Journal articles on the topic 'Asian Exhibitions History'

The rise of Asian American History and Ethnic Studies courses, decentered whiteness in museum collections and exhibitions, and ethnic preservation activism all have the potential to inform and sensitize the general public in the same sense advocated by revolutionary thinker Paulo Freire. Ideally, they are all forms of problem-posing education that deeply engages and activates the public on behalf of social justice for the excluded or oppressed.

Abstract This review article looks at “Oppression and Overcoming: Social Movements in Post-War Taiwan” (2019.5.28–2020.5.17), an exhibition at the National Museum of Taiwan History (nthm) through approaches of museum studies and social movement studies, and aims to understand its implication for doing Taiwan Studies. This review concludes that “Oppression and Overcoming” is significant as a novel museological practice by being part of a continuation of social movements, which transformed the museum to a space for civil participation and dialogue. This allows the exhibition to become a window for both citizens and foreigners to understand and realize Taiwan’s vibrant democracy and civil society. In addition, this review suggests that future exhibitions on social movements could demonstrate the possibility to position Taiwan in a global context to better connect with other countries in the Asian region.

Abstract This essay examines the transformation of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) into a global art histories museum. An analysis of the new Christian Art Gallery and its objects that date from the eighth through the twentieth century illuminates the ways in which the ACM engages with global art histories in a permanent gallery and not only through special exhibitions. This essay begins with a history of the ACM and its transition from a museum for the “ancestral cultures of Singapore” to one with a new mission focusing on multicultural Singapore and its connections to the wider world. Hence, taking a thematic approach, the ACM's new galleries question how museums generally display objects along national lines or regional boundaries. This essay also brings attention to the multiple mediums and functions of Christian art from both the geographical locations that usually are associated with Asian art and also from cultures that are rarely taught or exhibited, such as Timor-Leste, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. While showcasing the different moments that Christianity came to Asia, the museum also emphasizes the agencies of Asian artistic practitioners in those global encounters. Although appreciative of the ways in which the ACM's Christian Art Gallery reveal the various tensions within global art histories and break down hegemonic constructions of Christian art from Asia, this essay also offers a critique. Highlighting this unusual engagement with Christian art by an Asian art museum, the new gallery reveals that museums and exhibitions can add to the conversations on global art histories.

This article, in the 30th anniversary of the Soviet Union dissolution, is an attempt to examine how Uzbekistan, among the countries of the former Soviet Union, reinterprets its past history (mainly during the Soviet period) through an analysis of museum exhibitions. The immediate task of Uzbekistan, like other new born countries in Central Asia, which became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was ‘nation-building’. Various ways have been sought to create the identity of an independent nation. One of them is the change of interpretation of the Soviet period. Central Asian countries are putting forward a break with the Soviet era, citing the mistakes of the Soviet central government in the past. In addition, they are trying to strengthen the solidarity of the newly independent nation and create a national identity by putting themselves as victims of political oppression. In the <Repression Museum> exhibition, Uzbekistan identifies itself with a colony conquered by the Soviet Republics. The subjects of the colonial empire include not only Tsarist Russia but also the Soviet central government. Exhibitions 1 and 2 of the Museum of Repression in Uzbekistan reconstruct the history of oppression moving from the imperial Russia, through the Bolshevik revolution, the socialist construction, Stalin counter-terrorism and post-war period to the perestroika period. The repression related to the cotton scandal is unique to Uzbekistan. And the 3rd exhibition room deals with the current development of Uzbekistan. In the Museum of Repression in Uzbekistan, the socialist revolution disappeared. And here Lenin s ideal of pursuing common prosperity by building a common home for the people that was considered to be different from imperial Russia, a prison for the people, became insignificant. The Bolsheviks changed into a plundering colonizers that are indistinguishable from the Western empires. It is portrayed only in the portrait of a harsh empire that has invaded. Likewise today s authoritarian rulers in Uzbekistan are arbitrarily interpreting the past in order to solidify their own nation-state.

