Kristy Stone

Current Fellows: History Department, PhD

BA Fine Art (Wits), M.Ed. Education and Heritage Studies (Wits)

With a background in Fine Art and museum education, I am currently interested in a creative reworking of the archives through affect, art and objects of power. Objects of power are, in this study, considered to be those that ‘trouble’ taxonomies and object histories within tradi-tional western museum praxis. Objects classified as charms, bundles, nkisi or amulets etc. are here to be seen as ‘differently-living’: their very ‘being’ queers conventional binaries of living/nonliving, hu-man/nonhuman.

Working with a selection of ‘powerful objects’ from the UWC-Mayibuye and Iziko Social History Archives, I will write object histories pointing to moments where these objects depart from typical object behaviour and hence require a radically new researcher-position. In recognising the limits of evidence-based knowledge creation, I will use archival inquiry alongside the nonrepresentational research method of art-making. I thus intend to create a body of artwork in re-lation to a selection (bundle) of objects of power.