Gemma Sharpe
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gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Gemma Sharpe
@gemmasharpe.bsky.social
1K followers 670 following 240 posts
Assistant Prof in Art History, Cold War internationalism, Modernism in Pakistan and South Asia | GC-CUNY alum | Cleveland based | From across the pond
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gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Apropos of nothing…
Two women (the Queen and Liz Truss) standing on a green carpet next to green sofas in a decorated room. Mirror and painting behind them.
April 21, 2025 at 10:15 AM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Looking for images of "Victorian classrooms" to help teach Foucault this week and just had an extremely relevant and disconcerting core memory flashback.

"HANDS ON HEADS!"

Anyone else's teachers use this trick?!
Black and white photo of modern children in Victorian dress and a victorian classroom, all with their hands on their heads. Children are arranged in rows on a slope with white smocks over black dress. A writing slate is visible on the nearest desk and a teacher in a white shirt stands to the left of the image. The entire room is wrapped by dark panelling that cuts across the image except for (going left to right) a blackboard, cabinet, some pipes, a door, and picture on the wall.
February 21, 2025 at 6:26 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Oh no...
Photocollage representing two images of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (CIA director and baddie in the MCU movies) played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus alongside a photograph (right) of Tulsi Gabbard looking to the right and wearing a blue suit against a blue background. Superficially, all three images show women with shoulder-length hair with distinctive white side-streaks along with a similar age, skin-tone and even facial structure.
February 15, 2025 at 7:45 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Dittmer does a fantastic analysis of how the original comics *anticipated* events to come and that helped carry the the public into accepting those events. Captain America in this (horrifically racist) cover is seen striding across the Pacific, leaving behind...
Black and white screenshot of an illustration in Jason Dittmer's "Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero" showing cover of comic book with a bulky Captain America striding across a chaotic representation of the Pacific under the titlehead of the comic. A racist caricature representing the Japanese state/military is being punched by Captain America, with illustrated swoops and stylizations to show this. A speech bubble from CA's mouth states, "You started it! Now - we'll finish it!" A caption with copyright and date information is beneath the image.
February 15, 2025 at 4:46 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
The late, wonderful Asim Butt sprayed the eject logo around Karachi during uprisings against Musharraf’s military regime in 2008. Another favorite is his intervention onto police roadblock containers: now reading “pubic lice.”
Grainy photo with a red overtone picturing a shipping container blocking a building entrance. The curb is striped bricks and the shipping container has the word POLICE written across the center with the first two letters blanked out so the viewer can only read the word LICE. In much smaller vertical text over half of the “O” the artist has used a stencil to spray the word “PUBIC,” i.e., PUBIC LICE.
February 8, 2025 at 1:06 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
My dears, it’s really here. You gotta stop looking at us and fight it now.
February 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Racist riots in the street? Check. Total erosion of the higher education system? By god: CHECK. Egregious normalisation of attacks on trans and minority communities? Check. Immigrants being described as parasites, what’s new?!
February 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Also very embarrassed to admit that I never really "got" Dada until recently. Realizing now what a powerful strategy turning political and social disorientation back on itself can be. Guess I get it now!
Hugo Ball performing "Karawane" (a nonsense poem) at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916. Black and white photograph of Ball standing against a flat temporary backdrop wearing layers of card or a similar material as trousers, dress, cape and hat. He is also wearing claw-like gloves on his hands. Music stands on either side of him hold two large white sheets of paper from which he presumably reads the poem. The photograph catches him looking forward, however, just past the photographer's left shoulder and (we assume) his audience for the performance.
January 20, 2025 at 6:53 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
I love this city. Bagley Road, Cleveland: for all your health and fur outfitting needs 🦫
Parking lot under a grey sky with two single story warehouse-size buildings side by side. On the left is “Fin Feather Fur Outfitters” on a maroon sign at the center of a brick building, on the right, a Cleveland Clinic building clad in white.
January 14, 2025 at 1:42 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Now that was just cruel…