What is the place of the festival in the global system of contemporary art, and in that system’s history? Can the large, recurring surveys that are its most prominent exhibitions today even be considered festivals? Such questions become more pressing as sites newly embraced by that system take their place on a global event calendar, and as the events increasingly resemble those held elsewhere or merge with the market in the form of art fairs. What becomes of community and locality, of spontaneity and participation, as that market ‐ and art history ‐ takes up the uncommodified fringes and untold stories of contemporary art’s ever widening geography? This article stems from my research for a recent volume entitled Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992‐98, concerning a series of artist-initiated festivals held in northern Thailand in the 1990s known as the Chiang Mai Social Installation. These gatherings, and others like them, suggest that while national representation was the usual ticket to participation on a global circuit, the agencies and currency of national representation were not essential determinants of contemporaneity; and that it was localism, rather than any internationalism, that underpinned the worldly affinities discovered amongst artists in Southeast Asia at that time. The sites of this becoming contemporary were festive, sites of celebration and expenditure rather than work and accumulation. What does this mean for contemporary art’s history and theory, and how might it change our understanding of the region’s art and its international currency today?

The topic of this study is a realistic due to the fact that in Chinese history, the Tang Dynasty (618–907) is considered as the peak of national strength. It is during this period that ancient China became the center of economic and cultural exchanges with a number of states in the medieval world. Thanks to stable social development and the steadily developing economy, Chinese art of this period flourished. To this day, it has a special meaning for both Chinese and Asian cultures. The article examines the presentational forms of the art of Tang Dynasty in historical and art museums of the People’s Republic of China at the beginning of the 21st century: an overview of the history of Tang Dynasty and its art is presented, the collections of museum objects — works of fine art of the Tang Dynasty in Chinese museums are considered, and specific forms of art presentation are analyzed, such as expositions, exhibitions, online exhibitions, educational programs and projects implemented in cooperation with the media. The research is based on original sources of museum origin (materials from museums’ official websites, interviews conducted with museum employees) and a body of regulatory and administrative documents covering museum policy developments in the People’s Republic of China.

With the onset of the Cold War, the federal government became concerned with the impact that the status and treatment of Chinese Americans as a racial minority in American society had on perceptions of the United States among populations in the Asian Pacific. As a response, the State Department's cultural diplomacy campaigns targeting the Pacific Rim used Chinese Americans, including Betty Lee Sung (writer for the Voice of America) and Jade Snow Wong and Dong Kingman (artists who conducted lectures and exhibitions throughout Asia). By doing so, the government legitimated Chinese Americans' long-standing claims to full citizenship in new and powerful ways. But the terms on which Chinese Americans served as representatives of the nation and the state——as racial minorities and as ““Overseas Chinese””——also worked to reproduce their racial otherness and mark them as ““non-white”” and foreign, thus compromising their gains in social standing.

An interview with Alexander V. Sedov, the Director-General of The State Museum of Oriental Art devoted to the launch of the new master’s program of the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the State Academic University for the Humanities (GAUGN) and the Department of Oriental History of the Institute of Oriental Studies Russian Academy of Sciences “Socio-Cultural Development of East Asian Countries”, which is headed by Alexander Sedov as an academic curator (Dinara V. Dubrovskaya, the head of the Department of Oriental History of the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS, is the supervisor of the program). The interview focused on the attractiveness of the Eastern art and culture and their broadcasting to a wider audience through the exhibitions of the Oriental museum, reaching the level of discussion of the problems of preserving cultural heritage, questions of the feasibility and relevance of museumification of archaeological sites such as Palmyra in Syria, monuments in Oman and Yemen.

This paper will use the artworks and exhibitions of Cai Yingqian, Chen Min, Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, and Chen Chieh-jen to discuss how contemporary art reflects on modern colonial history through mediations. By employing ready-made media materials handed down through history, archival art moves from medium to mediation, mediating between subjects, media materials, and artistic works, and at the same time highlights the materiality and mediality of media, forming a historical picture where media and the message, objects and narrations, images and the deceased together form a unified entity. While the narrative and memory of history rely on media, mediation can summon the memory of the past. Artists can activate images and turn them into an “afterlife” to open sealed historical spacetime, resurrecting the forgotten experience of modern colonial history in Asia, and finally inciting us to face the colonial structure, which is nowadays still at the core of Asian geopolitics. Ultimately, every kind of mediation reverts back to the media itself. The construction of the archive, the production of knowledge, and the opacity of media are revealed by the close connection between colonialism and mediation.

Where Imperialism Could Not Reachexamines the impact of the Japanese model of industrialization on China through a history of policy recommendations and economic ideas in practice. In the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), Chinese regional policymakers learned a Japanese-style industrial policy that focused on the use of exhibitions and schools to disseminate information and stimulate rural innovation. In focusing on the treaty ports and the impact of European and American capitalism that has a larger and more quantifiable source base, many scholars have ignored the vital intra-Asian dimensions of China’s economic development, underpinned by shared position of China and Japan on the global semiperiphery and the pursuit of labor-intensive industrialization focusing on improvements to labor quality. The dissertation also aims to demonstrate the primary importance of information and incentives for innovation—rather than overcoming capital constraints—in Chinese strategies for economic growth.

