Permeable Borders: Examining Displacement in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Art
Xuan Ma | Permeable Borders: Examining Displacement in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Art | Utrecht University, Department of History and Art History | Promotor: Prof. dr. Eva-Maria Troelenberg (Utrecht University); copromotor: Dr. Franziska Koch (Heidelberg University) | 1 May 2021 – 1 May 2025 | x.ma[at]uu.nl
This project will examine contemporary Chinese diaspora art through the lens of displacement. Focused on the cross-border encounters in Chinese art since the mid-1990s, it explores how contemporary Chinese migrant artists have reinterpreted their displaced experiences in art, and promoted insightful reflections of displacement through the audience’s responsive engagements. By evaluating the multiple spatialities and temporalities materialized by displacement, this project hopes to situate Chinese diaspora art historically and challenge the linear historiography of contemporary Chinese art. From the transcultural perspective, it proposes that displacement as both artistic expressions and artistic experiences helps historicize the cultural subjects and their transcultural entanglements. On this basis, it questions how can Chinese migrant artists apply displacement to negotiate pluralistic identities on the borders, and engender cross-border dialogues with various communities? How can displacement in diaspora art inspire to reconfigure the contemporary art paradigm of Euro-American-dominated universalism and multiculturalism? And last, under the accelerated globalization and intensified international exchanges in today’s world, this project tries to answer how does displacement in art and via art inspire people to better inhabit a globalized world?
Image information: Chairs from the artwork Fairytale (2007), Ai Weiwei, Voorlinden Museum, Photo by Xuan Ma, 24/9/2021