On 23 October 2012, the MA Asian Art Histories Programme organised a public seminar titled Artists on the Move: Transcultural Practices in Asian Contemporary Art. It invited an international panel of academics, curator and artist to speak on a topic that is particularly relevant to art practice and discourse within the Asian context.

Transculturalism has been proposed as an approach to describe the practices and experiences of Asian artists living and working outside their home countries. As a concept, transculturalism provides an entry point in understanding critically engaged zones of contact as social spaces where cultures meet and interact, and are resisted or transformed through cultural mixing. Have the realities of globalisation made it necessary to think of artistic and cultural practices beyond clearly delineated nation-state boundaries and essentialised categories of identity and cultures by addressing issues arising from cultural appropriation, cultural translation, displacement, diaspora and hybridization as well as how we make sense of the self in shifting contexts of home and country? How have notions of ‘origin’, ‘authenticity’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘derivation’ and ‘tradition’ been problematised by transcultural practices that affect and shape the discourse, writing and curating of Asian art today? These critical questions were addressed by the speakers from various perspectives and theoretical positions.

The five speakers were:

Jen Webb – Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra.

Jason Wee – A visual artist and curator working in both Singapore and New York

Isabel Ching – An independent curator based in the Philippines.

Jorella Andrews – Head of the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Nora Taylor – Art historian of modern and contemporary Vietnamese art and Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The seminar was moderated by Kwok Kian Chow, Senior Advisor, National Art gallery, Singapore