and social sciences: "Pratiques artistiques contemporaines : régards croisées entre art et sciences sociales".

The book ARTS ET ACTIVISMES AFROQUEERS by KARTHALA will be out on June 20, 2024. I am so glad to contribute with a text on (under) representations of queer body in contemporary African photography. All my thanks to Dorothée Boulanger Susanne Gehrmann.  Along with texts by Sylvie Brodziak, Régis Samba-Kounzi and Magali Nachtergael between others.

The next issue of French journal FOCALES is online. This issue is focused on Contemporary photography and Anthropology. I am so glad to sign a text on queer and decolonial perspectives in photography,  based on my ongoing doctoral research. All my thanks to Julie Noirot and the team of Presses Universitaires de Sainte Etienne.

Created on the initiative of three art schools - the National School of Arts of Paris-Cergy, the School of Arts and Media of Caen-Cherbourg and the Villa Arson in Nice - PLARA is a platform digital editorial devoted to research in the arts. As part of this new platform, I am delighted to announce the first publication of the Kam project. All my thanks to ENSAPC director Corinne Diserens, Head of research Martina Olivero and all the redaction.

ACCADEMIA DELLE BELLE ARTI DI BRERA invited me to keep a workshop on my artistic practice, notably the KAM project and my research on photography and postcolonial perspectives. As part of my doctoral project at ENSAPC and CYU. All my Thanks to historian, teacher and curator Nicoletta Leonardi for this invitation. FREE ENTRY. More info here: Kam-Brera

I was in Zurich invited as part of the international workshop "METHODS AND MEDIA OF THE PRESENT/ABSENT : Visual approaches to Vodun and Vodou", organized by University of Zurich and SNSF-research project. I presented my work TCHAMBA and my practice as photographer working in a Postcolonial context: "The Right to Opacity: Photographing Vodun TCHAMBA in the Postcolonial times"

University of Zurich
ENSAPC - Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts Paris-Cergy
CY Cergy Paris Université

With:

Elyan Hill (Dallas), Birgit Meyer (Utrecht), Meera Venkatachalam (Mumbai), Angelantonio Grossi (Moraga, CA), David Frohnapfel (Berlin), Zainabu Jallo (Bern/Basel), Alissa Jordan (Philadelphia), Dora Imhof/U5 (Zurich), Michaela Schäuble (Bern) and Sela Kodjo Adjei (Accra), Gina Athena Ulysse (Santa Cruz) and Sasha Huber (Helsinki), Bärbel Küster (Zurich), Christopher Nixon (Wiesbaden), Niklas Wolf (Zurich), Laeïla Adjovi (Dakar), Nicola Lo Calzo (Paris),Rita Mawuena Benissan (Accra) Timothy R. Landry (Hartford, CT), Kwame Akoto Bamfo (Nuhalenya), Kyrah Malika Daniels (Atlanta).

Glad to start my fourth year as a teacher at ENSAPC, with the course "La Mémoire du lion", focused on postcolonial and queer issues in photography.

International Symposium: Attraversamenti: Traiettorie del Postcoloniale nelle Americhe

4 and 5 December 2023
Meeting Room Biblioteca Beato Pellegrino / Padova

Scientific Committee
Gabriele Bizzarri Maria Fontes Emanuele Leonardi Renata Morresi Annalisa Oboe Marika Piva Anna Scacchi

The new issue of RIVISTA DI STUDI DI FOTOGRAFIA, the only  Italian academic review dedicated to photography studies, is finally available. So thankful to curators Nicoletta Leonardi and Monica Maffioli for their great work on this new issue. I am so happy to be able to publish the first results of my ongoing doctoral research at ENSAPC and Cergy University. My text propose a reflection on postcolonial photography.

Photography and Queer. How to hold together these two conceptual mastodons, often associated with specific genealogies but in fact linked and united by multiple alliances? This day of research-creation tries to answer this question, through the works of contemporary visual artists whose main medium is photography.

A QUEER PHOTO ARCHIVE Symposium - JEU DE PAUME
Under the directions of Nicola Lo Calzo
10th December 2022 - 11am-7pm

Guest Artists:
Josué Azor - Haïti
Brandon Gercara - La Réunion
Sunil Gupta - Inde-Canada
SMITH - France
Chantal Regnault - France-Usa
Joëlle Sambi - Bélgique-Congo
Regis Samba-Kounzi - France-Congo-Angola

All my thanks to :

Jeu de Paume
Quentin Bajac, director
Marta Ponsa, Head of artistic projects and cultural action.Responsable des projets artistiques et de l’action culturelle
Santiago Essses, Technical director and all the team.
 
Ecole Nationale supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy and École Universitaire de Recherche CY Humanités Création Patrimoine
Martina Olivero, the head of research and doctoral program
Corinnes Diserens, the director of Ecole Nationale supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy.

A big thanks to all the artist, the art historian Anaïs Feyeux for her modereting, Willy Ouattara and Marco dell’Omodarme for their advices.

I am pleased to invite you to the Quai Branly for a screening meeting around my work Tchamba as part of "Ethnology will surprise you" from April 9 to 10, 2022. The event is free.

"Photographing the invisible: Tchamba vodun" by Nicola Lo Calzo - Saturday, April 09, 2022 from 6:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Since 2013, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac has honored young ethnologists, photographers and renowned researchers during a weekend devoted to ethnology. A booming science, based on fieldwork, historical, anthropological and archaeological archives, ethnology provides a better understanding of the complexity and variety of our societies and cultural forms.

