Research Area B Rethinking Art (B20)
Emerging artscapes in South Asia
Project Leader: Christiane Brosius
Project Members: Cathrine Bublatzky, Marlène Harles
This project approached the entanglements of anthropology and art, in theory and practice, by using transculturality as a conceptual key in order to a) challenge and push the discipline’s conceptual and methodological boundaries in the context of globalised fields of cultural production and to employ b) translocal ethnography to better understand highly mobile and yet deeply localised art circuits, institutions and agents. The focus was on South Asia since 2000 and several case studies were undertaken to generate a vibrant discussion around inner-Asian art networks, the import of Western concepts into urban public art in India, the domain of Higher art education, the role of large art festivals in the context of urban fabrics of art production but also urban change. Case studies have been selected from Delhi (India), Kathmandu Valley (Nepal) and Dhaka (Bangladesh).