This article is focused on several themes connected with the history of photography, political exile in Imperial Russia, exploration and representations of Siberia in the late 19th–early 20th centuries. Photography became an essential tool in numerous geographic, topographic and ethnographic expeditions to Siberia in the late 19th century; well-known scientists started to master photography or were accompanied by professional photographers in their expeditions, including ones organized by the Russian Imperial Geographic Society, which resulted in the photographic records, reports, publications and exhibitions. Photography was rapidly spreading across Asian Russia and by the end of the 19th century there was a photo studio (or several ones) in almost every Siberian town. Political exiles were often among Siberian photographers, making photography their new profession, business, a way of getting a social status in the local society, and a means of surviving financially as well as intellectually and emotionally. They contributed significantly to the museum’s collections by photographing indigenous people in Siberia and even traveling to Mongolia and China, displaying “types” as a part of anthropological research in Asia and presenting “views” of the Russian empire’s borderlands. The visual representation of Siberia corresponded with general perceptions of an exotic East, populated by “primitive” peoples devoid of civilization, a trope reinforced by numerous photographs and depictions of Siberia as an untamed natural world, later transformed and modernized by the railroads construction.

A pedagogical experiment in Asian American History courses partnered classes with the Cornell University Library. Students using its Japanese American Relocation Center Records archive learned to apply historical analysis through an intersectional framework of race, class, gender, and generation. Their finished projects formed a digital exhibition—a research tool accessible to the wider public.

Against the backdrop of the Bauhaus centenary in 2019, Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism examined the history, significance, and future of postcolonial modernism in this region, with partners in four cities – Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Singapore, and Yangon. The project provided a historical perspective on the societal and political upheaval that accompanied the transition to independence after the colonial period in these countries. It also showcased current initiatives in the fields of art, architecture, and science that are committed to the preservation and use of Modernist buildings. In 2020, the project will continue with an exhibition and accompanying program in Berlin.

Museums have long been thought of as “quiet” spaces, in which visitors walk slowly through galleries to look at material cultures in glass cases. Music and sound have begun to pervade the quiet spaces of museums in the forms of aural installations and performance-based programs. They are no longer galleries for solely visual engagement, but loud spaces in which visitors and audiences listen to recordings, experience live performances, and participate by themselves singing and playing in workshops, classes, installations, and impromptu demonstrations. This article explores three case studies in exhibiting music. The first is the exhibition Ragamala: Garland of Melodies, which was on display at the Royal Ontario Museum and sought to demonstrate the fluidity between the South Asian arts. The second is an investigation of some of the formal and informal performance-based programming at the Aga Khan Museum. The last case study focuses on a future project, in which collectors of Indian audio cultures will submit contributions to help construct a history of sound in India. Each case study is motivated by a series of central questions: what constitutes “exhibiting music”? What are the broader implications of and consequences for exhibiting music in each case? How does exhibiting music in a museum impact a visitor’s experience? What kinds of new stories are told in exhibiting music and sound? The three case studies respond to these questions and provoke issues and possibilities for further critical inquiry. They show that museums are dynamic spaces with incredible potential to inspire multi-experiential engagement.

The HNM Semmelweis Museum of Medical History's exhibition „Diseases for the Ages, What the Deceased Tell Us”, is displaying the anthropological collection of the Museum which never was presented earlier, and the mummy-research made in the framework of the Nephthys Project, with some additional material from the Hungarian Natural History Museum and the Hopp Ferenc Asian Art Museum. Visitors can learn about the appearance of known and little-known diseases visible on archaeological human remains and gain insight into the know-how and the results of the mummy research. The exhibition is accompanied by a museum educational program and a series of lectures.

