GLOBAL ASIA/PACIFIC ART EXCHANGE 2019
Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art
Full Conference Program JUNE 11, 13, 14
Download Conference Program (PDFs):
For pre-conference Artexte panel click here. For program-at-a-glance click here. For full conference program click here. For full printable program (with bios and abstracts) click here. |
Exhibition Series
Waterways: Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art
June 11-September 11, 2019
FOFA Gallery, Department of Art History Vitrine, EV Junction, Webster Library Vitrine
Curated by EAHR-IARG
Full details at ethnoculturalarts.com/exhibitions
June 11-September 11, 2019
FOFA Gallery, Department of Art History Vitrine, EV Junction, Webster Library Vitrine
Curated by EAHR-IARG
Full details at ethnoculturalarts.com/exhibitions
JUNE 11 2019 (Tuesday)
2:00-3:30 p.m.
Artexte Library and Exhibition Centre 2, Sainte-Catherine East, Montreal room 301 Open to the public, Registration Required: tiny.cc/Artexte_GAX |
A Conversation on Indigenous/Asian Art Archives
Jessica Hébert, Artexte Librarian Mikhel Proulx and Sara Nicole England, Indigenous Digital Art Archive, IIF John Tain, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong |
Panel Description
This panel brings together representatives from Artexte, Asia Art Archive, and the Indigenous Digital Art Archive to discuss some of the issues raised when documenting and preserving contemporary art and visual culture, such as the documentation of ephemeral practices; the shaping of historical research by archival resources; the (at-times colonialist) classifications that define the terms by which culture gets documented and preserved; and the futurity of archival projects. In addressing these questions--often urgent ones for cultural organizations seeking to serve Asian and Indigenous communities--the panel hopes to provide some touchpoints for the conference. Jessica HÉbert
Jessica Hébert is an artist and librarian, specialist of the print collection at Artexte. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University and a Masters of Library and Information Studies from McGill University. Since 2013, she has been an active member of Art Libraries Association of North America (ARLIS) and served as president of the Montreal-Quebec-Ottawa chapter in 2017. She began working at Artexte in 2014, and is interested in the creation and collection of artists’ books and zines, as well as the documentation of ephemeral artworks. Mikhel Proulx
Mikhel Proulx researches contemporary art and digital culture. Mikhel is a PhD student and faculty member in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal. His research considers Queer and Indigenous artists working with networked media. He is a Canada Graduate Scholar and a Jarislowsky Foundation Doctoral Fellow in Canadian Art History. His writing has been published widely, and he has curated exhibitions across Canada, Europe and the Middle East. Sara Nicole England
Sara Nicole England is an art historian, arts organizer, and white settler based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). She holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and a BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University. Sara’s writing has been published in Public Art Dialogue (forthcoming), Espace art actuel, Invitation by Art Mûr, and a Bloomsbury volume on design and agency (forthcoming), among others. She is the Research Coordinator for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, where she co-organizes the Indigenous Digital Art Archive, a living archive and online database of Indigenous new media art and ephemera. John Tain
John Tain is Head of Research at Asia Art Archive, where he leads a team of researchers based in Hong Kong, Delhi, and Shanghai, with projects spanning all of Asia. Previously, he was a curator for modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute, where he developed collections related to artists such as Ed Ruscha, Allan Sekula, Faith Wilding, and Tetsumi Kudo. His writings on Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wu Tsang, Charles Gaines and Kara Walker, among others, have appeared in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, Art Review Asia, and in other publications, and he is an editor for Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series. His exhibition, co-curated with Jasmine Alinder, Someday, Chicago, on the Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto, was on view this past fall at the DePaul Art Museum as part of the Terra Foundation for American Art’s “Art Design Chicago” initiative. |
June 13 2019 (Thursday)
9:00-9:30 a.m.
Concordia University 1515 Saint-Catherine St W, Montreal FOFA Gallery / York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
MORNING COFFEE
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9:30-10:00 a.m
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Territorial Acknowledgement and Morning Song, ODAYA
Welcome Heather Igloliorte, Special Advisor to the Provost on Advancing Indigenous Knowledges (CURC in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement) Convenors’ Remarks / Introduction to GAX 2019 Alice Ming Wai Jim, Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories Alexandra Chang, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University |
ODAYA
Odaya is a non-profit organization that brings together four dynamic Indigenous women who draw strength from their ancestral heritage and use the stage as a platform for raising awareness around Indigenous issues. HEATHER IGLOLIORTE
Heather Igloliorte (Inuk) is the University Research Chair in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement at Concordia University, where she is also the Special Advisor to the Provost on Advancing Indigenous Knowledges, Co-Director of the Initiative for Indigenous Futures Cluster (IIF) in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology with Professor Jason Edward Lewis, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History. She has been an independent curator for fourteen years - she currently has three exhibitions touring across Canada and is working on the inaugural exhibition of the Inuit Art Centre opening in Winnipeg in 2020 - and is the Principal Investigator of the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership SSHRC Partnership Grant which aims to increase the number of other Inuit working in agential positions across the arts. ALICE MING WAI JIM
Alice Ming Wai Jim is a Professor of Contemporary Art and University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She is founding co-editor-in-chief, with Alexandra Chang, of the international scholarly journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), published by Brill (Leiden,NL) in association with the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art (Concordia University) and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute (New York University). As an art historian, curator and cultural organizer, her research interests include contemporary ethnocultural and global art histories, media arts, international art exhibitions, and critical curatorial studies. She has curated numerous exhibitions of artists from global Asian, Asian Canadian, African Canadian and Indigenous communities and organized major scholarly events within academic settings and for the broader arts community in Canada and internationally. In 2018, she co-edited the fall special issue of RACAR, “What is Critical Curating?” Recipient of the 2015 Centre de documentation d'Artexte Award for Research in Contemporary Art, Jim is co-convener of the 2019 Global Asia/Pacific Exchange (GAX), Asian Indigenous Relationalities in Contemporary Art, in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal). Her current research projects include the history of Asian Canadian art and Afro-Asian Indigenous futurist aesthetics. ALEXANDRA CHANG
Alexandra Chang a curator, writer, and arts scholar. She is currently Curator of Special Projects and Director of Global Arts Programs at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, where she organizes the Climate Working Group (CWG) and directs the NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX). In Fall 2019, she will take on the role of Associate Professor of Practice at Rutgers University, Newark's Art, Culture and Media Department and Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. Chang is also director of the Virtual Asian American Art Museum and Co-Founding Editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), Brill (Leiden). She is the co-founder of the College Art Association’s affiliated society the Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN). She recently curated "Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art" at the Chinese American Museum and California African American Museum for the Getty's PSTII, Sept 2017-Mar 2018; "Dark Roads: Zarina Hashmi" at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, Oct 2017-Feb 2018; (ex)CHANGE: History Place Presence, a city-wide collaboration including 25 newly commissioned works with six public artworks across Philadelphia with the Asian Arts Initiative throughout 2018, and "Ming Fay: Beyond Nature" at Sapar Contemporary in New York City, May-June 2019. She is the author of Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Art Collectives from Godzilla, Godzookie, to the Barnstormers (2008 Timezone 8) and editor of Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art (Duke University Press, 2018). |
