A discussion of the 'Worlding' of (South) Asian art and questions of representation with Chaitanya Sambrani, Associate Professor at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory, Australian National University.
The modernity and contemporaneity of contemporary cultural expressions from Asia and other parts of the non-Western world started being acknowledged by major institutions in the developed world some four decades ago. Today it is increasingly common to see contemporary art from previously peripheral locations featured among exhibitions of a “worlded” contemporary art system. Discernible in the seemingly insatiable appetites for luxury consumption at burgeoning art fairs, or in the aspirational accumulation of cultural capital in a biennialised world, dealers, curators, critics and collectors are increasingly confident in their inclusion of art from South Asian and other previously marginalised locations. Focussing on examples from South and Southeast Asia, this talk analyses the “worlding” of contemporary art in the complex interplay of the local and the global. It explores the multiple valences of local belonging and international representation in the production of meaning in the eternal present of a seemingly contextless contemporaneity.
The event was convened and organised by Mallica Kumbera Landrus with funds from the India-Oxford project. Geoffrey Batten was Moderator for discussion
