SYMPOSIUM: Metropolitan Crossings: Art, Displacement, and the Making of Modern London (1930s–1970s)

5 - 6 November 2025 
Overview

SYMPOSIUM

Metropolitan Crossings: Art, Displacement, and the Making of Modern London (1930s–1970s)

 

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
108a Boundary Road, St John’s Wood, London, NW8 0RH

5–6 November 2025

 

Registration: Opening Soon

 

This symposium explores how exile, migration, and displacement shaped the artistic and cultural landscape of London between the 1930s and the 1970s. Across two days, the presentations will examine the diverse trajectories of artists who arrived from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and consider how their experiences of immigration and cultural negotiation transformed British art. Themes include diasporic solidarities, the politics of mobility, activism, institution-building and the role of curators and collectors, identity erasure, female agency and rebellion, design, and the impact of memory, mental health, and trauma on artistic practice. The programme highlights London as both a contested and generative space for forging new artistic networks and forms of expression.
 

Day 1 – Wednesday, 5 November 2025


09:00–09:45| Gallery Opens / Coffee and Networking
09:45–10:00 | Opening Remarks and introduction to the Ben Uri Research Unit

 

 

Panel 1 – From China and the Philippines to London | starts at 10:00

 

Chair: Sophie Guo, The Courtauld Institute of Art


10:00 | Lu Zhang (Independent scholar) – “Mr. F. T. Cheng Hosted Us at China Restaurant”: Art, Food, and Diasporic Expression in 1930s London
10:20 | Luna Huang Ruomin (Independent scholar) – Identity, Assemblage and Space- making: Diasporic Chinese Art Institutions in London
10:40 | Anne-Grit Becker (University of Siegen) – Knives and Poems: David Medalla’s “space for people”
11:05–11:20 | Discussion

 

 

11:20–11:35 | Coffee Break

 

 

Panel 2 – Diasporic Negotiations and Cross-Cultural Solidarities (Part I) | starts at 11:35


Chair: Joy Onyejiako, SOAS/Ben Uri Gallery and Museum


11:35 | Basil Olton (Highgate Art School) – Curating Artistic Migration in East London

11:55 | Helena Cuss (Independent scholar) – Diasporic solidarities? Jewish refugee art dealers and Black Commonwealth artists in postwar London
12:15 | Sabo Kpade (Independent scholar and curator) – Uzo Egonu’s London: Displacement, Belonging, and Archival Entanglements in the Making of Modern Metropole
12:40–12:55 | Discussion

 

 

12:55–13:55 | Lunch Break

 

 

Panel 2 (cont.) – Diasporic Negotiations and Cross-Cultural Solidarities (Part II) | starts 13:55


Chair: Joy Onyejiako, SOAS/Ben Uri Gallery and Museum


13:55 | Liz Bruchet and Ming Tiampo (UCL and Carleton University) – Slade Overseas Students and Conjunctures of Global Activism
14:15 | Fabian Röderer Williams (University of Hamburg) – Going to Britain? Photographic Politics of West Indian Arrival
14:35 | Ed Kettleborough (University of Bristol) – Image in Revolt: Frank Bowling and Derek Boshier at the Grabowski Gallery
15:05–15:20 | Discussion

 

 

15:20–15:35 | Coffee Break

 

 

Panel 3 – London Between the Mediterranean and the Baltic | starts 15:35


Chair: Elena Konyushikhina, The Courtauld Institute of Art


15:35 | Michael Paraskos (Imperial College London) – The Inflected Migration of Stass Paraskos (cancelled)
15:55 | Andra Silapētere (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art) – Latvian Exile Community in London: Contexts and Creative expressions
16:15 | Jelena Sofronijevic (Gray’s School of Art) – Sculpture and Solidarity: Petar Hadži Boškov in London, Bradford, and Skopje
16:40–16:55 | Discussion

 

16:55–17:05 | Coffee Break

 

 

Panel 4 – Geographies of Belonging from Iraq and Armenia | starts 17:05

 

Chair: tbc


17:05 | Alisha O’Brien-Coker (Tate Britain) – Beyond Babylon:  Exploring and cross-comparing the artistic production of Dia al-Azzawi and Walid Siti between 1970s and 1980s
17:25 | Alyson Wharton-Durgaryan (University of Lincoln) – An Armenian Exodus: The Absence of Armenians in Shaping the Post-War London Market
17:50–18:00 | Discussion

 

18:00 | Drinks at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum

 

 

Day 2 – Thursday, 6 November 2025


09:00–10:00 | Gallery Opens / Coffee and Networking
Screening: Designing from Home (Harriet Atkinson and Sue Breakell)

 

 

Panel 5 – Women, Exile, and Trauma in Artistic Practice (Part I) | starts 10:00


Chair: Shaul Bar-Haim, University of Essex


10:00 | Marina Vinnik (Bauhaus University Weimar) – Otti Berger: Exile in London 1937, Silence and Untranslated Success
10:20 | Sarah MacDougall (Ben Uri Gallery and Museum) – “Almost Forgotten Today”: Katerina Wilczynski – Mapping Migration and the Mechanisms of Erasure)
10:40 | Ana-Maria Milčić (Ben Uri Research Unit/Austrian Academy of Science) – Sublimation and Subversion in Exile: Gertrude Elias and the Critique of British Psychiatry
(discussion to follow after end of panel)

 

 

11:05–11:15| Coffee Break

 

 

Panel 5 (cont.) – Women, Exile, and Trauma in Artistic Practice (Part II) | starts 11:15


Chair: Shaul Bar-Haim, University of Essex


11:20 | Natalia Mali (Independent scholar) – Unseen Women: Exile, Trauma, and Gender in the Art of Motesiczky and Carrington
11:40 | Rachel Dickson (Ben Uri Research Unit) – Unseen Women: Exile, Trauma, and Gender in the Art of Halina Korn and the Polish Network for Mental Health Patients in Postwar London
12:05–12:25 | Discussion

 

 

12:25–13:15 | Lunch Break

 

 

Panel 6 – Archives, Homes, and Artistic Recovery | starts 13:15


Chair: Claudia Treacher, independent scholar


13:15 | Harriet Atkinson and Sue Breakell (University of Brighton)– ‘Designing from Home’: the negotiation of identity and communities for designer FHK Henrion (1914-1990)
13:35 | Valeria Carullo (Royal Institute of British Architects) – The Circle 1943–68
14:00–14:10 | Discussion

 

 

14:10–14:25 | Coffee Break

 

 

Panel 7 – Jewish Women and Networks of Migration | starts 14:25


Chair: Fran Lloyd, Kingston University


14:25 | Cai Lyons (Independent scholar) – A Flair for Catching Hedgerow Genius: Lea Bondi Jaray, St. George’s Gallery, and the Transnational Networks of Post-War London
14:45 | Isobel Muir (Tate Britain) – ‘Art for the People’? An examination of the response of the ‘Modern Painters of To-Day’ exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery, April 1942, curated by Lillian Browse


(5 min break)


15:10 | Monica Bohm-Duchen (Insiders/Outsiders) – Dorothy Bohm, London Street Photographer: ‘Not Just a City but a World’
15:30 | Emily Fuggle (Queen Mary/Ben Uri Gallery and Museum) – Becoming ‘one of the most important and vital organisations in the Jewish community’ : quantifying public programmes at the Ben Uri
15:55–16:15| Discussion

 

 

16:15–16:30 | Coffee Break

 

 

Book Launch
16:30–17:30 | Burcu Dogramaci, London Exile. Metropolis, Modernity, and Artistic Migration (Leuven University Press, 2025) with introduction by Ana-Maria Milčić and David Glasser