What do we mean by the term 'Contemporary Asian Art' and how are we to represent it? With its varied histories, traditions and cultures, Asia can hardly be bracketed into one entity, yet the reception of its art is ridden with essentialisms and tropes.
Meanwhile, the region's longstanding engagement with Modern and Contemporary art, globalisation and rapid economic changes has seen Asia's arts scenes change irrevocably. Influx - Contemporary Art in Asia explores the trends in and circulation of, contemporary art from Asia in the many International Expos, Biennales and Art Fairs that seem to be focusing increasingly on this region.
Illustrated with works of leading artists from India, China, Pakistan, South-East Asia and the Middle-East, it brings together essays by 19 critical writers. They reflect on the diversity of Asia's self-perceptions, the historical bases for a category such as Asia and its political and cultural exigencies which inform various curatorial interventions.
Table of Contents -
General Introduction
I - Contested terrains and Critical re-Imaginings
The Illusions and Antagonisms of Civilizational Exchange - Critical Reflections on Dismantling Asian Empires.
The Elephant and the Ant - Chinese and Thai Art in the 1980s and 1990s.
Worlding Asia - A Conceptual Framework for the First Delhi Biennale.
Cartographic Necessities - Contemporary Practices and the Making of a Brave New World.
Curating Barbarians - Descriptions of a Visual Practice
II - Tropes and Places
Miniature, Monster, and Modernism - Curating Terror or Terror of Curating.
An Honest Engagement with the Pitfalls (and Perks) of the Ethnic (Rubric)
Retrieving the Far West - Toward a Curatorial Representation of the House of Islam.
Interrogating the Sacred - Storylines for the Self.
The Art of Kazakhstan as a Political Project
III - Interventions in the Public Sphere
Curating Across Agnostic Worlds.
The Untold (the Rise of) Schisms.
Mapping the Trajectories of Minoritarian Aesthetics and Cultural Politics.
Excavating the History of the Present - Caste as Pictorial Sign in the Works of Savi Sawarkar.
Curatorial Work as Collective Fabrication.
Archival Malpractice and Counter Strategies.
Index.