Gender and Body in the Contemporary Arts

Including a performance by Tsuneka Taniuchi on Tuesday night and the concurrent parcours exhibition "Becoming Intense - Becoming Animal - Becoming..." (curated by Martina Koeppel-Yang) at various locations in downtown Heidelberg

This workshop is uniquely designed to emphasize the aspect of ‘practices’ within the framework of our project. By inviting art historians with rich curatorial expertise and active artists, we aim at exploring the various approaches and experiences of curators in organising exhibitions as well as artists producing, advertising and selling works involving gender issues and/or concerns relating to the body. The broad regional backgrounds of the invitees shall foster a transcultural discussion highlighting the diverging or converging issues at stake. Since international exhibitions of contemporary arts in the guise of art biennials are abundant in Asian countries since the Kwangju Biennial opened in 1995, Asian perspectives on gender aspects in the arts become all the more pertinent to a transcultural debate. Questions to be addressed may include the following:
 
What is the status quo of 'gender' and 'body' discourses in the contemporary arts of your (trans)regional field of expertise?
Which themes and concepts of gender and the body shape your curatorial or artistic work and your personal research, and to what extent would they be relevant for transcultural dimensions?
Which theories from cultures other than your own are important for your work? How did you transform them and how may indigenous ideas and phenomena have re-shaped other cultures’ perceptions of gender issues?
Which themes were of great (historical) import, but may have lost their relevance more recently?
To what extent do the current global as well as local art politics shape your way of addressing gender?

Melanie Trede, Prof. Dr.

Deputy Speaker, Research Area B "Public Spheres", Cluster "Asia and Europe"
Professor of East Asian Art History, Heidelberg University

Contact information
Institute of East Asian Art History
Heidelberg University
Seminarstraße 4
69117 Heidelberg
Germany

Email: trede@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de
Phone: +49 (0) 6221 54 3969