"Heavy Metal: Cast Iron and the Politics of Material in Postwar Art"

Once dismissed as a utilitarian medium—used for pipes, radiators, stove plates, and factory forms—cast iron has long occupied a marginal place in art historical narratives. Yet in the postwar period, artists in the U.S. and beyond began reclaiming this material from scrapyards and industry, exploring its visceral, sculptural, and symbolic capacities. This panel invites new scholarship on cast iron as both medium and message: a substance that embodies labor histories, environmental degradation, post-industrial aesthetics, and modern alchemical transformation.

Inspired by the studio casting experiments of Julius Schmidt and the pedagogical spread of iron pouring workshops, this session repositions cast iron not only as a sculptural tool but also as a critical site for examining gender, material culture, regionalism, and industrial memory. How does cast iron’s weight—literal and metaphorical—resonate within contemporary practices of ruin aesthetics, slow making, and ecological reckoning? Can rust serve as a political patina?

We welcome proposals from artists, scholars, and practitioners that reconsider cast iron in the context of postWWII and contemporary art. Papers engaging with labor, materiality, ritual, or global practices of iron casting are particularly encouraged.