At the invitation of the FOKAL foundation and within the framework of activities related to the Fund for Emerging Photography in Haiti (FPEH), I led an online methodological seminar on "critical photography" based on my photographic and doctoral research (CY Uni and ENSAPC). From December 13 to 17, 2021.

Seminar "Colonial Slavery in European Museum: Arts and representations".
Nicola Lo Calzo, (Université de Paris Cergy - ENSAPC) On the use of photography to address counter-narratives of slavery: the Cham project

I presented a text on the use of "give back" to produce a situated and decolonial photography, notably the experience of Obia exhibition produced in Saint Laurent du Maroni in 2016, by Les Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane and the CIAP

As part of the exhibition Ângela Ferreira, structures et gestes- Independence Cha Cha & #BucketsystemMustFall, the Ygrec-ENSAPC art center and the Théâtre de La Commune organize the seminar Survivances and ghosts of colonialism in contemporary societies - activism, research and artistic devices.

Nicola Lo Calzo - On the uses of photography to address the memories of slavery: The CHAM project, Bushinengue heritage and resistance bodies.

September 17-18, 2021
Théâtre de La Commune - Aubervilliers

APELA Congress, September 22-24, 2021
Queer activism and aesthetics in African literature

Nicola Lo Calzo (Université de Paris Cergy - ENSAPC) - Écritures photographiques, masculinité et corps queer en Afrique subsaharienne : l’oeuvre de Regis Samba Kounzi

L’engagement ethnographique – Observer, décrire et comprendre l’expérience humaine, a workshop organized by André Chapatte.
Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva
September 27-30, 2021.

André Chappatte, Responsable du projet
Aline Samaké, Assistante du projet
Bourahima Diomandé, Postdoctorant
Salomé Okoekpen, Doctorante
Bassirou Gaye, Doctorant
Katrin Langewiesche (Anthropologue; Mainz Universität, Allemagne)
Abdourahmane Seck (Anthropologue et historien ; Université Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis, Sénégal)
Alice Aterianus-Owenga (Socio-anthropologue ; Université de Lausanne, Suisse)
Peter Lambertz (Anthropologue ; Université de Louvain, Belgique)
Nicola Lo Calzo (Photographe, EUR Doctorant, CY-ENSAPC, Paris, France)
Christian Vium – (Socio-anthropologue, photographe & vidéaste ; Aarhus University, Denmark)

As part of the new issue of ACOMA, Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani, i wroted the text AYITI, Memorie e oblio della Rivoluzione haitiana: un approccio fotografico. Summer Issue n.18, 2020.

Ten years after the inauguration, at the Aquitaine Museum of the section "Bordeaux, Atlantic Trade and Slavery", this seventh edition of the Rencontres Atlantiques proposes to analyze the material traces of slavery and treaties in terms of semiophores. Nicola Lo Calzo is presenting "Cham. Mémoires de l’esclavage colonial : une enquête photographique, 2010-2020".


09-10 Mai, 2019
Musée d’Aquitaine - 20 Cours Pasteur. 33000 Bordeaux

I'm travelling to Sao Tomé island from 18th August in order to develop a new chapter of the Cham project.
The work will be done in collaboration with Alliance Française de São Tomé et Príncipe. I'll be available for assignments.

As part of the seminar "Slavery and post-slavery", organized by the CIRESC, Lo Calzo is invited to share a panel with the anthropologist Alessandra Brivio around our works on Tchamba vodun in Togo and Benin. Many thanks to Gaetano Ciarcia for inviting me.

March 9,  3 pm. EHESS, 105 Bd Raspail 75006, Paris

AIDES (French community-based non-profit organisatio fighting HIV/AIDS invited Nicola Lo Calzo to speak on his work as part the first Caribbean colloquium around lgbti rights and struggle against homophobia in the Caribbean: ReLOVution.

Seminar Caribbean ReLOVution
Friday 5th, Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th aPRIL 2019.
Langley Resort Fort Royal - Dehaies - Guadeloupe.

Harvard University invited Nicola Lo Calzo to present the work Regla (Cuba) during the international conference Black Portraitures IV: The Color of Silence. Many thanks to Alejandro de la Fuente.

Afro-Cuban Heritage: emancipatory practices and cultural action by Nicola Lo Calzo,  Ivor Miller and Paulette Young,
Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street March 24, 2018 2:45 pm - 4:15 pm, Harvard University, Cambridge, US.

The University Paris-Est Créteil with the association "Thinking the World" organize a talk with a projection around the CHAM project , Tuesday, December 4 at 18:00 at the Amphitheater numero 1 of the campus.

UNESCO: Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa. An international coalition involving artists in the promotion of the General History of Africa was launched at UNESCO on 7 October. The coalition will help young people use the unique instrument that the History represents in recounting the continent’s past from an African perspective.

Slavery’s legacies, black struggles & white suprematism, Panel guided by Jean-Philippe Dedieu.

With Nicola Lo Calzo, Audrey Célestine & Chrystal M. Fleming.

Monday 16th January 7pm, Columbia Global Centers - Paris.
Reid Hall, 4 rue de Chevreuse , 75006 Paris.

International colloquium of the Memorial of the Abolition of Slavery: an Architecture of Memory
June 7/8 2013 - Auditorium of the national school of architecture of Nantes
Scientific direction : Françoise Vergès