10:00-11:00 a.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Asian Indigenous I - Curating Hospitality in the Great Ocean
Léuli Eshrāghi, in conversation with Francis Maravillas |
Léuli Eshrāghi
Dr Léuli Eshrāghi (he/ia) is an Australian artist and curator of Sāmoan, Persian and other ancestries, and a Horizon/Indigenous Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, Concordia University. Léuli’s performances, installations, writing and curatorial projects centre on embodied knowledges, ceremonial-political practices, language renewal and hopeful futures throughout the Great Ocean. Léuli’s postdoctoral research-creation project, Desired and Desiring, reflects, critiques and imagines an Indigenous video art museum focusing on gender, body, and desire, developed across two public visual arts organizations in Sydney, Australia. Curatorial projects include Pōuliuli at West Space, Melbourne and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Honolulu (2017), Ua numi le fau at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2016). Recent publications include chapters in Sovereign Words: Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism (2018) and Associations: Creative Practice and Research (2018). Léuli’s works have been presented at Sharjah Biennial 14: Journey beyond the Echo Chamber (2019), Cairns Regional Art Gallery (2018), Open Space, Victoria (2017), 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2016), Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland (2016), and Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2016). Francis Maravillas
Francis Maravillas is Assistant Professor in the Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art (CCSCA) program at the National Taipei University of Education. His research interests focus on contemporary art and visual culture in Asia and Australia, curatorial and exhibition histories, socially engaged and performative practices in art. He is currently writing a book on the aesthetics and politics of food in contemporary Asian art. He has published journal articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogue essays on the Asia-Pacific Triennial exhibition series, Asian artists in the diaspora in Australia, and food and hospitality in contemporary Asian art. He recently co-curated (with Marnie Badham) Bruised Food: A Living Laboratory (2019) at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, using methods of curation and public pedagogy to frame the discourse of the politics and aesthetics of food as employed by contemporary social practice artists. He is area editor (Asia-Pacific) of the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas journal. He was previously a board member of the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia. |
11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Asian Indigenous II - Alternative Contacts and Storytelling
Malissa Phung, Unpacking the Parallel Layers of Sino-Indigenous Absence in The Last Spike and Jeff Thomas’ Indians on Tour and First Spike Series Victoria Nolte, Re-visioning History and Diasporic Interconnections in Asian Canadian Contemporary Art: Karen Tam’s Flying Cormorant Studio (For Lee Nam) In conversation with Marissa Largo |
MAlissa Phung
Malissa Phung, Unpacking the Parallel Layers of Sino-Indigenous Absence in The Last Spike and Jeff Thomas’ Indians on Tour and First Spike Series The presentation begins by juxtaposing two photographs from Jeff Thomas’ (Iroquois) photography series Indians on Tour and First Spike with the infamous 1885 archival photograph known as The Last Spike, in which Donald Alexander Smith, a Canadian Pacific Railway financier, drives in the so-called final spike to commemorate the completion of the continental railway. These revisionist and archival photographs reveal parallel histories of absence and oppression in Canadian railroad historiography and documentary photography, yet they are hardly discussed in relation to one another. If Indians on Tour works to incorporate and emphasize the presence and priority of Indigeneity in urban Canadian landscapes, the image Buffalo Dancer at the New Chinatown Arch, Ottawa invites a reading of another significant absence: that of the Chinese migrant/settler community in Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation endeavours. These two communities are rarely discussed in relation to each other in mainstream society, let alone get placed next to each other in dominant Canadian visual art and documentary photography, so when this juxtaposition occurs, it becomes a striking and provocative pairing that has the potential to spark a much-needed dialogue between these historically interconnected communities. A Professor in the School of Communication and Literary Studies at Sheridan College (Ontario, Canada), Malissa Phung is an uninvited guest on the territories of the Huron-Wendat, Mississauga, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Her research and teaching areas of expertise include Asian North American literary and cultural studies, Asian diaspora and postcolonial studies, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, and critical race studies. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Postcolonial Text, Canadian Literature, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures of the Americas, and Verge (spring 2019), as well as the essay, “Are People of Colour Settlers Too?” in the Aboriginal Healing Foundation series, Cultivating Canada. While her doctoral research examines representations of Chinese labour and Sino-Indigenous relations in Chinese Canadian literature and documentaries, her new book project builds on this earlier work by turning to the literary and cultural depictions of these intimacies by Indigenous and Asian North American authors and artists through the framework of kinship and indebtedness. Victoria Nolte
Victoria Nolte, Re-visioning History and Diasporic Interconnections in Asian Canadian Contemporary Art: Karen Tam’s Flying Cormorant Studio (For Lee Nam) Karen Tam’s mixed media installation Flying Cormorant Studio (For Lee Nam)evokes the life and work of Lee Nam, a Chinese artist who lived in Victoria, British Columbia in the 1930s. With no existing archive or body of work, Lee is currently only known because of his friendship with Emily Carr, who recorded her impressions about his work and his character in some of her published writings (including her 1944 memoir The House of All Sorts and her collected writings Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, published posthumously in 1965). Their friendship has been framed as the meeting of two lonely artists, each experiencing forms of exclusion from Canadian society. Focusing on how Tam re-contextualizes Lee’s life and work in the form of a historiographic installation, this presentation will suggest how contemporary artworks can re-vision the significance of artists excluded, erased, and/or vanished from historical record. I will think through the epistemological limits of writing the histories of modern art in Canada, positioning diasporic interconnections that unsettle the borders of discrete places and knowledge structures. The story of Lee Nam and Emily Carr, as interpreted and presented by Tam, requires tracing the relationships between artists working within different (temporal and spatial) conceptions of contemporaneity and lived difference. Victoria Nolte is a doctoral candidate in Carleton University’s interdisciplinary Cultural Mediations program. A historian of contemporary art, her research focuses on the visual cultures of Asian diasporas in North America. Her doctoral work examines issues of historical representation and practices of place-making in installation and media works by Asian Canadian artists. Broadly, she is interested in the ways in which artists have taken up migration as a subject in their work, as well as how diasporic knowledges challenge the centre-periphery logic (and area-specific focus) of art history in a global context. Her research was recently published in the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas journal special issue on Asian Canadian visual culture (Spring 2018). She also works as the Graduate Coordinator for the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) at Carleton University. Marissa Largo
Marissa Largo is a researcher, artist, curator, and educator. She earned her PhD in Social Justice Education from OISE, University of Toronto (2018). She is a recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans (REAPA) special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her book manuscript, Unsettling Imaginaries examines Filipinx artists who respond to the racist and colonial discourses that persist in Canada through their artistic practices. Largo’s projects have been presented in venues and events across Canada, such as the A Space Gallery (2017 & 2012), Open Gallery of OCAD University (2015), Royal Ontario Museum (2015), WorldPride Toronto (2014), and MAI (Montreal, arts interculturels) (2007). Largo is co-editor of the anthology Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries (Northwestern University Press 2017) and serves as the Canada Area Editor of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. |
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m,.
