The symposium addresses the 20th century processes of decolonization, modernization, and nation-building that characterized the regions of Asia and the Pacific. These structures are revisited in the 21st century in the wake of globalization, and art practice in recent years has sought to address these questions, variously embracing or resisting their assumptions, politicizing their implications, or challenging discourse around such formulations. Not only are the cities of Asia and the Pacific growing, but have also become major centers of art, with mega-exhibitions and biennales that crucially forge regional identities and affinities. The symposium aims to explore these emerging visualities in the light of the complex, and changing socio-political and economic issues that affect countries, peoples, institutions and practice in the region.

Day 1

Friday, February 20, 2009

A.D. White House, Cornell University

12:30 pm
Check in

1:00 pm
Welcome Remarks: Prof. Shirley Samuels, Chair, History of Art

1:15 pm
Opening Remarks: Brinda Kumar and Bernida Webb-Binder

1:30 pm
Session 1: Asian Cities: Siting Cultures and Identities

Moderator: Prof. Mary Woods, Professor, Department of Architecture

Yasufumi Nakamori

PhD candidate, History of Art, Cornell University

Assistant Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

"Japan World Exposition 1970: the Festival Plaza as Site of Avant-Garde Confluence and Contestation in Postwar Japan"

Jung Joon Lee

PhD candidate, History of Art, The Graduate Center, CUNY

"1995: Cultural Productions as Agents of Nation-Building in South Korea"

Gilles Guillot

PhD candidate, Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies, Université Lyon 3, Jean Moulin

"Between Identity and Globalization, Taichung City in Search of a New Visuality

3:30 pm
Break

4:00 pm
Session 2: A Place For Artists and the Space For Art

Moderator: Prof. Iftikhar Dadi, Assistant Professor, History of Art

Pamela Corey

PhD candidate, History of Art, Cornell University

"Recomposing the Vietnamese Cityscape"

Rika Hiro

PhD candidate, Art History, University of Southern California

"Tokyo's (Un)bearable Lightness of Being: Chim Pom and Issues of Subjectivity in Post-Superflat Art"

Bernida Webb-Binder

PhD candidate, History of Art, Cornell University

"Jewel Castro and Shigeyuki Kihara: Contemporary Pacific Art and Modernity"

5:30 pm
Break

6:00 pm
Introduction of Keynote Speaker: Prof. Kaja McGowan, Associate Professor, History of Art

Keynote Address

Dr. Melissa Chiu
Director, Asia Society Museum, New York

"Contemporary Art in Asia: Arguing for a Global Art History"

7:00 pm
Reception

Day 2

Saturday, February 21, 2009

A.D. White House, Cornell University

8:45 am
Breakfast

9:15 am
Session 3: Imag(in)ing Selves and Spaces

Moderator: Prof. Jolene Rickard, Associate Professor, History of Art

Kelema Lee Moses

PhD candidate, Art History, The Pennsylvania State University

"Photography and the Everyday: Imagining "Paradise" in Territorial Hawaii"

Shota Ogawa

PhD candidate, Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester

"Curtain Call: Visualizing the Self, the City, and the Time through the Image of Koreans in Japan"

Sohl Lee

PhD candidate, Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester

"Through Moving Images: Seeing, Believing, and Articulating Migrant Workers' Lives in South Korea"

Jia Tan

PhD candidate, Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

"Performing (in) Construction/Demolition: Remaking Artistic and Urban Space in Pearl River Delta"

11:15 am
Break

11:30 am
Session 4: All Eyes on China

Moderator: Prof. An-yi Pan, Associate Professor, History of Art

Elizabeth Emrich

PhD candidate, History of Art, Cornell University

"Performing Differently: Specificity in the Study of Chinese Conceptual Art"

Bo Zheng

PhD candidate, Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester

"Karibu Islands: Engaging Beijing's Queer Community"