Public libraries are a wonder—they are institutions that invite you to linger at no expense. Often, they are built as if to anticipate your needs before they even register. Although not part of their job description, community branch librarians frequently take on the roles of local educators, resource advocates, and cultural navigators. The San Francisco Chinatown Branch librarians embodied this invisible history of labor, particularly through their advocacy to revitalize the physical space of the library in the 1970s-1990s. I deploy methods of close-reading with specific theoretical frameworks on community formation and culture to analyze the librarians’ work in the service of their public branch libraries. I analyze print material and local ephemera: coalition circulations, programming and exhibition flyers, pamphlets and surveys, and newspaper and magazine articles from the San Francisco Public Library archives. I argue that libraries are not only physical community centers, but critical centralized hubs of community knowledge and culture that librarians cultivate, that are vital to combatting and reshaping narratives of who and what Asians and Asian Americans are, against dominant forms ascribed by the nation-state.

From the 1920s to the early 1940s, Japanese department stores provided Japanese urban middle-class households with art and artifacts from China, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The department stores not merely sold art and artifacts from Japan's Asian neighbors but also promoted the cultural confidence to appreciate and collect them. At the same time, aspiring middle-class customers satisfied their desire to emulate the historical elite's taste for Chinese and other Asian objects by shopping at the department stores. The aesthetic consumption of Asian art and artifacts formulated a privileged position for Japan in the imperial order and presented the new middle class with the cultural capital vital to the negotiation of its social status. This article examines the ways in which department stores marketed “tōyō shumi” (Oriental taste), which played a significant role in the formation of identity for both the imperial state and the new middle class in 1920s and 1930s Japan.

This article considers what an unstudied collection of Vietnamese handicraft owned by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History reveals about its collecting culture and, conversely, what the collecting culture discloses about the collection. I show how the collecting culture’s activities intersected with American State Department efforts to bring postcolonial South Vietnam into the Free World during the Cold War. Attention to the Smithsonian National Collection of Fine Arts’ exhibition, “Art and Archaeology of Vietnam. Asian Crossroad of Cultures,” also reveals narratives of power and knowledge associated with the collecting culture. Ultimately, these failed the collection by leaving it disregarded.

Abstract This essay examines the Alpha Gallery, an independent artists’ cooperative that Malaysians and Singaporeans established, which staged art shows during the 1970s to spark an artistic renaissance in Southeast Asia. The cooperative’s transnational vision involved showcasing Balinese folk art as a primitive and, therefore, intrinsically Southeast Asian aesthetic, while asserting that it shared cultural connections with the Bengali Renaissance of the early 20th Century. Alpha’s leaders believed these actions might awaken indigenous artistic traditions across Southeast Asia. Their project underscores the lasting cultural impact of colonialism on Southeast Asia and the contested character of the region. Alpha’s condescending view of Balinese folk art echoed the paternalism of Euro-American colonial discourses about civilizing indigenous peoples that persisted because its key members received much of their education or training in Britain and the United States, a by-product of their countries’ pro-U.S. trajectory during the Vietnam War. Equally, Alpha’s transnationalism ran counter to Southeast Asian political elites’ fixation with pressing art toward nation-building. Indeed, the coalescing of nation-states does not define the region’s history during and after the Vietnam War. Rather, non-state actors like Alpha’s members, in imagining and pursuing their versions of Southeast Asia, contributed to the persistent contingency of the region.

The British Library’s Chagatai collections are poorly named. In this overview of language and linguistic diversity in the Library’s Turkic holdings, I explore why the term “Chagatai” has been applied erroneously to works exhibiting a number of different linguistic characteristics. I examine how the history of language among Central Asian Turkic communities appears within these collections, and what intellectual trends they encapsulate. In conclusion, I ask how we might describe them better in an effort to make them more meaningful as an archive, and to align them more closely with the worldviews and knowledge of contemporary Turkic communities.

At an exhibition in 1992 at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., “Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration,” one room among the four devoted to Ming China was called “Lamaist Art.” In the coffee-table book produced for the exhibition, with reproductions and descriptions of over 1,100 of the works displayed, however, not one painting, sculpture, or artifact was described as being of Tibetan origin. In commenting upon one of the Ming paintings, the well-known Asian art historian, Sherman E. Lee, wrote, “The individual [Tang and Song] motifs, however, were woven into a thicket of obsessive design produced for a non-Chinese audience. Here the aesthetic wealth of China was placed at the service of the complicated theology of Tibet.” This complicated theology is named by Lee with the term “Lamaism,” an abstract noun that does not occur in the Tibetan language but which has a long history in the West, a history inextricable from the ideology of exploration and discovery that the National Gallery cautiously sought to celebrate. Lee echoes the nineteenth-century portrayal of Lamaism as something monstrous, a composite of unnatural lineage, devoid of the spirit of original Buddhism (as constructed by European Orientialists). Lamaism was a deformity unique to Tibet, its parentage denied by India (in the voice of British Indologists) and by China (in the voice of the Qing empire), an aberration so unique in fact that it would eventually float free from its Tibetan abode, an abode that would vanish.

