Theme: 6. Using the Arts, Media and Culture: Contestations and Collaborations

Contested Borders and Heritages in Contemporary Art in Asia

Panel Convenor(s)

• NM

  Noriko Murai

  Sophia University, Japan

Panel Chair(s)

• NM

  Noriko Murai

  Sophia University, Japan

Panel Discussant(s)

• AC

  Alan Chong

  Independent Art Historian, Malaysia

Presenter(s)

• NM

  Noriko Murai

  Sophia University, Japan
• NJ

  Nayun Jang

  Sogang University, Republic of Korea
• ZJ

  Zehra Jumabhoy

  University of Bristol, United Kingdom

This panel examines the issue of historical heritage and cultural ownership visualized over and at national borders—conceptual, imagined, historical, or current—in contemporary art in Asia. While the notion of global Asia has received much media and scholarly attention in the 21^st century, the inherent diversity of geography, languages, religions, and ethnicities, in addition to population migrations, has in fact made this world region especially resistant to be grasped or discussed coherently as an entity. In contemporary art, there has also been much talk about contemporary and global Asian art, but exactly what defines or groups the otherwise varied art praxis and productions as “Asian” often remains elusive or tautological.

This panel proposes to approach the subject of contemporary Asian art by reversing our natural desire towards definable unity and by discussing the sites, histories, heritages, and even personalities that have symbolized contestations and fissures within and of Asia. The three papers discuss the work of artists living in and/or with ethnic heritage(s) from India, Pakistan, Japan, and South Korea, addressing how specific artworks engage with the issue of divisions and contestations in Asia. In “Exploring Border Temporalities: Remembering Korean State Villages Visually,” Nayun Jang discusses the photographic projects that address the tempo-spatiality of the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). In “Timed Out?: Mughal Pasts and South Asian Futures,” Zehra Jumabhoy demonstrates how divergent claims made over the Mughal cultural legacy in contemporary South Asian art visualize the conflict-ridden present of India and Pakistan. Noriko Murai in “Staging the Nation and Its Divided Genealogies in Contemporary Japanese Art” addresses the divided legacy of the Japanese art historian Okakura Kakuzō who is commemorated as a patriarch of both pan-Asianism and nationalism, symbolizing Japan’s contentious self-positioning within Asia.

The purpose of the panel is not just to present three case studies demonstrating different national examples. Rather, the panel collectively seeks to identify points of connection across the papers in seeking a shared historical consciousness that perhaps negatively binds Asia through its particular disruptions and separations, derived from the unevenly implicated but nonetheless shared histories that mark modern Asia, including colonization by various European powers, Japanese colonialism and military aggressions, post-WWII national independence, and the subsequent American military interventions.

Presentations:

• 09:00 – 10:45 (GMT+7)

  Staging the Nation and Its Divided Genealogies in Contemporary Japanese Art
  

  Presenter: Noriko Murai – Sophia University
• 09:00 – 10:45 (GMT+7)

  Exploring Border Temporalities: Remembering Korean State Villages Visually
  

  Presenter: Nayun Jang – Sogang University
• 09:00 – 10:45 (GMT+7)

  Timed Out?: Mughal Pasts and South Asian Futures
  

  Presenter: Zehra Jumabhoy – University of Bristol