Brianne Cohen

PhD candidate, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

"Cai Guo-Qiang's Explosion Events as Performances of Planetarity"

1:00 pm
Lunch

1:45 pm
Symposium Address

"Art History and the Public Sphere"

Dr. Charles Merewether
Art Historian and Curator

2:30 pm
Session 5: The Art of Dis/Placing Value

Moderator: Prof. Cheryl Finley, Assistant Professor, History of Art

Hélène Njoto

PhD candidate, Art History, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

"The Reemergence of an Indonesian Art Market: the Impact of the Chinese Boom"

Danica Willard

MA student, Art History, Theory and Criticism & Arts Administration and Policy, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

"Command Culture and the Third World: Neoliberalism, Globalization and Contemporary Indian Art"

Sophia Powers

MA student, Anthropology, Columbia University

"Gifting the Grounded: Khoj, the Indian Avant-Garde and the Art of Funding"

3:30 pm
Break

4:30 pm
Session 6: At Home in the World: Negotiating Globalization

Moderator: Prof. Kaja McGowan, Associate Professor, History of Art

Saskia Sorg

PhD candidate, School of Art and Design, Loughborough University

"Contemporary Drawings in the Context of Globalization in the Regions of Asia and the Pacific"

Hyejong Yoo

PhD candidate, History of Art, Cornell University

"Oh Yun's Woodcut Prints: Breathing New Life into the Spirit of Minjung"

Mary Jane Connor

MA student, Art History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

"A Plea for Cultural Autonomy in Fiji"

6:00 pm
Closing Reception

Dr. Melissa Chiu is Director of the Asia Society Museum in New York and President of the Society's Global Arts Programming. She is a leading authority on Asian contemporary art, and has launched a number of major contemporary and traditional art initiatives at the Asia Society Museum. Chiu has lectured at numerous American universities, including Harvard and CUNY and has also been a Getty Research Fellow (2003-2004). She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board, Asia Art Archives, Hong Kong; Advisory Board, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vancouver; Advisor for Art 21, and art television series broadcast on PBS; Board Member, Vietnam Foundation for the Arts; and is a founding member of the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium in New York.

She is the author and editor of many books, monographs, and anthologies, among them books on the Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Huan, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China focusing on the international Chinese artistic diaspora and a book accompanying exhibition Art and China's Revolultion (2008). Prior to joining Asia Society, Chiu was Founding Director of the Asia-Australia Arts Centre in Sydney, Australia (1996-2001). She earned her Ph.D. in Art History and M.A. in Arts Administration in her native Australia.

Dr. Charles Merewether is an art historian and curator. He is currently Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. In 2007-8 he was Deputy Director of the Cultural District (Saadiyat Island) for the Tourism Development and Investment Co. in Abu Dhabi and previously Arts and Culture Consultant for the Emirates Foundation in UAE. He is also Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Hong Kong International Art Fair. Merewether was the Artistic Director and Curator of the Biennale of Sydney (2006); Collections Curator at the Getty Center in Los Angeles; and the Inaugural Curator of the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey (Mexico). He has taught at the University of Sydney, Universidad Autonoma, Barcelona, the Ibero-Americana, Mexico City and University of Southern California. He has been recipient of various Fellowships from institutions including Yale University and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, Australian National University (2004-7). Merewether has published widely on modernism and contemporary art in Europe, the Americas, Australia, and East Asia. His most recent books are 'Ai Weiwei: Under Construction' (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008) Editor and contributor, 'Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan 1950-1970, (Los Angeles: The Getty Center, 2007) and Editor, 'The Archive,' (Mass: MIT / Whitechapel, London, 2006). He is currently writing a book on the cultural history of looting.