Thanks to its stunning entry into the ranks of world cinema in the 1970s, the history of the Hong Kong film industry up to 1997 is relatively well known. However, the coincidence of the Asian economic recession and the city's reintegration into the People's Republic of China (PRC) has worked to obscure recent developments. This article analyses contemporary Hong Kong cinema and its relations with the government of the mainland. We argue that the economic, cultural and geopolitical location of the city is contributing to developments that will allow the art cinema of the People's Republic of China to engage in international, Hollywood-dominated markets. Matters to do with production investment, censorship and film exhibition business are analysed in terms of the development of and revisions to the Closer Economic Partnership arrangement that now governs trade between the PRC and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

AbstractUnlike their Han Chinese counterparts who were mainly sequestered to the inner quarters, many imperial Khitan women of the Liao 遼 (907–1125) were not only active in state affairs, but they even rode astride and led their own armies to fight on battlefield. This article aims to investigate the lives and political careers of Empress Dowagers Yingtian and Chengtian, who ruled the empire as de facto sovereigns on behalf of their husbands and sons for over fifty years, by focusing particularly on how they proved themselves as capable horsewomen and what strategies have they employed in order to gain access to power and to accomplish their ambitions. Such warrior women, exercising leadership and exhibiting personal bravery, drew their strength from their Inner Asian steppe traditions and therefore established themselves as another type of queenship in Chinese history.

Invasive earthworms are rapidly transforming detrital communities in North America. Recent studies have investigated the effects of European earthworms, whereas Asian earthworms, such as species of the genus Amynthas Kinberg, 1867, remain understudied. Amynthas is a surface-dwelling earthworm that voraciously consumes the litter layer of temperate forest floor habitats. The accumulation of detritus is important for the terrestrial Eastern Red-backed Salamanders (Plethodon cinereus (Green, 1818)) because this microhabitat provides the matrix through which salamanders travel when foraging, searching for mates, and dispersing. We examined the effect of Amynthas on the activity of “naïve” (no history of co-occurrence with Amynthas) and “experienced” (recent co-occurrence with Amynthas) salamanders in laboratory microcosms. We hypothesized that earthworms would disturb normal salamander activity through the reduction of leaf litter and physical impediment, with greater negative effects on naïve salamanders encountering this “novel” invasive species. Consistent with published studies, earthworm presence significantly decreased leaf-litter mass over time. Prior experience with earthworms did not appear to influence salamander response. However, earthworm presence had a significant effect on salamander activity, with salamanders exhibiting increased movement, cover-object use, and co-occurrence under cover objects with earthworms as the study progressed. Unnecessary movement has the potential to incur fitness costs to salamanders in the form of energetic expenditure and increased exposure to predators.

The collection of the West Bohemian Museum in Pilsen includes significant examples of artworks and decorative arts from Asia. The history of this collection dates back to the last quarter of the 19th century, when these items were a part of a collection of the West Bohemian Museum of Decorative Arts in Pilsen. The first director of the museum, architect Josef Škorpil (1856–1931), contributed to the creation of the decorative arts collection and the acquisition of objects from the Far and Middle East. Thanks to its acquisition activities throughout Europe, a significant decorative arts collection was established in Pilsen. Its importance goes beyond the Pilsen region. The concept of creating this collection was in accordance with the emergence of decorative arts museums in Europe. The collection, together with the Asian objects, was presented to the public as a part of an exposition opened in 1913. Today, the Asian collection consists of Chinese and Korean objects, mainly ceramics and porcelain, as well as exceptionally well-preserved textiles from the late Qing Dynasty. The Japanese portable Buddhist altar zushi or a set of Japanese woodblock prints of the ukiyo-e style are among the most unique acquisitions. A relatively modest set of items from the Middle East includes typical examples of decorative arts from Iran, Turkey or Syria. The objects are still a popular subject of research and have also become a part of the new decorative arts permanent exhibition of the museum that was opened in 2017.

