Play Subversive Contemporary Art In Pakistan And The Diaspora

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a growing number of Pakistani artists embraced the nations perceived visual languages and political, social, and cultural history to interrogate and unpack Pakistans contemporary society and identity. The fruits of this shifting and mixing were works of art that turned artistic and societal traditions, from miniature painting to matrimonial rites, on their sides even as they upheld their significance. Through their works,artists examined and expressed the complicated nature of Pakistani national and cultural identities by looking at the societys most volatile concerns. The artists did not simply present these critical issues; they played with them. It is this playful contemporary artwork that this book analyses within acontext of art practices in Pakistan, pedagogical methods at art schools in the nation, and the impact of larger historical events and social processes: colonialism, the partition of India and Pakistan, and globalization.

Pursuing a new and timely line of research in world art studies, Humor in Global Contemporary Art is the first edited collection to examine the role of culturally specific humor in contemporary art from a global perspective. Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of artists from around the world have applied humor as a tool for observation, critique, transformation, and debate. Exploring how humorous art produced over the past six decades is anchored in local sociopolitical contexts and translated or misconstrued when exhibited abroad, this book opens new conversations regarding the functioning of humor and the ways in which art travels across the globe. With contributions by an impressive array of internationally based scholars covering six major continental regions, the book is organized into four distinct geographical sections: Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, South and North America, and Europe. This structure highlights the cultural specificity of each region while the book as a whole offers a critical perspective on the postcolonial, globalized art network. Reflecting on present-day processes of globalization and biennialization, which confront viewers with humorous art from a variety of cultures and countries, this book will provide readers with a culturally sensitive understanding of how humor has become vital to many contemporary artists working in an unprecedentedly interconnected world.

"This expanded edition is brought up to date in the light of the most recent developments in contemporary art. A new chapter considers globalization in the visual arts and the complex issues it raises, focusing on the many major international exhibitions since 1990 that have become an important arena for women artists from around the world."--BOOK JACKET.

In Downwardly Global Lalaie Ameeriar examines the transnational labor migration of Pakistani women to Toronto. Despite being trained professionals in fields including engineering, law, medicine, and education, they experience high levels of unemployment and poverty. Rather than addressing this downward mobility as the result of bureaucratic failures, in practice their unemployment is treated as a problem of culture and racialized bodily difference. In Toronto, a city that prides itself on multicultural inclusion, women are subjected to two distinct cultural contexts revealing that integration in Canada represents not the erasure of all differences, but the celebration of some differences and the eradication of others. Downwardly Global juxtaposes the experiences of these women in state-funded unemployment workshops, where they are instructed not to smell like Indian food or wear ethnic clothing, with their experiences at cultural festivals in which they are encouraged to promote these same differences. This form of multiculturalism, Ameeriar reveals, privileges whiteness while using race, gender, and cultural difference as a scapegoat for the failures of Canadian neoliberal policies.

Satoko Shimazaki revisits three centuries of kabuki theater, reframing it as a key player in the formation of an early modern urban identity in Edo Japan and exploring the process that resulted in its re-creation in Tokyo as a national theatrical tradition. Challenging the prevailing understanding of early modern kabuki as a subversive entertainment and a threat to shogunal authority, Shimazaki argues that kabuki instilled a sense of shared history in the inhabitants of Edo (present-day Tokyo) by invoking "worlds," or sekai, derived from earlier military tales, and overlaying them onto the present. She then analyzes the profound changes that took place in Edo kabuki toward the end of the early modern period, which witnessed the rise of a new type of character: the vengeful female ghost. Shimazaki's bold reinterpretation of the history of kabuki centers on the popular ghost play Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan (The Eastern Seaboard Highway Ghost Stories at Yotsuya, 1825) by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. Drawing not only on kabuki scripts but also on a wide range of other sources, from theatrical ephemera and popular fiction to medical and religious texts, she sheds light on the development of the ubiquitous trope of the vengeful female ghost and its illumination of new themes at a time when the samurai world was losing its relevance. She explores in detail the process by which nineteenth-century playwrights began dismantling the Edo tradition of "presenting the past" by abandoning their long-standing reliance on the sekai. She then reveals how, in the 1920s, a new generation of kabuki playwrights, critics, and scholars reinvented the form again, "textualizing" kabuki so that it could be pressed into service as a guarantor of national identity.

"This publication brings together documentation from the art exhibition Ruptures in Arrival: Art in the Wake of the Komagata Maru [April 12 to June 15, 2014] and the symposium Disfiguring Identities: Art, Migration and Exile [May 10 and 11th, 2014]. These two related projects that both took place at the Surrey Art Gallery features mainly Canadian contemporary artists who are engaged in their respective art practices in the subject matter of migration, race, racism, particularly as it pertains to Asian Canadian identity and Canadian identity at large. Many of the artworks in the exhibition and projects discussed at the symposium responded to the history of the Komagata Maru incident in which 376 Indian migrants (primarily Sikhs) attempted to come to Canada in 1914 but were turned away by Canadian and British Columbia officials. Other participants in the exhibition and symposium made artwork responding to the histories of other migrant ships that had come to Canada from Asia in more recent decades: the ship MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea that carried over 550 Sri Lankan Tamil passengers collectively in 2009 and 2010, and the four ships that carried 600 Chinese migrants to British Columbia's coast in 1999. Like the exhibition and symposium, the publication features reproductions of painting, drawing, photography, video art, short film, installation art, and music composition and incorporates many voices of participating artists and curators from across Canada."--

Exploring visual culture, design and politics in 1960s Beirut, this compelling interdisciplinary study examines a critical period in Lebanon's history.