Co-sponsors: Africana Studies and Research Center - American Indian Program - Asia American Studies - Center for the Study of Inequality - Department of Anthropology - Department of Architecture - Department of Comparative Literature - Department of German Studies - Department of Government - Department of History - Department of the History of Art - Department of Philosophy - Department of Science and Technology Studies - Department of Theatre, Film and Dance - Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program - Frank Robinson - Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Finance Commission - Institute for German Cultural Studies - Minority, Indigenous, and Third World Studies Research Group - Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art - Society for the Humanities - South East Asia Program - The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies
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SPRING 2008 GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM:

The Cornell University Department of the History of Art is pleased to announce its annual graduate symposium

Diasporic Bodies and Visual Culture:
Contemporary African and
African Diaspora Art Perspectives

Department of the History of Art
Annual Graduate Symposium
Cornell University
April 11-12, 2008
Africana Studies and Research Center
Cornell University

Program

Friday, April 11

2:00 p.m. Amanda Gilvin
Welcome
Symposium Co-organizer

2:05 p.m. Professor Shirley Samuels
Opening Remarks
Chair of the Department of the History of Art

Guest Speaker
2:15 p.m. Dr. Anthony Downey
Beyond Identity Politics: Excessive Identities in the Work of Yinka Shonibare, Aimé Ntakiyika, and Samuel Fosso
Program Director of the M.A. in Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London

3:15 p.m. Break

Session One
Moderator: Professor Diane Butler
Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University

3:30 p.m. Dwan McClendon
Wangechi Mutu: Female Figures and the Discourse of Destruction
Kent State University, Ohio

4:00 p.m. Rose Oluronke Ojo
Disrobing the Hero in Renee Cox's "Raje" and Yinka Shonibare's "Diary of A Victorian Dandy" Series
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

4:30 p.m. Break

Keynote Address
5:00 p.m. Professor Salah Hassan
Keynote Introduction

Lalla Assia Essaydi
Continuity and Change: Veiled Realities
Artist

6:30 p.m. Reception

Saturday, April 12

10:00am Coffee and Tea

Session Two
Moderator: Professor Iftikhar Dadi
Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art, Cornell University

10:30 a.m. Zakiyyah Jackson
The Perversity of Power and Violence in Kara Walker's 'Battle of Atlanta: Being a Narrative of a Negress in the Flames of Desire'
University of California, Berkeley

11:00 a.m. Jon Senchyne
Face, Race, Revolution: Facial Representation in Alain Locke's The
New Negro and Richard Wright's Native Son
Cornell University

11:30 a.m. Gabriel Peoples
"Slavery Cannot Be Destroyed, But Only Change Form":
Implications for the Status of Black Men in the Public Media in
Hank Willis Thomas's B®anded and Unbranded Exhibitions
Cornell University

12:00 p.m. Lunch Break

Session Three
Moderator: Professor Dagmawi Woubshet
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Cornell University

1:00 p.m. Zanele Muholi
Gay(zing) Body, Image, Beauty, and Landscape
Ryerson University

1:30 p.m. Danielle M. Snoddy
"I Am an Activist First—Then an Artist": The Photographic Work of Zanele Muholi
University of Iowa

2:00 p.m. Kevin Dumouchelle
Beyond the Body Boundary: Queer{y}ing the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Samuel Fosso
Columbia University

2:30 p.m. Break

Session Four
Moderator: Professor Maria Fernandez
Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art, Cornell University

2:45 p.m. Jessica Hurd
Breathing Body, Winding Snake: A Reevaluation of Body Symbolism in Dogon Art, Performance, and Village Design
Indiana University

3:15 p.m. Laila Shereen Sakr
On Performing Arab New Media
University of California, Santa Cruz

3:45 p.m. Dan Jakubowski
Julie Mehretu and the Global Community
Graduate School of the History of Art and Design at the Pratt Institute

4:15 p.m. Closing Remarks

This symposium is possible thanks to contributions from the following Cornell University departments and institutions: Africana Studies and Research Center, the GPSAFC, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art, Institute of European Studies, Institute for German Culture Studies, Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, Department of German Studies, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Society for the Humanities, Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, and the College of Art, Architecture, and Planning