The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Art in Global Asia

294 Pages·2022·6.507 MB·English

by  Menene Gras, Jonathan Harris, Bashir Makhoul

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
CONTEMPORARY ART IN GLOBAL ASIA
This substantial collection of newly commissioned essays presents an ambitious, entertaining, and
accessible guide to developments in Asian art over the past 20 years of the epoch of globalization.
The term ‘global Asia’ signals the genesis and evolution of contemporary art within the
context of global economic, social, political, and intellectual change related to the end of the
Cold War, decolonization, the emergence of postcolonial societies and cultures, and the rise of a
global contemporary art world. In the handbook its editors establish, in an extended introductory
section and in four section introductions, the theoretical, geographical, and historical parameters
within which the contemporary visual arts of ‘global Asia’ may be described, analyzed, and
evaluated. The collected chapters provide a diverse, multiauthored, heterogeneous, and genuinely
plural account of art and its contexts. The democratic and inclusive character of globalization is
refected and produced within this anthology, which includes diferent styles of writing as well
as varieties of analytic and thematic focus.
The anthology will appeal to both scholars and students in art history, art practice, curation,
contemporary art, fne art, cultural studies, and globalization studies.
Menene Gras has been the director of culture and exhibitions at Casa Asia (Barcelona and
Madrid) since 2003 and is also the current director of the Asian Film Festival Barcelona
(AFFBCN). With a PhD from the University of Barcelona, Menene Gras is an art critic, curator,
lecturer, and former professor at the same university. Author of many essays, catalogues,
anthologies, and four books of poetry, she was art correspondent for Art Forum for more than
12 years and has been writing in many newspapers and art magazines for many years.
Jonathan Harris has taught at several British universities, including Keele, Liverpool, Southampton,
Birmingham City, and the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury, England, where he is
the director of UCA Doctoral College. Specializing in modernist and contemporary art, Harris has
published 23 books and over 150 book and journal essays, including a trilogy of studies on art and
globalization, and most recently he has edited Terrorism and the Arts (Routledge 2021).
Bashir Makhoul is the president and vice chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts,
UK. Professor Makhoul is a writer, editor, and artist with a substantial track record of driving
globalization initiatives within higher education. He is an internationally exhibited artist, his work
features in major collections, and he is widely acknowledged as a global authority on Palestinian art.

