B.A. (Hons) University of Sydney (1999); Ph.D. University of Sydney (2005)
My research to date has primarily concerned the visual cultures of Southeast Asia with emphasis on video and other non-traditional media in contemporary art. Having made two books on contemporary art in Thailand, my attention has more recently turned to the uncertain boundaries between 'modern' and 'contemporary' art in the larger terrain of Asia and the Pacific. I am preparing a new cycle of research exploring transdisciplinary art histories of these regions, and the place of regionalism itself in those histories. I am also a practising curator. My most recent exhibition project was the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), which I co-curated with Amar Kanwar and Ute Meta Bauer.
- Critical Theory
- Worldliness in Modern and Contemporary Art and Literature
- Visual Culture and its Histories (Art, Media, Screen Culture)
I am currently co-supervising a PhD thesis entitled 'Ku’er: Queer(ing) Post-Mao Performances' by Goh Wei Hao, a candidate in the university's joint degree programme with King's College, London.
The main thread in my research is what I call the currencies of contemporaneity, the values and discourses that qualify art as 'contemporary' in a given time and place. Pursuing the histories of contemporary art in Asia has led me to focus on a second strand, namely, the place of worldliness and internationalism in those histories. Recent publications have focused on the function of the curator and the formation and impact of regionalisms. I am interested in regional histories of international exhibition-making (including biennales and other spectacles), the challenges it has posed to national, iconographical modes of art history, and the haunting of contemporary art by the aesthetics and technologies of the Cold War.
- Asian modern and contemporary art
- Art history and theory
- Curatorship and exhibition histories
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
ARTICLES IN JOURNALS
SHORTER ARTICLES/COMMENTS IN JOURNAL
BOOK REVIEWS
CONFERENCE PAPERS
OTHERS