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LUNCH BREAK
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1:30-2:45 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
The Future is Indigenous Language: Image, Text & Speech
Noelani Arista, The Moʻolelo in the Machine: Memory Loss and Data Retrieval Speech to text, text to digital, speech to digital. Édith-Anne Pageot, “Why have there been no great "French-speaking" Indigenous artists in Canada?” In conversation with Henry Tsang |
Noelani Arista
Noelani Arista, The Moʻolelo in the Machine: Memory Loss and Data Retrieval Speech to text, text to digital, speech to digital. My work as a historian centers on the textual production of Hawaiian knowledge, on moʻolelo, mele and oli. I study the transmediation of moʻolelo (history, story) into written and published text and I am concerned with the way the alluring promise of digital mediums offer us new modes of preservation and production. What happens when the rules that discipline ʻike Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian knowledge) which supplied authority, wove together social relations and which secured the veracity of knowledge are no longer salient, since digital mediums allow anyone in “community” to have a voice, share an opinion or make claims about what is maoli (Hawaiian, Native, true, and real?) Does art in a post-colonial context require remembering? Is it possible to remember the past and leave the trauma behind? What do we lose when we orphan the affective disturbances introduced by colonialism? Can we really choose what defines us? Noelani Arista (Kanaka Maoli) is an Associate Professor of Hawaiian and American History at the University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa. Her areas of expertise include Hawaiian governance, customary knowledge, and knowledge systems, Hawaiian religious, legal and intellectual history. Her research, writing and translation work investigates and seeks to exemplify prototypical Hawaiian epistemologies and methods of intellectual production. Her current historical work furthers the persistence of Hawaiian textual archives through multiple digital mediums including gaming, Indigenous Protocols for Artificial Intelligence, and building digital archives which are context rich. Édith-Anne Pageot
“Why have there been no great "French-speaking" Indigenous artists in Canada?” In 1971, Linda Nochlin sarcastically asked the provocative question, “Why have there been no Great Women Artists?” to point out the blatantly patriarchal biases of the Western art world. Sadly, a similar question needs to be addressed today concerning Indigenous artists who speak French as a first or a second language. In 2011, France Trépanier and Chris Creighton-Kelly spoke of a systemic invisibility and described the intersectional discrimination pertaining to language and culture. More recently, a number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars have underlined the lack of inclusion of French-speaking Indigenous artists in major exhibitions and the persistence of a colonial rhetoric which characterized the critical reception of their work (RACAR, 2016). The signatories of the Manifeste pour l’avancement des arts, des artistes et des organisations artistiques autochtones au Québec (2017) call for real recognition of Indigenous artists from Kébeq that, in their view, must translate into institutional support. It also stipulates that granting agencies must undergo funding program reform including aspects of governance, education, training and category definition. In particular, category definition reform touches certain foundations of Art History as a discipline and implies a reformulation of the relationship between Art and Craft. Based on a synthesis of recently published status reports and also based on the Manitou College (1973-1976) experience, (the first bilingual Indigenous post-secondary institution), this presentation raises some of the challenges that represents the necessity of a decentered epistemological shift in the artistic milieu in Quebec and Canada. Edith-Anne Pageot is professor of modern Art history at UQAM (University of Quebec in Montreal). Her research focuses on cross-cultural spaces, gender and geographies in Native and Non-Native Art in Canada (1900-1975). She is currently leading a research project entitled La culture artistique au Collège Manitou. Agentivité et stratégies d’autodétermination, financed by UQAM’s New Orientations Program and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Examples of her recent publications include L'art autochtone à l'aune du discours critique dans les revues spécialisées en arts visuels au Canada. Les cas de Sakahàn et de Beat Nation (Muséologies, 2018), Figure de l’indiscipline. Domingo Cisneros, un parcours artistique atypique (RACAR, 2017), “Postcolonial Territorial Landmarks within Canada’s Multiculturalism: The Myth of Virility” (Canada: Landmarks and Landscapes, 2017). Henry Tsang
Henry Tsang’s projects employ video, photography, language, interactive media, sculptural elements and convivial events to explore the spatial politics of history, language, community, food and cultural translation through global flows of people, culture and capital. Projects include: Tansy Point, a video installation of the site of the 1851 treaty signings by the Chinook peoples and the US government that were never ratified; RIOT FOOD HERE, a public offering of food reflecting on Vancouver’s Anti-Asian Riots in 1907; Maraya, in collaboration with Glen Lowry and M. Simon Levin, that investigates the reappearance of Vancouver’s False Creek in Dubai as the Dubai Marina; video installations Orange County, and Olympus, shot in California, Beijing, Torino and Vancouver, that explore overlapping urban and socio-political spaces; and Welcome to the Land of Light, a public artwork along Vancouver's seawall that underscores the 19th-century trade language Chinook Jargon and the English that replaced it. Henry is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada. |
2:45-3:00 p.m.
