This year marks the centenary anniversary of Dada, a movement that began in disgust with the horrors of the First World War. While its earliest protagonists presented absurdist poetry readings at the soirées nègres of Cabaret Voltaire, Dada is historically seen as European and therefore devoid of non-European protagonists. Beginning with the little-known African and Carribean Dadaists in the early twentieth century, this talk will mix research and practice to explore of missing narratives of modernity and the avant-garde that were produced in direct response to Dada's demand for complete and utter social rupture.

Senam Okudzeto is the Edith Bloom/Jesse Howard Jr. Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome and a lecturer at the University of Basel.