This paper aims to achieve two goals: the first is to bring a fresh perspective to the Atlanto-centric history of Chinese propaganda while tracing the roots of Sino-Hungarian bilateral approaches and Hungarian Sinology to a time dating some fifteen years earlier than the mutual recognition of the two People’s Republics. This analysis also introduces three actors of different political agendas who applied a similar PR tool of cultural diplomacy to elicit international sympathy for their homeland. After briefly surveying the primary stimuli of cultural diplomacy in interwar Hungary and Republican-Era China, I turn to pre-1949 Sino-Hungarian cultural approaches in the era of no formal diplomatic relations. Such initiatives offer valuable insights into the history of cultural diplomacy while also highlighting significant parallels with the present. Specifically, I introduce the political and cultural agenda of three individuals acting as cultural ambassadors to their homelands. The Shanghai Jewish refugee aid organizer, Paul Komor, and the women’s association president, Theresia Moll, were members of the Hungarian diaspora in China. They introduced the post-Habsburg Central European region to a cosmopolitan community while exhibiting two different foci: Hungarian irredentism and pan-Danubianism. Meanwhile, Zhenya He, a Kuomintang propagandist and the University of Budapest’s first Chinese language instructor during the 1930s, synthesized Hungarian pan-Asian Turanism with Sun Yat-sen’s Tridemism to further Sino-Hungarian exchanges.

Few students of modern China would dispute that the Hundred Days Reform of 1898 ushered in a major nation-building effort that, despite false starts and setbacks, has continued to this day. Thus, history and policy converged when its centenary in 1998 was widely commemorated—20 years after reform was again proclaimed China's national agenda (1978). Beida, or Peking University, which traces its founding to the establishment of the Imperial College (Jingshi daxuetang) in 1898, celebrated not only the historical event but also its own evolution over the past century to become China's leading institution of higher learning. The Palace Museum, which stands on the grounds of the former Forbidden City, where much of the 1898 drama unfolded, commemorated with an exhibition of archival materials and historical artifacts. It lasted from June 11 to September 21, the original dates of the Hundred Days. Historians did not lag behind. In an outpour of publications, they explored the multifarious facets of the famous episode. China scholars elsewhere also took note of the centenary. Two panels at the 1998 meetings of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington, D.C., for example, presented papers that dealt with, if not exactly what transpired a century ago, issues somehow related to it.

All modern crocodyliforms (alligators, crocodiles and the gharial) are semi-aquatic generalist carnivores that are relatively similar in cranial form and function. However, this homogeneity represents just a fraction of the variation that once existed in the clade, which includes extinct herbivorous and marine forms with divergent skull structure and function. Here, we use high-dimensional three-dimensional geometric morphometrics to quantify whole-skull morphology across modern and fossil crocodyliforms to untangle the factors that shaped the macroevolutionary history and relatively low phenotypic variation of this clade through time. Evolutionary modelling demonstrates that the pace of crocodyliform cranial evolution is initially high, particularly in the extinct Notosuchia, but slows near the base of Neosuchia, with a late burst of rapid evolution in crown-group crocodiles. Surprisingly, modern crocodiles, especially Australian, southeast Asian, Indo-Pacific species, have high rates of evolution, despite exhibiting low variation. Thus, extant lineages are not in evolutionary stasis but rather have rapidly fluctuated within a limited region of morphospace, resulting in significant convergence. The structures related to jaw closing and bite force production (e.g. pterygoid flange and quadrate) are highly variable, reinforcing the importance of function in driving phenotypic variation. Together, these findings illustrate that the apparent conservativeness of crocodyliform skulls betrays unappreciated complexity in their macroevolutionary dynamics.

The Yunnan boast three broad-leaved forests, the semi-wet evergreen broad-leaved forest (SWEB) occurring in subtropical plateaus areas, the lower montane evergreen broad-leaved forest (LMEB) in tropical lower montane, and the upper montane evergreen broad-leaved forest (UMEB) in subtropical upper montane regions. Floristic composition and biogeography of these evergreen broad-leaved forests are studied and their diversification and divergence are revealed. I found similarities across the three forest types with species-rich families tending to have cosmopolitan distributions and families with less species exhibiting other distribution types. In biogeographical elements, the SWEB and the UMEB showed similar affinity in the proportion of tropical elements comprising total genera, specifically 45% and 44% respectively, and temperate elements totaling 46% and 48%, of all genera with northern temperate distribution comprising the highest ratio (18% in the SWEB and 20% in the UMEB ). LMEB tropical elements comprised 79% of the total genera, with tropical Asian distributed elements contributing the highest ratio (27%). While the three forest floras comprised of similar families, the same is not true at the genus and species levels. I suggest our results indicate divergence of the three forest floras, possibly from events in the geological history of Yunnan. From recent palaeobotanical studies, the diversification of floras of these evergreen broad-leaved forests in Yunnan occurred during the late Miocene with increased divergence with time in response not only to altitude changes and at the same time global cooling in Yunnan, but also the southeastward extrusion of Indochina geoblock influencing LMEB, and the Himalayan uplift affecting the floras of SWEB and UMEB.