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COFFEE BREAK
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3:00-4:15 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Waterways:
Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art Artist Roundtable Discussion (EAHR-IARG Exhibition Series, Summer 2019) Artists Kari Noe and Beatrice Glow, in conversation with Austin Henderson; Jason Sikoak, in conversation with Renata Critton-Papp With artists Léuli Eshrāghi, Stephanie Cheung, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Jane Chang Mi, and Henry Tsang in attendance. |
Panel Description
Waterways: Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art is curated by the Ethnocultural Art Histories Research Group (EAHR) and the Indigenous Art Research Group (IARG) at various locations on the Sir George Williams Campus of Concordia University, from June 11 to September 11, 2019. As part of GAX 2019, the exhibition series brings together Indigenous, Asian Indigenous, and Asian diasporic artists to the island of Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal) to exchange knowledge on Asian Indigenous relations in contemporary art. Large bodies of water are often considered to be distancing forces between islands. This hegemonic and colonial view of the world confines islands to subordinate places. In contrast, Waterways takes a more holistic perspective informed by Tongan and Fijian writer and anthropologist Epeli Hau’ofa’s groundbreaking essay, “Our Sea of Islands,” which acknowledges the continued significance of water as a connector across island populations. Globally, waterways have long stood as sites of knowledge, trade, navigation, and cross-cultural exchange between different populations. The artists speak to their relationships with water and islands through a range of interdisciplinary research-creation projects and approaches, including ethnography, engineering, oceanography, digital animation, and photography. Ultimately, Waterways seeks to foster a gathering space for knowledges, shared experiences, and ideas from around the world. Kari Noe
Kari Noe is a graduate research assistant at the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is pursuing an M.S. in Computer Science. She is currently working with a team of fellow programmers on Kilo Hōkū, a virtual reality simulation designed to teach the basics of modern Hawaiian wayfinding to introductory level students. She is also working on Digitizing Detours, a virtual reality experience intended to digitize the publication Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i, a collection of essays and stories by Hawaiian artists, scholars, and activists. In addition to programming, her passion for art leads her to receive an undergraduate degree in Animation. Her senior film, Kai and Honua was part of a workshop at the 2016 Sundance Native Shorts Lab and was screened at the Hō'ea 2018 Kanaka Maoli Film Showcase, the 2018 Hawaiʻi International Film Festival ACM, and the 2019 Cultural Animation Film Festival. Beatrice Glow
Beatrice Glow is an interdisciplinary and multi-sensory artist leveraging participatory performance, painting, experiential technology, olfactory art, installations and video to shift dominant narratives. She is currently a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and Smack Mellon Studio Program Artist. Glow's work is an incubator for applied research of public engagement. Recently, through the American Arts Incubator and with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, her focus has been on amplifying Indigenous voices through public art and virtual and augmented reality works in allyship with Indigenous environmental stewardship. Recent activities include solo exhibitions at Duke House, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile; Cuchifritos Gallery, New York; and Wave Hill, Bronx, New York; group shows at Honolulu Biennial 2017; Park Avenue Armory, New York; and Galeri Nasional Indonesia; and a Duke University Press’ Cultural Politics Journal artist feature. As a Hemispheric Institute Council Member, she co-founded the Performing Asian/Americas: Converging Movements workgroup. Austin Henderson
Austin Henderson is an artist and MA candidate in Art History at Concordia University. He holds a BFA in Visual Art from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with a Minor in Art History. His current research is concerned with queer theory, material culture, and the intersections between contemporary art practice, design, and popular American cinema. His artwork has been exhibited in group shows across Canada and the US. Jason Sikoak
Nunatsiavut Inuit artist Jason Sikoak was born and raised in The Big Land, Labrador, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Sikoak’s love of art began as a child, watching his uncle, Jack Mugford. Wishing he could command the materials as his uncle did, Sikoak vowed to learn as much as he could. Sikoak is currently completing his BFA at Concordia University. Renata Critton-PApp
Renata Critton-Papp is a second-year Art History major at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. She is a recipient of the 2019 Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Award. Moving between research, visual arts, and creative writing, her practice revolves around documenting emotion, memory, and healing through creation. She is interested in studying intersectionality, accessibility, and reconciliation within art institutions. |
4:15-5:15p.m.
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PARALLEL SESSIONS
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4:15-5:00 p.m.
Concordia University: FOFA Gallery Concordia Department of Art History EV Junction Library |
Waterways: Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art
Tour of Exhibitions (starts at FOFA Gallery, then Department of Art History, EV Junction, and Library) in presence of artists and EAHR-IARG curators |
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4:15-5:15 p.m.
Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art Concordia University, EV 3.711 |
EAHR-Taklif Workshop
Creating [٣] Space: Afghan & Iranian Creatives Maximum 20 participants; register at tiny.cc/GAXthirdspace |
Creating [٣] Space
Creating [٣] Space is a community-engaged workshop, that uses arts-based methods to negotiate and implement strategies to challenge damaging declinist narratives projected onto Iranian and Afghan communities. It is led collaboratively by community arts educators, Ferozan Nasiri and Mélika Hashemi, and focuses on three themes: (re)defining place-making, creating third space, and negotiating futurisms. Through the use of interactive classroom tool Nearpod, participants will first be engaged in an introductory discussion and provided with a prototype of a zine toolkit which challenges uninformed narratives by raising awareness about difficult knowledge and sensitive subjects such as immigration and displacement. Participants will then be encouraged to share their own interpretations of third space. Each assigned group will be given a “cube” symbolizing the nonlinearity of the third spaces within various institutional settings. The workshop is carefully designed to provoke discussions, definitions, inquiry, and possible resolutions about first-second Afghan and Iranian generation place-making, decolonization, and Afghan/Iranian futurism. This workshop has been coordinated for GAX 2019 by EAHR members Kanwal Syed and Nima Esmailpour of the Taklif : تکلیف collective. Kanwal Syed
Kanwal Syed holds a BFA in Sculpture from the National College of Arts, Pakistan and an MA in Art History from University Sains Malaysia, with the thesis, “Caught in The Middle: Socio-Political Imageries in Contemporary Art in Pakistan Post 9/11 (2001-2013).” Author of two journal articles, she is currently a PhD candidate and a part-time faculty in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Recipient of Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) research grant 2018-2019, her research interests encompass Pakistani Art with an emphasis on nuanced artistic representations of urban female subjectivities in contemporary Pakistani art discourse post 9/11 and the ongoing War on Terror. NIMA ESMAILPOUR
Nima Esmailpour is an artist, art historian, and the co-founder of Taklif : تکلیف collective. He graduated from Goldsmiths,(University of London) with an MA in Art and Politics and is currently pursuing his PhD in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Taklif has produced and participated in numerous critical engagement initiatives, including Common Aliens: Diaspora in Time (Studio XX, Montreal, 2016), Disorienting Diaspora: Shorts by Brown Queer Artists from the Canadian Archive (RIDM Festival, Montreal, 2017), Conversations at the Edge (SAIC, Chicago, 2019), Utopia as Method (Regart, Quebec City, 2018), What is Critical Curating? (RACAR, 2018), Ideas of Femininity (FOFA Gallery, Montreal, 2018), and Syphon 5.1: My life is not your _____. (Modern Fuel, Kingston, 2019). Ferozan Nasiri
Ferozan Nasiri is a second-generation Afghan-Canadian completing her MA Education degree in Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She works as a Community Arts Organizer and an executive team member for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW). She is interested in the way Afghan members from the diaspora use art to theorize and centre lived experiences through storytelling and different platforms, particularly in virtual and online spaces. Mélika Hashemi
Mélika Hashemi i is a second-generation Iranian-Canadian completing her MA Education degree in Education in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Mélika’s art practice is informed by her social and pedagogical concerns regarding marginality and resistance, as well as her hyphenated experiences with Iran. As an art educator, Mélika is constantly finding ways to renew intersectionality through the curriculum beyond gallery and classroom walls. Ferozan’s and Mélika’s most recent work was featured in this year’s Contact Photography Festival, Salam from Niagara Falls, an art exhibition that takes up first and second-generation Afghan and Iranian place-making in the context of ongoing settler colonialism on Turtle Island. |
5:15-5:30 p.m.