#universitychallenge
Screenshot of U.K. television quiz show University Challenge showing two teams of four students with illuminated surnames against a blue background and over their university affiliations (Wadham Oxford and Imperial). Imperial are THRASHING Wadham 0/290, without mercy or let-up. Though the editing makes it look like the two teams are on top of one another, they are all on the same level in the studio. This formatting just gives viewers a visual comparison of team reactions as the questions are being called out. The questions are very hard. I only got eight or so right for this episode ☹️
January 14, 2025 at 12:54 AM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
They have to put barricades around this Frank Gehry building when it snows in Cleveland. Which is pretty often! 🫣
January 2, 2025 at 11:20 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
‘Tis the season for gothic and ghost stories. Novel length (and perhaps recent) spooky recommendations are gratefully received! Something to listen to during Christmas chores 👻
19th century (?) print on yellow paper with fine detail and hatching marks. Image shows Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol sitting by a fire on the left. He is wearing incongruously blue socks and warming his hands at the fire while scowling over his shoulder at a ghost of Jacob Marley standing on the right, a chain around his waist. A tall candle stands on a table between them and casts a circle of light onto the dark background and wooden wall panels.
December 21, 2024 at 3:11 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
I raise you the original 1970s wallpaper in our kitchen and hallway 🧡
Zillow photogram of a kitchen area with white cabinets (top half fronted with leaded glass) decorated with 1970s floral (top) and striped wallpaper, (below the moulding). To the left, blue and white tiled archway into main kitchen. In the foreground is a grey table and pink chairs, also c.1970s though alas no longer with the house.
December 6, 2024 at 10:26 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
calling it a “Monumental Liquid Sculpture.” The Cold War context of this whole story is really important, including to the legal background. One of my favorite archival finds is this 1964 cheque to the Asia Society for $1.99…
Screenshot from academic article showing a cheque from Iqbal Geoffrey to the Asia Society in New York.
December 6, 2024 at 12:54 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
When I stumbled on an incredible letter by Pakistani lawyer/artist Iqbal Geoffrey to Alfred Barr at MoMA scolding Barr for not purchasing his work. Such rhetorical nuggets as, “you cannot masturbate history, it does not come. It overcomes.” Wrote a whole article on it…
Black and white photograph of young artist Iqbal Geoffrey in 1961-ish gesturing to a painting (on paper/card) on the floor and looking down at it. Geoffrey wears a suit and tie and an abstract painting is seen in the background.
December 6, 2024 at 12:39 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Doing as I’m told…

*This is Albers.

**Also the answer to: “What do you get if you cross a Poodle with a Pit Bull and some Shih Tzu?”
Scruffy yellow/brown dog standing on a grey towpath edged by grass and on an orange/brown lead. She is looking at the camera and smiling because she really enjoys a good towpath.
December 6, 2024 at 2:22 AM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Kazimir Malevich: the intellect, the sadness, the hope in his paintings. I’m a goner 🖤
Male artist standing stiffly in a tweed suit in front of a wall of paintings, mostly abstract and geometric, including one (right) of a pure black square.
December 1, 2024 at 11:43 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Though I’ll also take the late great Okwui Enwezor’s periodisation. Shortest of all centuries.
Exhibition catalog cover with two people and text: The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994.
December 1, 2024 at 10:01 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
"They left because the boll weevil had ravaged the cotton crop." Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, panel no. 9, 1940-41.
Small painting by Jacob Lawrence of stylized cotton plants on black and grey stalks being eaten by black boll weevils. Set against an angular brown background (lower register) and pale blue sky (top register). Carefully painted but with some areas of visible brushwork in the background that appear as small white splotches in the paint.
November 13, 2024 at 6:49 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Oh god, I hadn't even scrolled down.
Three babies packaged in clear cellophane advertising its utility for "freshness" in the 1960s.
November 9, 2024 at 10:25 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Teaching a class next week on the promotion of plastic in the 1960s and I just...
Magazine ad by Du Point Cellophane featuring two babies in a box wrapped in cellophane and a bow with the tag line "Good things are twice as good in Cellophane."
November 9, 2024 at 10:21 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
To commemorate closing down my Twitter, the time one of my students snapped a joke slide I put up before class and made it go very viral.
PowerPoint image projected on a screen. On the left a from TV show Succession showing a group of three people clustered together and dramatically lit. On the right a painting by Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi with figures in a similar arrangement though with two women cutting off the lower guy’s head 🗡️🩸
November 9, 2024 at 1:22 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
Because only centrism can win against the right. Sure sure sure…
Big red bus (circa 2016) standing in front of gothic architecture and emblazoned with a pro-Brexit slogan that plays to the British love for the NHS and a social safety net being dismantled by the people driving the bus. Evidence that the Democratic neoliberal establishment is full of shit and that Starmer will lose the next UK election to Reform.
November 8, 2024 at 11:44 AM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
I'm teaching a course on global abstraction and want to mix things up a bit -- get away from painting for a few classes.

Have added a class on abstract quilts and will show Fantasia (1940). Other ideas for craft, film, photo... non art historical case studies definitely of interest!
"Abstract Design in American Quilts." Image showing an exhibition of (mostly red, beige and white) geometric quilts at the Whitney Museum in 1971. (Photo is somewhat grainy for this reason).
January 6, 2024 at 6:37 PM
gemmasharpe.bsky.social
🌤️ First post 🌤️
September 22, 2023 at 2:42 PM