Dr. Holiday Powers

Specialization

Modern and Contemporary Arab Art

Education

Ph.D., Cornell University, 2015
M.A., Cornell University, 2013   
B.A., Scripps College (Cum Laude), 2008   

Biography

Holiday Powers is assistant professor of global modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on art in the Arab world. She received her Ph.D. in 2015 from Cornell University and her doctoral work was focused on modernism in Morocco and especially the Casablanca School. This research forms the basis for her first book project. Her research emphasizes the articulation of local and transnational discourses in modern and contemporary art, particularly within the Arab world, from the perspective of postcolonial and feminist theory. Her new research is focused on representations of maternal bodies in global modern and contemporary art. She has contributed to publications including Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and the Journal of North African Studies, as well as book chapters for publications including Under the Skin: Feminist Art from the Middle East and North Africa Today. She has also written encyclopedia entries for Grove Art Online, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, and the Encyclopedia of Modern Art and the Arab World. She has additionally been active in contemporary art, including her role as Artistic Program Coordinator and Parallel Projects for the Marrakech Biennale 5, and has curated two exhibitions for the VCUarts Qatar gallery.

Research Interests

Morocco, Arab modernism, maternal bodies in contemporary art, global contemporary art, postcolonial theory, feminist theory

Publications

Powers, Holiday. Moroccan Modernism: The Casablanca School (1956- 1978) (book manuscript under review)

Powers, Holiday. “Cybernetics and Postcolonial Utopias,” Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa, Intellect and University of Chicago Press (Peer review) (Forthcoming 2023)

Powers, Holiday. “Decolonization.” Grove Art Online (Forthcoming 2022)

Powers, Holiday. Critical artist biography, Mohammed Melehi, African Modernism in America, 1947–1967, exhibition catalogue published by the American Federation of Arts (Forthcoming 2022)

Powers, Holiday. “Jassim Zaini and the Maternal Body,” Modern Art in the Arabian Peninsula, American University of Cairo (Peer review) (Forthcoming 2022)

Powers, Holiday. “Design and the Casablanca School,” An African History of Design, American University of Cairo (Accepted)

Powers, Holiday. “Reading Modern Art in the Arab World from Morocco and Qatar,” Review of Middle East Studies (2020): 54 (1).

Powers, Holiday. “Transmission as Resistance in the Work of Zineb Sedira.” Under the Skin: Feminist Art from the Middle East and North Africa Today, ed. Ceren Oznipar and Mary Healy. Oxford Press for Proceedings of the British Academy. (Peer review) (2020)

Powers, Holiday. “Local Modernism, Transnational Solidarity: Souffles and the Cultural Politics of Liberation.” Axis of Solidarity. The Africa Institute. (Accepted)

Powers, Holiday. “Geographies of Research, Geographies of Modernism.” Arab Art Knowledge Production. Darat al Funun. (2020)

Powers, Holiday. “Superman is an immigrant, too: Space and Place in the Work of Khalid Albaih.” Nka. (Accepted)

Powers, Holiday. “Articulating the National and Transnational in Exhibition Histories of the Casablanca School.” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Special Issue: Global Black Consciousness. Ed. Salah Hassan and Margaret Crawford (2018): 42.

Powers, Holiday. “The Casablanca School.” Catalog for That Feverish Leap into the Fierceness of Life. Art Dubai Modern (2018).

Powers, Holiday. Exhibition review, “When Arts Become Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938-1965)” at the Palace of Arts, Cairo. African Arts Volume 51, Number 1, 2018

Presentations

Powers, Holiday. “Paris and the Artists of the Casablanca School.” Decolonizing Paris, Capital of the Arts. College Art Association. February 2021

Powers, Holiday. Roundtable Participant, African Modernism/New Scholarship. African Studies Association. November 2020

Powers, Holiday. “The Absence of the Maternal Body in Contemporary Art.” New Conversation Series. Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. March 2020

Powers, Holiday. “Local Modernism, Transnational Solidarity: Souffles and the Cultural Politics of Liberation.” Axis of Solidarity: Landmarks, Platforms, Futures. Tate Modern, London. February 2019

Powers, Holiday. “Geographies of Research, Geographies of Modernism.” Knowledge Production: Examining Arab Art Today. Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan. July 2018

Powers, Holiday. “Transmission as Resistance in the Work of Zineb Sedira.” Feminist Temporalities and Art Histories in the Middle East and North Africa. College Art Association, New York. February 2017