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SHORT BREAK
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5:30-6:30 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Opening Keynote
Yuki Kihara, ‘サモアについてのうた (Samoa ni tsuite no uta) A song about Sāmoa’ in conversation with Jacqueline Lo |
YUKI KIHARA
In this keynote presentation, Yuki Kihara discusses her new body of work, whose title is adapted from a popular Japanese song entitled ‘サモア島の歌 (Samoatou no uta)’ meaning ‘A song from Samoa.’ Music textbooks for elementary school students in Japan feature the song. The lyrics describe the Samoan archipelago situated in the Moana — an Indigenous pan-Polynesian name for the Pacific continent — as a paradise on earth settled by ‘noble savages’ — a typically romantic, Orientalist imagining of neighbouring Island nations held by Japan dating back since the Edo period in the seventeenth century. The work serves to subvert the colonial gaze by shedding light on the lived experience in the Moana while reframing the relationship between Japan and the Moana, specifically Sāmoa. The work takes an Indigenous interpretation of trans-Moana identity, gender and history, while referencing the interracial Samoan and Japanese heritage as a point of conceptual departure. This lecture explores the conceptual threads behind the work’s first five of 20 ‘Indigenized’ kimono presented across five iterations — from 2019 until 2023 — and created by the artist with the Indigenous audience in mind. A native of Sāmoa, Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives through visual arts, dance, and curatorial practice, engaging with postcolonial history and representation and how they intersect with race, gender, spirituality and sexual politics. In 2008, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition of Kihara’s work entitled Living Photographs featuring highlights of her interdisciplinary practice, followed by an acquisition of her works by the museum for their permanent collection. Kihara’s works are also in the collections of, among others, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The British Museum and Giorgio Armani. Kihara’s work has been presented at the Asia Pacific Triennale (2002 & 2015), Auckland Triennale (2009), Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013), Daegu Photo Biennale (2014), Honolulu Biennale (2017) and Bangkok Art Biennale (2018). Kihara is a research fellow at The National Museums of World Cultures in The Netherlands. Kihara lives and works in Sāmoa. JACQUELINE LO
Professor Jacqueline Lo is Chair of Academic Board of The Australian National University. She is also Associate Dean (International) for the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Executive Director of the Centre for European Studies. Her research focuses on issues of race, colonialism, diaspora and the interaction of cultures and communities across ethnic, national, and regional borders. She is the Founding Chair of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network. |
6:30-9:00 p.m.
MILIEUX, 11th floor. EV BUILDING |
Opening Reception
Wine and food will be served. Book Launch: Samoan Queer Lives, co-editors Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara with local collaborators Kama La Mackerel and Ossie Michelin |
Samoan Queer Lives - Book Launch
Original and Inspiring: The First Book by Fa`afafine, Fa`atama, Transgenders and Queer Pacific Islanders from the Islands of Sāmoa By Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara. Personal stories from one of the unique Indigenous queer cultures in the world. First of its kind, Samoan Queer Lives is a publication featuring a collection of autobiographical pieces by fa`afafine, transgender, and queer people of Sāmoa, one of the original continuous Indigenous queer cultures of Polynesia and the Pacific Islands. “As media and academia too often ask the enigmatic question ‘What is a fa`afafine?’ Samoan Queer Lives addresses a more pertinent question: ‘What is life?’” – Yuki Kihara Fa`afafine have lived their culture for as long as Samoans in the South Pacific can remember – and although their lives were ridiculed and then outlawed by explorers, missionaries, and colonial authorities, fa`afafine survived and thrived. Samoan Queer Lives is a new book of fa`afafine autobiographical stories from the 1940s into the 21st century. Shevon Matai was part of a fa`afafine transgender house culture in a 1960s–1980s tailor shop called Hollywood in Apia, Sāmoa, and a sister shop called Beverly Hills in Pago Pago, American Sāmoa. Other stories include: Allan Alo, a gender liminal choreographer’s journey finding artistic voice and what it means to be a fa`afafine with a pe`a (customary Samoan tattoo for men); Isaako Si`uleo, a Samoan gay man and activist who lived in San Francisco and New York during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemics; Jean Melesaine, a butch lesbian photographer whose recent immigrant childhood included gang life, prison and self-discovery. The author-editors also provide a background on the history of the fa`afafine of Sāmoa with images from the 19th century, and the influence of fa`afafine on the founding of Gay Liberation since WWII. This is a book that appeals to all readers wanting literature about cultures that were part of the origins of the Transgender and Gay movements; and about contemporary fa`afafine culture in the Sāmoa Islands and global diaspora, as told by renowned fa`afafine artists Yuki Kihara and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. Copies of Samoan Queer Lives will be available for purchase at this event, and can also be purchased at littleisland.co.nz. Dan Taulapapa McMullin
Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an artist and poet from Sāmoa Amelika (American Samoa). The Bat and other early works received a 1997 Poets&Writers Award from The Writers Loft. His book of poems Coconut Milk (2013) was on the American Library Association Rainbow List Top Ten Books of the Year. In 2018, his book Samoan Queer Lives, co-edited with Yuki Kihara, was published by Little Island Press of Aotearoa. Taulapapa's artwork has shown at the Metropolitan Museum, De Young Museum, Oakland Museum, Bishop Museum, NYU's /A/P/A Gallery, iBiennale Honolulu, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and the United Nations. His film Sinalela won the 2002 Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival Best Short Film Award. 100 Tikis is an art appropriation video at the intersection of tiki kitsch and indigenous sovereignty, and was the opening night film selection of the 2016 Présence Autochtone First Peoples Festival in Montréal; and was an Official Selection in the Fifo Tahiti International Oceania Documentary Film Festival; and at Pacifique Festival in Rochefort, France. Taulapapa's art studio and writing practice is based in Hudson, New York, where he lives with his partner. He is currently working on a novel. Yuki Kihara
A native of Sāmoa, Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives through visual arts, dance, and curatorial practice, engaging with postcolonial history and representation and how they intersect with race, gender, spirituality and sexual politics. In 2008, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition of Kihara’s work entitled Living Photographs featuring highlights of her interdisciplinary practice, followed by an acquisition of her works by the museum for their permanent collection. Kihara’s works are also in the collections of, among others, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The British Museum and Giorgio Armani. Kihara’s work has been presented at the Asia Pacific Triennale (2002 & 2015), Auckland Triennale (2009), Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013), Daegu Photo Biennale (2014), Honolulu Biennale (2017) and Bangkok Art Biennale (2018). Kihara is a research fellow at The National Museums of World Cultures in The Netherlands. Kihara lives and works in Sāmoa. Kama La Mackarel
Kama La Mackerel (they//them) is multi-disciplinary artist, writer, educator and cultural mediator, from Mauritius, who now lives in Montréal, Canada. Their work is grounded in the exploration of justice, love, healing, decoloniality, and self- and collective empowerment. Kama’s artistic practice spans across textile, visual, digital, poetic and performative work, and is at once narratological and theoretical, at once personal and political. A firm believer that artistic practices have the power to build resilience, to heal, and to act as a form of resistance to the status quo, their work articulates an anticolonial praxis through cultural production. Lamackerel.net Ossie Michelin
Ossie Michelin is a queer Inuk journalist from North West River, Labrador. Son of a missionary nurse and a Labrador trapper, Ossie comes from a long line of storytellers. His work can be found in various news outlets and magazines such as APTN National News, the CBC, Canadian Geographic, and more. Ossie writes about Indigenous issues, the environment, and the North with a capital N. |
JUNE 14 2019 (FRIDAY)
9:00-9:30 a.m.
