This international symposium, to be held on June 27, 2015 at the University of Tokyo and organized by the university in collaboration with Mori Art Museum and New York University's Asian/Pacific/American Institute as a part of the Global Asian/Pacific Art Exchange initiatives, aims to interrogate the notion of Global Asias and the contemporary situation of Asian art in and beyond geographical Asia.

The idea of Global Asias, which refers to the global dislocation, relocation, and transformation of goods, ideas, and people originating in Asia, calls attention to transnational conflict and negotiation at multiple intersecting levels. It is concerned with relationships not only between indigenous cultures inside Asia, but also between Asian-derived cultures outside of Asia. Global Asias looks, for example, not only at the relationship between Japan and the United States or Japan and Brazil, but also the relationship between Japanese-American and Japanese-Brazilian.

The symposium proposes to focus specifically on contemporary art practices in relationship to the global diffusion and transformation of Asian art and culture. We would like to explore how local art history in Asian countries is reconfigured by, and also reconfigures, the globalization of Asian art and its discourses. We are also interested in examining how art practices within a given country relate to art practices by those who are from that country but live and work elsewhere. In addition, we would like to consider how the idea of Global Asias, which represents a plural and transnational concept of Asian culture, figures in the processes of globalization that in some way exercise hegemonic effects on local and indigenous art practices. The symposium will also consider global framings in relation to the concept of Global Asias which may include a call back to the international or may examine practices that call upon the global in terms of the planetary.

If you are interested in participating in this conference, please send a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation, and a short bio, by April 30, 2015, to: art.global.asias[at]gmail.com. We will notify the applicants of the results of the selection by early May 2015. Final papers are due June 13, 2015.