Maverick Practices in Asian Art: Artists, Curators, and Scholars Breaching the Boundaries
The Center for the Art of East Asia in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago will host a forthcoming symposium titled Maverick Practices in Asian Art: Artists, Curators, and Scholars Breaching the Boundaries. Maverick Practices in Asian Art will feature project-based artist talks and panel discussions aimed at underscoring innovative insights and methodologies that are actively reframing the field of contemporary Asian art. Organized in collaboration with internet based PoNJA-GenKon (Post-1945 Japanese Art Discussion Group/Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai), Maverick Practices in Asian Art emphasizes unconventional approaches in both scholarship and curatorial work relating to modern and contemporary art from Asia and its diasporas. While such terms as “interdisciplinary” and “transdisciplinary” may objectively describe these disparate approaches, the word “maverick” aptly captures the symposium’s collective spirit of breaching traditional boundaries. The symposium draws upon four key themes that signal important new directions in contemporary Asian curatorial and art historical studies, including: Conceptualism in Global Asia; Contemporary Asian Diasporas; Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art; and Curating Community: Decentralized Contemporary Art Spaces.
Maverick Practices in Asian Art: Artists, Curators, and Scholars Breaching the Boundaries also hopes to honor the memory of University of Chicago PhD student Alan Longino, a fearless practitioner of modern and contemporary art history and exhibition making whose maverick spirit and intellectual legacy lives on through the work of his contemporaries.
FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2025
Cochrane-Woods Art Center (CWAC)
5540 S. Greenwood Ave, Chicago, IL
Opening Remarks
1:45 –2:00 pm
Keynote Dialogue
On Kawara and Matsuzawa Yutaka: Two Mavericks of Conceptualism — In Memory of Alan Longino
2:00 –3:00 pm
Location: CWAC, Room 157
Anne Rorimer (Independent Scholar and Curator), in conversation with Reiko Tomii (Historian and Curator), moderated by Martha Joseph (Associate Curator of Media and Performance at The Museum of Modern Art)
CWAC Exhibition Opening Receptions
Go Calmly Across this Room: In Memory
3:00-4:30 pm
Location: CWAC, Floor 2*
An exhibition in honor of Alan Longino, featuring works from his personal collection and the arts community at University of Chicago curated by Trevor Brandt, Lex Ladge, and Cybele Tom (PhD Candidates in Art History, University of Chicago)
Drifting Timelines 流动时序
3:00-4:30 pm
Location: CWAC, Floor 1
An exhibition examining diasporic identity and historial connections, featuring work by Chicago-based artists Hai-Wen Lin, Xuanlin Ye, and Fengzee Yang. Curated by Haemin Kim (Undergraduate Student in Art History and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Chicago)
*Floor 2 is accessible only by stairs. Please email visualresources@uchicago.edu if you need an accommodation to access CWAC, Floor 2.
Satellite Exhibition
Open carefully
kayla cui, maya janine d'costa, el lee, kyle lowe, tongji philip qian, hyeseul song
Room 502, Gates-Blake Halls, 5845 S. Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
(Former site of Longino, I.A.H.)
M to F, 9 am to 5 pm
March 25-May 5, 2025
Artist Presentations
5:00-6:00 pm
Location: Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Room 157
Tomorrow Girls Troop
Art, Feminism, and Activism
6:00-7:00 pm
Location: Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Room 157
Lecture with Babies
SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2025
Franke Institute for the Humanities
Jospeh Regenstein Library S-102
1100 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL
Opening Remarks
9:45-10:00 am
[Presentation order subject to change]
Panel One: Conceptualism in Global Asia
10:00-11:30 am
Panel Chair: Reiko Tomii (Art Historian)
Nina Horisaki-Christens (Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles)
Archipelagic Trajectories in Feminist Video Art: Michishita Kyōko’s Being Women in Japan: Living with the Ocean (1974)
Chaeeun Lee (PhD candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center)
Apparatus for Guerrilla Epistemology: Situating Arakawa
and Madeline Gins’s The Mechanism of Meaning
Soyoon Ryu (PhD candidate in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU)
Hyeonjang: Situating Conceptualism in East & Southeast Asian Art
Panel Two: Contemporary Asian Diasporas
11:30 am-1:00 pm
Panel Chair: Yechen Zhao
Genji Amino (PhD Candidate in English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University)
The Transparency of Asian American Aesthetic Form
Baseera Khan (Contemporary artist)
Civil Obedience
Tie Jojima (Curator of Global Contemporary Art, The Phillips Collection)
Queering Asian Diasporic Art in Brazil
Panel Three: Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art
2:00-3:30 pm
Panel Chair: Wu Hung
Ignacio Adriasola (Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, The University of British Columbia)
Enokura: Painting beyond the Names-of-the-Father
Orianna Cacchione (Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond Art Museum)
Loosing Geographical and Material Borders:
Repositioning the Institute of Art Tapestry Varbanov in 1980s China
Joyce Chung (Curator, Asian Arts Initiative)
Asian/ Asian American Art for Political Activism in the 1980s and 1990s
Panel Four: Curating Community: Decentralized Contemporary Art Spaces
3:30-5:00 pm
Panel Chair: Ellen Larson
Min-hyung Kang (Independent Curator, Founder of Barim)
Translocality: Contemporary Struggles and Serendipities around an Art Space Barim in South Korea
Tongji Philip Qian (Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts and Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the Society of Fellows, University of Chicago)
#notalwaystherightthing
Cheng Xu (Assistant Curator in Contemporary Art for Games and Technology, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco)
Is That Art? Games and Tech as Media
Roundtable Discussion
5:00-6:00 pm
SPONSORS
This program is made possible thanks to major support from the University of Chicago’s Department of Art History. Generous support is also provided by Stephen Cheng and the University of Chicago’s Center for East Asian Studies (through funding from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant, U.S. Department of Education). Additional support is given by The Franke Institute for the Humanities, donations made in memory of Alan Longino, Department of Visual Arts, and PoNJA-GenKon.
Promotional sponsors include UChicago’s Visual Resources Center and The Committee on Southern Asian Studies.
ACCESSIBILITY
Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact Ellen Larson in advance of the program at ellenlarson@uchicago.edu.