Concordia University 1515 Saint-Catherine St W, Montreal FOFA Gallery / York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
MORNING COFFEE
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9:30-9:45 a.m
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Welcome & Introduction to Day 2
Alice Ming Wai Jim, Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories Alexandra Chang, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University |
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9:45-10:45 a.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Morning Keynote Skawennati, Towards Thrivance
in conversation with Alice Ming Wai Jim |
SKAWENNATI
Towards Thrivance In this keynote, Skawennati will discuss her trajectory of imagining Indigenous people in the future. Beginning with her early experiments in online communities, through her well-received machinima projects, to her recent production of physical versions of her virtual creations, she continues to investigate how work in cyberspace can positively affect the real world. Skawennati makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her work has been widely presented in both group exhibitions and solo shows and is included in both public and private collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati graduated with a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is based. She is Co-Director of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation network of artists and academics who investigate and create Indigenous virtual environments. Their Skins workshops in Aboriginal Storytelling and Experimental Digital Media are aimed at empowering youth. In 2015 they launched IIF, the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. ALICE MING WAI JIM
Alice Ming Wai Jim is a Professor of Contemporary Art and University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She is founding co-editor-in-chief, with Alexandra Chang, of the international scholarly journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), published by Brill (Leiden,NL) in association with the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art (Concordia University) and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute (New York University). As an art historian, curator and cultural organizer, her research interests include contemporary ethnocultural and global art histories, media arts, international art exhibitions, and critical curatorial studies. She has curated numerous exhibitions of artists from global Asian, Asian Canadian, African Canadian and Indigenous communities and organized major scholarly events within academic settings and for the broader arts community in Canada and internationally. In 2018, she co-edited the fall special issue of RACAR, “What is Critical Curating?” Recipient of the 2015 Centre de documentation d'Artexte Award for Research in Contemporary Art, Jim is co-convener of the 2019 Global Asia/Pacific Exchange (GAX), Asian Indigenous Relationalities in Contemporary Art, in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal). Her current research projects include the history of Asian Canadian art and Afro-Asian Indigenous futurist aesthetics. |
10:45-11:00 a.m.
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COFFEE BREAK
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11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Roundtable Discussion: Climate Change: Connecting Practices
Yuki Kihara, Jane C. Mi, Stephanie Cheung, and Luchia Meihua Lee In conversation with Alexandra Chang |
Panel Description
Climate Change: Connecting Practices This panel will engage upon Day 1 artist and keynote Yuki Kihara's work while also presenting the practices and research of artists Jane Chang Mi and Stephanie Cheung, and curator Luchia Meihua Lee, who are engaged with thinking through the global and temporal resonances and interconnections of climate change, science, Asian indigenous art practice and allyship. The panel will be moderated by Alexandra Chang of the Climate Working Group and touch upon transregional case studies and the research that interrelate with their practices. Yuki Kihara
A native of Sāmoa, Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives through visual arts, dance, and curatorial practice, engaging with postcolonial history and representation and how they intersect with race, gender, spirituality and sexual politics. In 2008, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition of Kihara’s work entitled Living Photographs featuring highlights of her interdisciplinary practice, followed by an acquisition of her works by the museum for their permanent collection. Kihara’s works are also in the collections of, among others, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The British Museum and Giorgio Armani. Kihara’s work has been presented at the Asia Pacific Triennale (2002 & 2015), Auckland Triennale (2009), Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013), Daegu Photo Biennale (2014), Honolulu Biennale (2017) and Bangkok Art Biennale (2018). Kihara is a research fellow at The National Museums of World Cultures in The Netherlands. Kihara lives and works in Sāmoa. Jane C. Mi
As an ocean engineer and an artist, Jane Chang Mi assesses the post-colonial ocean environment through an interdisciplinary and research-based lens. She examines the narratives associated with the underwater landscape considering the past, present, and future. Mi most often focuses on the occupation and militarization of the Pacific Ocean by the United States as her livelihood as an ocean engineer would have reinforced the legacy of the American military complex. The ocean has always played a large role in her life; she has been an avid Scuba diver for over 25 years. She helped Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute develop the Eye-in-the-Sea one of the first long term underwater observation systems. She was also the inaugural artist in residence at the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, researching the pre-contact history of Pearl Harbor. She is currently based out of both Honolulu and Los Angeles. Stephanie Cheung
Stephanie Cheung is a Hong Kong-based curator, writer and artist specializing in process-based, participatory and collaborative projects. She takes open form as a format to explore dialogues, and shapes perception through light touches on tactile materials. Art to her is a practice of care, in which she explores more conscientious ways to inhabit the world. Cheung received an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2015, and in the same year completed Message in a Bottle with support of the Angela Gill Johnson Memorial Award from the Bamboo Curtain Studio in Taipei. Her writings have been published in international journals such as World Art, CAA Reviews, Asian Art News, etc. As an artist, she has presented site-specific projects in America, England, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London. Luchia Meihua Lee
Luchia Meihua Lee is a New York-based curator interested in global contemporary art in all media, and has curated numerous exhibitions with indigenous contemporary artists and environmental art. Luchia is Executive Director of the Taiwanese American Arts Council, whose mission is forging links between Taiwanese American art communities and other parts of the American art scene. She co-edited Zhang Hongtu: Expanding Visions of a Shrinking World co-published by Duke University Press and Queens Museum. She was chief curator of the National Taiwanese Museum of Fine Arts, and deputy curator at Taipei Gallery TECO in New York City. Earlier, served as cultural specialist at the Council for Cultural Affairs (now Cultural Ministry) in Taiwan. Luchia has doctoral studies in Art History and critical studies in CUNY and New York University and she earned an M. Phil in History of Art and Architecture from Trinity College, Dublin, studying medieval manuscripts. Alexandra Chang
Alexandra Chang a curator, writer, and arts scholar. She is currently Curator of Special Projects and Director of Global Arts Programs at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, where she organizes the Climate Working Group (CWG) and directs the NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX). In Fall 2019, she will take on the role of Associate Professor of Practice at Rutgers University, Newark's Art, Culture and Media Department and Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. Chang is also director of the Virtual Asian American Art Museum and Co-Founding Editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), Brill (Leiden). She is the co-founder of the College Art Association’s affiliated society the Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN). She recently curated "Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art" at the Chinese American Museum and California African American Museum for the Getty's PSTII, Sept 2017-Mar 2018; "Dark Roads: Zarina Hashmi" at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, Oct 2017-Feb 2018; (ex)CHANGE: History Place Presence, a city-wide collaboration including 25 newly commissioned works with six public artworks across Philadelphia with the Asian Arts Initiative throughout 2018, and "Ming Fay: Beyond Nature" at Sapar Contemporary in New York City, May-June 2019. She is the author of Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Art Collectives from Godzilla, Godzookie, to the Barnstormers (2008 Timezone 8) and editor of Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art (Duke University Press, 2018). |
12:30-1:30 p.m.
