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Conference: The Art of the Borderland Across South and Southeast Asia

“The Art of the Borderland across South and Southeast Asia” is a conference that brings together research that explores the geographical contiguities across South and Southeast Asia through a focus on regional art, visual and public cultures, and media practices. By drawing attention to the inter-Asian borderland through a consideration of the region’s aesthetic practices, the presentations highlight regional narratives of modern and contemporary art that diversify critiques of master narratives of national modernities and our understanding of art worlds as plural. They also show how visual, public, and media cultures of the inter-Asian borderland enact imaginaries of space and place that transgress and challenge the region’s regard as territorially bounded and fixed. Further, they discuss what material practices in the borderlands of South and Southeast Asia reveal about the modern and contemporary visual culture of the state. In doing so, “The Art of the Borderland” challenges the region’s dominant image as an aberrant site of exceptionality, strengthening its regard as the ground from which to study and theorize Asia’s pasts and present.