| Administrative History | Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA) was founded in 1994 as a not-for-profit organisation to address the new internationalism of the visual arts in the United Kingdom and the broad and multi-cultural artistic communities contributing to the cultural landscape.
Iniva emerged out of artist-led conversations with Gavin Jantjes, Sarah Wason, David A Bailey, Sonia Boyce, Rasheed Araeen and cultural theorist Stuart Hall asking the question, what could a new model for a cultural institution look like, that speaks to the diversity and shared cultural heritage. The conference, ‘"Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism," held at Tate in April 1994; iniva’s founding symposium brought together several key and influential international artists and scholars such as Rasheed Araeen, Jimmie Durham, Geeta Kapur and Olu Oguibe to debate the significance of new internationalisms in the arts and to speculate on its relevance for the future.
Today Iniva’s work primarily focuses on centring the voices of emerging generation of artists while maintaining a dialogue with artists who are now seen as more established. Nurturing, supporting and developing artists through building networks that build communities of practice. This is done through maintaining a library and archive collection and organising programmes for artists and communities.
A purpose-built gallery space named Rivington Place was the site of INIVA and Autograph ABP and was opened by Stuart Hall in 2007. In 2019, INIVA relocated to Chelsea College of Arts – University of the Arts London in Pimlico.
The Iniva archive is housed in Stuart Hall Library, iniva’s archive includes 350 artist files with 4,500 slides, 1,260 artist ephemera files, and 20 files documenting iniva events and projects. It also preserves iniva's founding documents, including transcripts from iniva’s founding symposium "Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism," and board papers from 1994 to the present. Additionally, it houses papers and correspondence related to Professor Stuart Hall's role as the former Chair of iniva, materials from OVA (Organisation of Visual Arts, a franchise of iniva) initiated by photographer Sunil Gupta, written contributions from David A. Bailey, artist Isaac Julien, curatorial and research work by Hou Hanru at iniva, and research materials from Li Yun-chia's project. Stuart Hall Library is a specialist library that centres art and theory publications from the Global Majority, African, Asian, Caribbean, Polynesian, Latinx, and Diaspora perspectives. The library also holds catalogues, monographs and periodicals, audio and visual material, slides and ephemera.
All information has been provided from:
https://iniva.org/about/institute-of-international-visual-arts/
https://iniva.org/library/library-and-archive-collection/
https://iniva.org/library/ |