Practicing American Art in Asia: Cultural Hegemony and Art Activism 1950-2020

Prof. Kyunghee Pyun's talk,  "Practicing American Art in Asia: Cultural Hegemony and Art Activism 1950-2020,"  asks, What constitutes “American” art and what are the geopolitical boundaries of “Asia?”

This lecture surveys the historical development of American art in post-WWII Asian countries and Asian immigrant communities in North America. It discusses current issues such as the institutionalization of performance art; a comparison of different modes of American artists’ engagement in East Asia and Southeast Asia; and specific case studies of recent and ongoing projects by American artists who are either based or regularly making work in Asia.

Kyunghee Pyun’s scholarship focuses on histories of collecting, reception of Asian Art, diasporic Asian artists, and Asian American visual culture. She is the author of Fashion, Identity, Power in Modern Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and co-editor of Interpreting Modernism in Korean Art (Routledge 2021); American Art from Asia (Routledge 2022); and Expanding the Parameters of Feminist Artivism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).