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Joe Konieczny is a PhD Student in Art History and African Studies at the CUNY Graduate Centre, where his research focuses on the phenomenology of modern and contemporary Hausa art and the cultural production of the Western Sahel. His preliminary dissertation work attends to photography, film, and performance and their interrelation with the disciplinary formation of modern art history by way of the trans-Sahel trade. Joe retains a broader interest in the relationships between museological institutions and Global Indigenous populations. As a practitioner, he works against the stultification of art historical practice and in favour of a rigorous engagement with formal theory.

Joe’s research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Mellon Foundation, and the City University of New York. He has curated exhibitions with the Anna and Avrom Yanovsky Collection and Silverfish Magazine, supported by the Toronto Arts Council.

Joe is currently an adjunct faculty member at Brooklyn College and the College of Staten Island, a co-editor of the H-AfrArts listserv at the H-Net project from Michigan State University, and cofounder of the Modern Africa Working Group at CUNY. He has previously served as a restitution fellow at AfriMuHeRe, editorial assistant for the Art Canada Institute, and research assistant for Rencontres de Bamako. Joe’s writing has been published by The Museum of Modern Art, Visual Studies, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.