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN
GLOBAL ASIA
Edited by Menene Gras, Jonathan Harris,
and Bashir Makhoul
Designed cover image: One drop of my tears. Oil on canvas, 85x85cm, 2022.
By: Bashir Makhoul with Alex Makhoul.
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Menene Gras, Jonathan Harris and Bashir Makhoul;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Menene Gras, Jonathan Harris and Bashir Makhoul to be identifed as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identifcation and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-25851-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-25852-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28529-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003285298
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of contributors viii
I.
Contexts, defnitions, problems 1
1 Introduction: Art in ‘global Asia’ in a transformed world 3
Jonathan Harris, Menene Gras, and Bashir Makhoul
2 Why Asia? Map-making as the social construction of place:
increasing Asian power in the world 14
Menene Gras
3 Shifting local cultures through travelling identities in the
new Silk Roads: the temptation to return 28
Menene Gras
II.
Mappings 43
4 Orders of spectating: rehearsals of sovereignty and
new museums of art in the Near East 47
Lewis Johnson
5 Pedagogy, bureaucracy, and fashioning a rooted modernism 61
Hammad Nasar
6 The 1990s: a new epoch in the history of Korean contemporary art 69
Kim Hong-hee
v
Contents
7 Facts in the ground: artefacts, fctions, and national identities in
contemporary Palestinian art 82
Gordon Hon
8 Telling time through nation and narration: towards an
understanding of ‘Asian contemporary art’ in global Asia 91
Menene Gras
III.
Regions and borders 111
9 Palestinian video art and the fuxus of globalization.
‘Palestinian’ as a contemporary national identity 115
Bashir Makhoul
10 Palestinian video art and the fuxus of globalization.
Palestine as an ‘imagined community’ 127
Bashir Makhoul
11 Doing the business in the Hong Kong art world 140
Jonathan Harris
12 The woman does not exist: de-Oedipalization of
contemporary art 154
Sumi Kang
13 Metonym and metaphor, islands and continents: refections on
curating contemporary art from Southeast Asia 161
Lee Weng-Choy
IV.
Sites, systems, and practices 173
14 Palestinian international exhibitions: from universal resistance to global
nomadism – the case of Qalandiya International. Qalandiya
International: the predicament of a colonially defned locality 177
Rawan Sharaf
15 Palestinian international exhibitions: from universal resistance to
global Nomadism – the case of Qalandiya International.
Qalandiya International: a genealogy of institutional patterns,
behaviours, and references 189
Rawan Sharaf
vi
Contents
16 Art after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami: radical
changes in Japanese art 203
Kenichi Kondo
17 Biennales and triennales in global Asia: art as journey and
encounter 213
Caroline Turner
18 Museum frenzy: notes from the feld on studying True
Color Museum 225
Isaac Leung
V.
Refections on the dialectics of contemporary art in Asia 233
19 The exhibition 237
Amanullah Mojadidi
20 The age of gold and the dust of stars: paradise and fall in the
paintings of Li Xinping 247
David Elliott
21 The provincial cosmopolitan: Emily Jacir and the
Mediterranean Sea 255
Nicos Papastergiadis
22 A new ecology of knowledges: modes of abyssal thinking 261
Anna Maria Guasch
23 From dusty warehouses to the white cube: BizArt and the developing
forms of contemporary art display in Shanghai 268
Davide Quadrio
Index 278
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
David Elliott is a British art historian, curator, writer, and teacher who has directed art muse-
ums in Oxford, Stockholm, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Guangzhou. He has directed major biennales
in Sydney (2010), Kyiv (2012), Moscow (2014), and Belgrade (2016) and has taught art history/
museum studies at universities in Oxford (1986–1996), Tokyo (2002–2006), Berlin, and Hong
Kong (2008–2016). A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and
contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these felds. He is currently based in Oxford.
Menene Gras has been the director of culture and exhibitions at Casa Asia (Barcelona and
Madrid) since 2003 and is also the current director of the Asian Film Festival Barcelona (AFF-
BCN). With a PhD from the University of Barcelona, Menene Gras is an art critic, curator,
lecturer, and former professor at the same university. Author of many essays, catalogues, anthol-
ogies, and four books of poetry, she was an art correspondent for Art Forum for more than 12
years and has been writing in many newspapers and art magazines for many years.
Anna Maria Guasch is a full professor in history of contemporary and global art at the Uni-
versity of Barcelona (Spain). She is director of the research projects Art, Globalization, Inter-
culturality (https://artglobalizationinterculturality.com/es/) and Global Art Archive (https://
globalartarchive.com). She is the author of several books.
Jonathan Harris has taught at several British universities, including Keele, Liverpool, South-
ampton, Birmingham City, and the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury, England,
where he is Director of UCA Doctoral College. Specialising in modernist and contemporary
art, Harris has published 23 books and over 150 book and journal essays, including a trilogy of
studies on art and globalization, and most recently he has edited Terrorism and the Arts (Rout-
ledge 2021).
Gordon Hon is a professorial fellow at UCA and a lecturer in visual culture at the University
of Southampton. He has written extensively on Palestinian contemporary art and is also a prac-
ticing artist and curator.
Kim Hong-hee is the chairman of the board for the Nam June Paik Cultural Foundation.
As an art historian, curator, and critic based in Seoul, South Korea, she has served as the
viii
Contributors
director of the Seoul Museum of Art (2012–2016) and the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art
(2006–2010). She has published over ten books.
Lewis Johnson is an independent historian, theoretician, and curator of art, living, and working
in and beyond Istanbul. Recently, he was visiting Theodore Randall International Chair of Art
and Design at Alfred University, NY, USA (2021). He has published on issues in modern and
contemporary art in Europe, North America, Turkey, the Middle East, and South Africa.
Sumi Kang (Kang, Su Mi) is an art critic and aesthetician. She is an associate professor of art
theory at Dongduk Women’s University in Seoul. She has published several books on art.
Kenichi Kondo is a senior curator at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. He specialized in
contemporary art and has curated a number of exhibitions, including Chim↑Pom: Happy Spring
(2022) and Catastrophe and the Power of Art (2018).
Isaac Leung is a practicing artist, curator, and scholar in art and culture. He is currently an
assistant professor in the faculty of arts of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the board
director of the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival.
Bashir Makhoul is the president and vice chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts,
UK. Professor Makhoul is a writer, editor, and artist with a substantial track record of driving
globalization initiatives within higher education. He is an internationally exhibited artist, his
work features in major collections, and he is widely acknowledged as a global authority on
Palestinian art.
Amanullah Mojadidi is an Afghan American conceptual artist and shamanic practitioner with
degrees in cultural anthropology. He has published both fction and nonfction works.
Hammad Nasar is a curator, writer, researcher, and strategic advisor. His most recent exhi-
bitions include British Art Show 9 (2021–2022); Turner Prize (2021); and Rock, Paper, Scissors:
Positions in Play – the UAE’s pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). He is presently a senior
research fellow, Paul Mellon Centre (London), and lead curator, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
(Coventry). Earlier, he was the executive director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London; head
of research and programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; principal research fellow, UAL
Decolonising Arts Institute; and co-founded Green Cardamom, London.
Nicos Papastergiadis is the director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures and Professor at
the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of
several publications as well as the editor of over ten collections and author of numerous essays
which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues. He
is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities; co-chair of the Greek Centre for
Contemporary Culture; and chair of the International Advisory Committee for the Centre for
Contemporary Art, Singapore.
Davide Quadrio is the director of MAO, Museum of Asia Art in Turin, Italy, and is a visiting
professor at the Visual Art Department, IUAV, Venice. He founded and directed for a decade
the frst not-for-proft independent creative lab in Shanghai, Bizart Art Center, as a platform
to foster the local contemporary art scene (1998–2010). In 2007 Quadrio created Arthub, a
production and curatorial proxy active in Asia and worldwide.
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