Collective Grieving in Art: A Seminar on Transoceanic Collaboration toward Repair

This seminar invites participants to explore transnational and transoceanic artistic collaboration as a form of collective grieving toward repair, especially for those communities whose precarious condition is perpetuated by liberal humanism that undergirds neo/colonialism and neoliberalism. 

Lee’s recent research, initiated before the outbreak of Covid-19 and finding profound resonance in times of escalating anti-Asian racism since the onset of the pandemic, includes how Asian and Asian American artists living and working between Asia and North America have organized themselves and created artistic spaces where new kinships, friendships, and solidarities can be formed, but not without tensions between artists and places. The artists explored in this seminar seek to repair the racialized disconnections (both within and between North America and Asia) that perpetually relegate diasporic Asians to “resident aliens” and marginalize them, especially when they refuse to partake in white supremacist, neoliberal, and assimilationist politics. Anchored in queer and feminist theories of art and media and critical race theory, participants will weave together anti-colonial and feminist critiques of Euro- and Anglo-centric historicism for exploring multisensorial and affective experiences of art making and viewing in Asian diasporas, with the backdrop of the haunting post/memories of diasporic lives vis-à-vis militarism, anti-Black racism, settler colonialism, and long-distance nationalism. Participants are encouraged to bring examples from Australia and other sites of diaspora.

Readings

(Provided upon registration) 

• David L. Eng, “The Feeling of Kinship: Affect and Language in History and Memory,” in The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 166-198.
   
• Jung Joon Lee, “Drawing on Repair: Kang Seung Lee and Ibanjiha’s Transpacific Queer of Colour Critique,” Burlington Contemporary Journal, no. 8 (June 2023): 142-157. DOI: doi.org/10.31452/bcj8.lee.repair

Series convened by Olivier Krischer and Yvonne Low, and co-presented by the Power Institute and VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW.