Academic Sessions: Belfast 2007
Towards a New Age of Asian Art
Convenor:
Ming-Hui Chen, Loughborough University m.chen3@lboro.ac.uk
Being the next dominant power in the global economy in the twenty-first century, the Asia-Pacific region has attracted the world’s attention to its contemporary artistic presentation. In the past twenty years, many cities in the Asia-Pacific region have been at the centre of both economic growth and cultural re-examination. Globalisation has brought the Asian metropolis to deconstruct its own cultural heritage, and urbanisation has created an urgent question for its people to re-consider development, competition, modernised cultures and values.
In recent years, there have been several biennials and triennials held in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Busan Biennale, Fukuoka Triennial, Guangzhou Triennial, Gwangju Biennale, Hong Kong Art Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Singapore Biennale, Taipei Biennale, Triennial of Chinese Contemporary Art etc, which have created a phenomenon which was unique to this region. During these exhibitions, the artists have often combined their own cultural languages with high technology, re-interpreted their traditional aesthetics and re-defined their traditional materials, by which they have declared their national identity and represented their post-colonial discourses.
The papers selected for this session have focused on curators’ strategies and historians’ observations which help contemporary Asian art to be understood, and which address how the artists have hybridised their artistic language within a modern ideology. These papers will argue how the artists and curators have found the balance between nationalism and globalisation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Speakers:
Inhye Kang (McGill University)
Travellers in the Contemporary Art Scene
Elizabeth Norman (Independent Scholar, formerly Sheffield Hallam University)
‘A New Model Arts Festival’: the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial in Japan
Jariya Nualnirun (University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce)
Popular Thai Songs: Investigating Thai National History in Modern Memory
Mary Ann Steggles (University of Manitoba)
The Assertion of the New, of the Chinese, in World Art Practice
Victoria Lu (MoCA, Shanghai; Shih Chien University, Taipei)
The Neo-aesthetics of Heterogeneity in Chinese Contemporary Art
Joshua Jiang (University of Central England)
Collective Identities
Felix Schöber (University of Westminster)
From Identity to Technology – the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennial
Li-En Chong (National University of Singapore)
There’s No Business like Show Business: Art in the Singapore Biennale 2006
Jan Mrazek (National University of Singapore) discussant