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About this talk

This lecture examines how globally engaged Chinese contemporary artists use historiographic art to critically reflect on contemporary art’s relation to the past. It takes their artistic approaches to history writing as the starting point to explore the historical, epistemological, and transcultural complexity of contemporary art in a critical global framework. While historiographic art is frequently discussed as a global phenomenon, existing scholarship has not sufficiently addressed the culturally specific and plural ways in which artistic engagements with the past are conceptualized. Prevailing frameworks remain shaped by Euro-American historiographic assumptions, thereby limiting the interpretive scope of historiographic art. To address this gap, the lecture adopts a pluriversal approach that expands art historical and intellectual archives beyond Western traditions. It demonstrates that additional layers of meaning emerge when contemporary historiographic artworks are read through the lens of a longer history of Chinese historiographic art and related aesthetics of transformation and transmission. Birgit Hopfener is Associate Professor of Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa. She is cross appointed to the university’s Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC) where she currently holds the Ruth and Mark Phillips Professorship. Discussant: Professor Paul Gladston, UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art

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