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LUNCH BREAK
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1:30-2:30 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Afternoon Keynote: Margo Machida, Asian/Indigenous Conjunctions: Contemporary Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Artists
In conversation with Anna Kazumi Stahl |
Margo MAchida
Margo Machida, Asian/Indigenous Conjunctions: Contemporary Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Artists I am a Hawai‘i-born Americanist scholar and independent curator examining how contemporary Asian American and Indigenous Pacific artists conceive evolving relationships to the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. Drawn from vantage points in the continental US, Hawai‘i, Australia, and Tahiti, this presentation advances a critical dialog on the visualization and symbolic negotiation of Asian-Indigenous relations by contemporary artists of Asian diasporic, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, aboriginal, and mixed ancestries. The selected artworks bring forward sensibilities marked by a dynamic syncretism that powerfully inflects these artists’ conceptions of multifaceted histories of migration, settlement, dispersion, labor flows, colonialism, war, and racial and cultural mixing that connect peoples, cultures, and places across the Pacific and the Americas. Margo Machida, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Art History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. Born and raised in Hawai‘i, she is a scholar, independent curator, and cultural critic specializing in Asian American art and visual culture. Her book, Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2009) received the Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill). Publications include: “Pacific Itineraries: Islands and Oceanic Imaginaries in Contemporary Asian American Art” (ADVA Journal, 2017); “Trans-Pacific Sitings: The Roving Imagery of Lynne Yamamoto” (Third Text, 2014); “Devouring Hawai‘i: Food, Consumption, and Contemporary Art” in Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (NYU Press, 2013); and “Convergent Conversations – The Nexus of Asian American Art” in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Anna Kazumi Stahl
Anna Kazumi Stahl holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (UC Berkeley) and is a fiction writer based in Argentina. Her critical work and her fiction both explore South-South and East Asian-South American transnational experience and strategies for narrating inter-cultural sensibilities. Working in an acquired language (Spanish), she has written two books of fiction and has a third (non-fiction) book forthcoming with Malba Cuadernos in Buenos Aires. Her fiction has been published in Latin America, Australia, Europe, Japan, and the USA. She is currently completing a novel set in a zone of Buenos Aires historically impacted by immigration. Stahl is the Director of NYU's global program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In addition, she has served as academic coordinator for John M. Coetzee's project of twice yearly colloquia on "Literatures of the Southern Hemisphere" at Universidad Nacional de San Martin. She is a Board Member of the Fulbright Commission of Argentina. |
2:30-3:45 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
The Ethics of Return
Việt Lê, Shamanism, Contemporary Art & Return Alisi Telengut, The Fourfold (work in progress) Yen-Chao Lin 林延昭, The History of Taiwan and Makuta'ay Tyler Russell, Recent Taiwanese Indigenous Art in Centre A's Engagement with Pacific Indigenous Practices In conversation with Francesca Tarocco |
Việt Lê
Shamanism, Contemporary Art & Return This paper traces the “return” of shamanism within contemporary artistic practice, with a focus on artists and traditions connected to Africa and Asia. I critically examine the circuits in which artists intervene in dominant institutional, artistic and spiritual narratives. Case studies include South African experimental filmmaker Dineo Seshee Bopape, Singapore-based Zarina Muhammed kyong and African American sculptor David Hammons. In the 2017 Venice Biennale, curator Christine Marcel featured a “Pavilion of Shamans,” questioning standard modernist conceptions of time, space and relationality. From Joseph Beuys, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Matthew Barney among others, Western conceptual art has long had a fascination with the artist-as-visionary. Art critic Tess Thackery has proclaimed shamanism as making a “comeback.” What are the ethics of return in the age of globalized art in which physical and psychic return also entails a capital return? Through the figure or the artist-shaman, I advocate for a politics of “negative return”—an inversion. Within common usage, a negative return occurs when total losses outweigh the initial investment. Instead, I reframe the “negative” as a desired outcome. This “negative return” references Freud’s theories on melancholia. Postcolonial and feminist revisions—racial melancholia, melancholic migrants—address Freud’s blindness to the linked traumas of race, gender, class and empire. Việt Lê is an artist, writer, and curator. Lê is an Assistant Professor in Visual Studies at California College of the Arts. He has been published in positions: asia critique; Crab Orchard Review; American Quarterly; Amerasia Journal; Art Journal; and the anthologies Writing from the Perfume River; Strange Cargo; The Spaces Between Us; Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art; among others. Recent solo exhibitions include sonic spiritualities (Vargas Museum, 2020) lovebang! (Kellogg University Art Gallery, Los Angeles 2016), vestige (H Gallery Bangkok 2015), tan nÁRT cõi lòng | heARTbreak! (Nhà Sàn Collective Hà Nội). Lê has presented his work at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; DoBaeBacSa Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Japan Foundation, Việt Nam; 1a Space, Hong Kong; Bangkok Art & Cultural Center (BACC), Thailand; Civitella Ranieri, Italy; Shanghai Biennale, China; Rio Gay Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; among other venues. White Gaze, an art book (poetry, images, performance) in collaboration with Michelle Dizon and Faith Wilding is published by Sming Sming Books & Objects (February 2018). Lê co-curated humor us (with Leta Ming and Yong Soon Min; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LA, CA, 2008), transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (with Yong Soon Min; Seoul, Sài Gòn, Irvine, San Francisco, 2008-09), the 2012 Taipei Kuandu Biennale and Love in the Time of War (UC Santa Barbara and SF Camerawork). Vietle.net ALISI TELENGUT
Alisi Telengut is a visual artist, animator, and an award winning filmmaker based in Montreal. She creates animation frame by frame under the camera, with painting as the medium, to generate movement and explore handmade and painterly visuals for her films. Her recent works received awards at the 24th Stockholm Film Festival, the 36th and the 37th Montreal World Film Festival and Canada International Film Festival. In addition to being screened at Sundance, Slamdance, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and various worldwide film venues and exhibitions as animation and moving image artworks, these films have also contributed to ethnographic and ethnocultural research archives. Yen-Chao Lin 林延昭
Yen-Chao Lin 林延昭 is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist. Commenting on the impermanence of existence through intuitive play, collaboration and scavenging, her practice explores divination arts, folk religion, ecology and social permaculture. A self-described postmodern archivist, and natural history enthusiast, she is an avid collector of all things from found family records to Victorian ephemera and biological specimens. Her works have been shown at Berlinale (Berlin), articule (Montreal), Art Metropole (Toronto), Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montreal), OBORO (Montreal), SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art (Montreal), among others. Tyler Russell
