Material Affinities and Representational Imaginaries

Panel Convenor(s)

• PM

  Padma Maitland

  Asian Art Museum, United States

Panel Chair(s)

• PM

  Padma Maitland

  Asian Art Museum, United States

Presenter(s)

• PM

  Padma Maitland

  Asian Art Museum, United States
• JF

  Janine Francois

  The Bartlett School of Architecture, United Kingdom
• BC

  Bhasha Chakrabarti

  Experimenter, United States
• SS

  Siddhartha Shah

  Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, United States
• MD

  Mario D’Souza

  Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India

How does art record and maintain international solidarities imagined or realized across the Global South? This collection of papers explores artistic and creative practices that trace histories between Africa, Asia, and beyond. Rather than a bounded territory or period, each paper examines specific works, projects, or materials as the basis for a discussion of African-Asian solidarities and misprisions. The panel moves through a diverse set of examples, each operating within different historical and regional contexts, from British colonial expansion and African-Asian diasporas in the Caribbean, to the Black Power Movement in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and North America. It also addresses speculative fabulations drawn from archival discoveries and creative practices to explore specific geopolitical and racialized histories as a reflection of shifting transregional conceptions. Special attention is paid to the material transformations, representational strategies, and ideological imaginaries exemplified in works or curatorial projects, and how spaces outside direct Africa-Asia connections speak to diasporic contingencies that expand upon Afro-Asia affinities in art, literature, and design.

Presentations:

• 09:00 - 10:45 GMT

  Panther: Visual and Material Solidarities of Race and Caste
  

  Presenter: Padma Dorje Maitland – Asian Art Museum
• 09:00 - 10:45 GMT

  Diasporan Dialogues: How the Caribbean Mediates between African and Asian Artistic Practices
  

  Presenter: Janine Francois – The Bartlett School of Architecture
• 09:00 - 10:45 GMT

  Indigo: The Layered Materiality of a Seductive Material
  

  Presenter: Bhasha Chakrabarti – Experimenter
• 09:00 - 10:45 GMT

  The Importance of Being Empress: Race and Labor in the Court of Queen Victoria
  

  Presenter: Siddhartha Shah – Mead Art Museum, Amherst College
• 09:00 - 10:45 GMT

  Spectres, Ships, and a Sea of Stories
  

  Presenter: Mario D’Souza – Kochi-Muziris Biennale