Announcing London, Asia, Art, Worlds Projects

Artists’ Commissions

Selected from an open call, the following artists’ projects intervene in, expand, disrupt and create new spaces within London, Asia, Art, Worlds. In very different ways, they respond to themes that have structured the programme: sociality and affect; potential histories and solidarities; circulation and encounter; pedagogy and learning; bureaucracy and agency; aesthetics and ways of knowing; thinking through empire; thinking from Asia. Some of these projects are available to encounter online for the duration of the conference and some will feature live during conference events. The projects will also form part of the digital legacy of London, Asia, Art, Worlds.

• QueerAsias: Virtualising Cartographies is a playlist of audio, moving image and VR works, and a live online performance curated by Annie Jael Kwan and featuring the work of Abdullah Qureshi, Joel Tan, Sam Reynolds, Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin) and Yarli Allison and Yin Lo. QueerAsias explores the possibilities of other types of stories – those that through queer digital narratives of memory, fantasy and desire, defy the logics of space-time and social convention. Sam Reynolds will perform Spell live in the digital realm on 24 June 2021, 17.00–18.00.

• Sophia Balagamwala, Whereabouts Unknown / Ata Pata Maloom Nahin, 2021, animation. This animation is part of a wider project that looks at how language, monument-making, and systems of archiving and display were used as tools of shaping and understanding identity in the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj and today.

• Saba Khan, Saheen Ahmed and Taran Singh, Mapping Memory II: Visualising Artists’ Networks through Virtual Mapping. This online collaborative project by Shaheen Ahmed, Saba Khan and Taran Singh traces the nomadic lives of artists within the spaces of Bangladesh, Britain and Pakistan, shaped by movements of ideas, friendships and conversations. It transforms cut paper folds into a 3D digital map that virtually moves and expands with a pulsating centre of activity.

• Mithu Sen, Be Beyond Being, 2021. Eight video works. Available to view online after the final live event of the conference on 25 June.

These projects have been commissioned by Hammad Nasar, Ming Tiampo and Sarah Victoria Turner.

Find out more about the remaining live London, Asia, Art, Worlds events here.

Collaborative Data Project

One of the aims of London, Asia, Art, Worlds is to plant seeds for new research to grow. This collaborative data project seeks to collect baseline data about artists from Asia who spent time in the UK and artists of the Asian diaspora born in the UK, in order to visualise the entangled cartographies of this field emerging between the UK and Asia between 1850 and 2000. We are focusing in particular on exhibition histories and educational institutions for this project. Find out how you can contribute your knowledge to this mapping and data visualisation here.