What’s Contemporary about Asian Art: Contested Terrains and Critical Re-Imaginings

Speaker: Parul Dave Mukherji
Discussant: Abhay Sardesai

August 28, 2010 | 6.30 pm
Auditorium, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai

The presentation draws upon the introduction of the forthcoming book co-edited by Parul Dave-Mukherji and titled “InFlux: Contemporary Art in Asia” which in turn was based on a conference on Elective Affinities and Constitutive Differences: Contemporary Asian Art that was held in 2007 in Delhi. The discussant for this program is Abhay Sardesai.

Is it a truism to view contemporary art in Asia as caught in a state of flux? Are not instability, incommensurability and heterogeneity the very conditions for grasping the contemporary? It is the coupling of the terms “contemporary” and “Asian art” that is a recent phenomenon stretching back to the 1990s. Its emergence coincided not only with the new world order at the time of globalization but the questioning of western identity in cultural practices. The lecture will deal with contemporary debates about theorizing contemporary Asian art.

Parul Dave-Mukherji is a professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Earlier, she taught at the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University in Baroda. From 2002, she became the co-convener of the Forum on Contemporary Theory and co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Thought. Her recent publications include Towards A New Art History: Studies in Indian Art (co-edited), New Delhi, 2003 and guest-edited the special issue on Visual Culture of the Journal of Contemporary Thought, 17 (Summer 2003); Rethinking Modernity, (co-edited) New Delhi, 2005. Her current research focuses on Indian art historiography, the politics of visual representation, comparative aesthetics and global art history.

Abhay Sardesai has been the Editor of ART India, the premier art magazine of India, from 2002. He has written and lectured extensively on art and literature.

This lecture was first presented in Bengaluru under the aegis of Somberikatte and 1.Shanthi Road, as part of the series ‘Re-Look: Lectures on Indian Art’ conceived and curated by the artist, Pushpamala N.