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to examine the longitudinal associations of exercise frequency with the incidence of myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and 10 different cancer outcomes.DesignA prospective cohort study.SettingPhysical examination data linked with the entire South Korean population’s health insurance system: from 2002 to 2015.Participants257 854 South Korean adults who provided up to 7 repeat measures of exercise (defined as exercises causing sweat) and confounders.Primary outcome measuresEach disease incidence was defined using both fatal and non-fatal health records (a median follow-up period of 13 years).ResultsCompared with no exercise category, the middle categories of exercise frequency (3–4 or 5–6 times/week) showed the lowest risk of myocardial infarction (HR 0.79; 95% CI 0.70 to 0.90), stroke (HR 0.80; 95% CI 0.73 to 0.89), hypertension (HR 0.86; 95% CI 0.85 to 0.88), type 2 diabetes (HR 0.87; 95% CI 0.84 to 0.89), stomach (HR 0.87; 95% CI 0.79 to 0.96), lung (HR 0.80; 95% CI 0.71 to 0.91), liver (HR 0.85; 95% CI 0.75 to 0.98) and head and neck cancers (HR 0.76; 95% CI 0.63 to 0.93; for 1–2 times/week), exhibiting J-shaped associations. There was, in general, little evidence of effect modification by body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, family history of disease and sex in these associations.ConclusionsModerate levels of sweat-inducing exercise showed the lowest risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, stomach, lung, liver and head and neck cancers. Public health and lifestyle interventions should, therefore, promote moderate levels of sweat-causing exercise as a behavioural prevention strategy for non-communicable diseases in a wider population of East Asians.

