Artists on the Move - Transcultural Practices in Asian Contemporary Art

MA Art Histories Symposium

Transculturalism has been proposed as an approach to describe the practices and experiences of Asian artists living and working outside their home countries. As a concept, transculturalism provides an entry point in understanding critically engaged zones of contact as social spaces where cultures meet and interact, and are resisted or transformed through cultural mixing.

Have the realities of globalisation made it necessary to think of artistic and cultural practices beyond clearly delineated nation-state boundaries and essentialised categories of identity and cultures by addressing issues arising from cultural appropriation, cultural translation, displacement, diaspora and hybridisation as well as how we make sense of the self in shifting contexts of home and country? How have notions of ‘origin’, ‘authenticity’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘derivation’ and ‘tradition’ been problematised by transcultural practices that affect and shape the discourse, writing and curating of Asian art today?

Cover image courtesy of Chelsea Zhao Xin