Tyler Russell is a curator and arts administrator inspired by art’s capacity to facilitate complex communication within and between communities. Executive Director/Curator of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art from 2014 to 2018 his recent exhibitions include Chang En Man’s As Heavy as a Feather and Wen-li Chen’s To My Unborn Child. These solo exhibitions by Taiwanese indigenous artists give artistic space to questions surrounding the complexity of rural-urban, settler-indigenous dynamics in indigenous rights and environmental activism in the former, and the struggles of memory and intergenerational cultural transference for carriers of endangered cultural heritage in the latter. Russell is currently the Executive Director of The Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna, BC. He holds an MA in New Intermedia Art from Tokyo National University of the Arts and a BA in International Development Studies from Dalhousie University, and is currently enrolled in a Cultural Studies PhD program at Queen’s University. Recent Taiwanese Indigenous Art in Centre A's Engagement with Pacific Indigenous Practices My presentation will focus on recent and upcoming exhibitions of Taiwanese indigenous artists' work in British Columbia. The exhibitions feature works that are predominantly multi-media in nature, involving socially engaged practice, photography, video, documentation as well as traditional object or mark making practices. The recent exhibitions are Chang En Man’s As Heavy as a Feather and Wen-li Chen’s To My Unborn Child. These solo shows gave artistic space to questions surrounding the complexity of rural-urban, settler-indigenous dynamics in indigenous rights and environmental activism in the former, and the struggles of memory and intergenerational cultural transference for carriers of endangered cultural heritage in the latter. The forthcoming exhibition reflects on a modest collection of works by these artists and posits the impacts on an institution like Centre A when it’s “Asian” framing is challenged through the foregrounding of Pacific Indigenous practices. Francesca Tarocco
A scholar of modern and contemporary Sinophone cultural and visual history and Buddhism, Francesca Tarocco is the author of several books including The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma (Routledge, 2011) and Altar Modern: Buddhism and Modernity in China (forthcoming). She curated, with Anna Greenspan, the interpretive humanities program All Tomorrow’s Parties 会聚未来 at RAM Museum (Shanghai, 2012-2013) and organized, with Alexandra Chang, the international conference Transcultural Visualities: Global Asian Art (2013). She is a member of GAX since its inception and recently co-curated the exhibition Intimacies and Imagined Futures: Video and Performance Practices together with Alexandra Chang and Nabi Nara (Berlin, 2018). Tarocco teaches at NYU Shanghai and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and writes for Frieze, Flash Art International and other art magazines. |
3:45-4:00 p.m.
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COFFEE BREAK
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4:00-5:15 p.m.
York Auditorium EV.1-615 |
Curating Asian Indigenous Relations
Daina Warren, An Overview of Indigenous Curatorial Practice Josh Tengan, Toward A Kanaka Curatorial Framework In conversation with Cheryl Sim |
DAINA WARREN
An Overview of Indigenous Curatorial Practice Daina Warren has been the current Director of the Indigenous artist run centre, Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery in Winnipeg Manitoba, for over seven years. She has been professionally curating since 2000 and has worked both in the artist run centre milieu as well with large institutions like that of National Gallery of Canada. Her eclectic and often experimental practice embodies cultural continuance and is grounded in contemplations of Cree cosmology, and Indigenous worldviews, and states of being. Warren effectively works with artists and stakeholders to create and ignite generative spaces, often through collaborative processes and by moving components outside of galleries and into a more public realm. Themes running through her writing and curating include conceptualizations of time and space, Indigenous migrations and encounters on the land, and devising strategies for gathering people around and with art. This presentation will look at various projects that have been integral both to her work as a curator as well look at projects that have been part of the organizations that she has worked within that time frame. Daina Warren is from the Akamihk (Cree) Nation in Maskwacis (Bear Hills), AB. She was awarded two Canada Council's Aboriginal Curatorial Residencies the first to work with grunt gallery, Vancouver BC (2000-2001) and a second residency at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario (2010-2011). She has a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art (ECUAD) and Design (2003) and an MA from UBC (2012). Warren was awarded the 2015 Emily Award from Emily Carr University and was selected as one of six Indigenous women curators as part of the Canada Council for the Arts Delegation to participate in the International First Nations Curators Exchange that took place in Australia (2015), New Zealand (2016), and Canada (2017). Her most recent accomplishment was winning the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellency in 2018. She is currently the Director of Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba. JOSH TENGAN
Toward A Kanaka Curatorial Framework Tengan will talk about recent projects including the Honolulu Biennial 2019, To Make Wrong / Right / Now, for which he was a part of the curatorial team. The title of the biennial was taken from the final lines of the poem, Manifesto, written by kupuna Kanaka Maoli artist, ʻĪmaikalani Kalāhele. He will also talk about CONTACT: Acts of Faith, comprised of contemporary interventions into the collections at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archive. He will unpack the curatorial frameworks of each project in an effort to formulate a kanaka maoli approach toward exhibition making in contemporary art Josh Tengan is a Honolulu-based independent curator and arts project manager. Since 2015, he has worked with Native Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-based artists and cultural practitioners, through the arts non-profit Puʻuhonua Society, to deliver Hawaiʻi’s largest annual thematic contemporary art exhibition, CONTACT, which offers a critical and comprehensive survey of local contemporary visual culture. He was the Assistant Curator of the Honolulu Biennial 2019, To Make Wrong / Right / Now. He holds a Curatorial Studies MA with Distinction from Newcastle University (UK) and a BA in Fine Art from Westmont College. CHERYL SIM
Cheryl Sim is Managing Director and Curator at Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art. Recent exhibitions include Pièces de résistance by Yinka Shonibare (CE) RA, Points de départ by Bharti Kher and GROWING FREEDOM by Yoko Ono. Sim is also an artist whose practice incorporates her background in media studies and research on contemporary art practices. Her video and installation work has been presented in exhibitions and festivals in North America and Europe. In 2015 she completed a PhD in the études et pratiques des arts program at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). Sim has presented papers, organized panels and served as moderator at conferences in Europe and Canada including Fashion, the 84th Anglo-American Conference of Historians and Re-Create: Theories, Methods, Practices of Research-Creation in the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology. Her book “Wearing the Cheongsam: Dress and Culture in a Chinese Diaspora” will be launched this fall by Bloomsbury Academic. |
5:15-6:00 p.m.
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PLENARY / CLOSING REMARKS
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