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Doedel, Liesdek, De Sanders, De kom en de werklozenonrust 1931-1933, Nijmegen: Transculturele Uitgeverij Masusa, 1986, 224 pp. - Anke Niehof, Patrick Guinness, Harmony and hierarchy in a Javanese kampung, Asian Studies Association of Australia, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986, 191 pp. - C.H.M. Nooy-Palm, Toby Alice Volkman, Feasts of honor; Ritual and change in the Toraja Highlands, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, Illinois Studies in Anthropology no. 16, 1985, IX + 217 pp., 2 maps, black and white photographs. - Gert J. Oostindie, Jean Louis Poulalion, Le Surinam; Des origines à l’indépendance. La Chapelle Monligeon, s.n., 1986, 93 pp. - Harry A. Poeze, Bob Hering, The PKI’s aborted revolt: Some selected documents, Townsville: James Cook University of North Queensland. (Occasional Paper 17.) IV + 100 pp. - Harry A. Poeze, Biografisch woordenboek van het socialisme en de arbeidersbeweging in Nederland; Deel I, Amsterdam: Stichting tot Beheer van Materialen op het Gebied van de Sociale Geschiedenis IISG, 1986. XXIV + 184 pp. - S. Pompe, Philipus M. Hadjon, Perlindungan hukum bagi rakyat di Indonesia, Ph.D thesis Airlangga University, Surabaya: Airlangga University Press, 1985, xviii + 308 pp. - J.M.C. Pragt, Volker Moeller, Javanische bronzen, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Museum für Indische Kunst, Berlin, 1985. Bilderheft 51. 62 pp., ill. - J.J. Ras, Friedrich Seltmann, Die Kalang. Eine Volksgruppe auf Java und ihre Stamm-Myth. Ein beitrag zur kulturgeschichte Javas, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 1987, 430 pp. - R. Roolvink, Russell Jones, Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim ibn Adham, Berkeley: Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Monograph Series no. 57, 1985. ix, 332 pp. - R. Roolvink, Russell Jones, Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim, Dordrecht/Cinnaminson: Foris, KITLV, Bibliotheca Indonesica vol. 24, 1983. 75 pp. - Wim Rutgers, Harry Theirlynck, Van Maria tot Rosy: Over Antilliaanse literatuur, Antillen Working Papers 11, Caraïbische Afdeling, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden, 1986, 107 pp. - C. Salmon, John R. Clammer, ‘Studies in Chinese folk religion in Singapore and Malaysia’, Contributions to Southeast Asian Ethnography no. 2, Singapore, August 1983, 178 pp. - C. Salmon, Ingo Wandelt, Wihara Kencana - Zur chinesischen Heilkunde in Jakarta, unter Mitarbeit bei der Feldforschung und Texttranskription von Hwie-Ing Harsono [The Wihara Kencana and Chinese Therapeutics in Jakarta, with the cooperation of Hwie-Ing Harsono for the fieldwork and text transcriptions], Kölner ethopgraphische Studien Bd. 10, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1985, 155 pp., 1 plate. - Mathieu Schoffeleers, 100 jaar fraters op de Nederlandse Antillen, Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1986, 191 pp. - Mathieu Schoffeleers, Jules de Palm, Kinderen van de fraters, Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1986, 199 pp. - Henk Schulte Nordholt, H. von Saher, Emanuel Rodenburg, of wat er op het eiland Bali geschiedde toen de eerste Nederlanders daar in 1597 voet aan wal zetten. De Walburg Pers, Zutphen, 1986, 104 pp., 13 ills. and map. - G.J. Schutte, W.Ph. Coolhaas, Generale missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VIII: 1725-1729, Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, Grote Serie 193, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1985, 275 pp. - H. Steinhauer, Jeff Siegel, Language contact in a plantation environment. A sociolinguistic history of Fiji, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xiv + 305 pp. [Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language 5.] - H. Steinhauer, L.E. Visser, Sahu-Indonesian-English Dictionary and Sahu grammar sketch, Verhandelingen van het KITLV 126, Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1987, xiv + 258 pp., C.L. Voorhoeve (eds.) - Taufik Abdullah, H.A.J. Klooster, Indonesiërs schrijven hun geschiedenis: De ontwikkeling van de Indonesische geschiedbeoefening in theorie en praktijk, 1900-1980, Verhandelingen KITLV 113, Dordrecht/Cinnaminson: Foris Publications, 1985, Bibl., Index, 264 pp. - Maarten van der Wee, Jan Breman, Control of land and labour in colonial Java: A case study of agrarian crisis and reform in the region of Ceribon during the first decades of the 20th century, Verhandelingen of the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, Leiden, No. 101, Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1983. xi + 159 pp.

- Walter E.A. van Beek, Ph. Quarles van Ufford, Religion and development; Towards an integrated approach, Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1988., M. Schoffeleers (eds.) - J.H. de Beer, H.F. Tillema, A journey among the people of Central Borneo in word and picture, edited and with an introduction by Victor T. King, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989. 268 pp. - Chris de Beet, Richard Price, Alabi’s world. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1990. xx + 444 pp. - G. Bos, Neil L. Whitehead, Lords of the tiger spirit; A history of the Caribs in colonial Venezuela and Guyana 1498-1820, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden. Caribbean series 10, Dordrecht/Providence: Foris publications, 1988, 250 pp., maps, ills., index, bibl. - James R. Brandon, Richard Schechner, By means of performance: Intercultural studies of theatre and ritual. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 190 + xv pp + ills. Paperback, Willa Appel (eds.) - J.N. Breetvelt, Matti Kamppinen, Cognitive systems and cultural models of illness, Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, FF Comunications No. 244, 1989. 152 pp. - Martin van Bruinessen, Mark R. Woodward, Islam in Java: Normative piety and mysticism in the Sultanate of Yogykarta. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989, 311 pp, index. - J.G. de Casparis, Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, Ancient Indonesian Bronzes; A catalogue of the exhibition in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam with a general introduction. Leiden: Brill, 1988. IX + 179 pp., richly illustrated., Marijke J. Klokke (eds.) - Hugo Fernandes Mendes, Luc Alofs, Ken ta Arubiano? Sociale intergartie en natievorming op Aruba, Leiden: Caraïbische Afdeling, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 1990. ix + 232 pp., Leontine Merkies (eds.) - Rene van der Haar, I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Kommunikation bei den Eipo; Eine humanethologische bestandsaufnahme, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989., W. Schiefenhövel, V. Heeschen (eds.) - M. Heins, K. Epskamp, Populaire cultuur op de planken; Theater, communicatie en Derde Wereld. Den Haag: CSEO Paperback no. 6, 1989., R. van ‘t Rood (eds.) - Huub de Jonge, Thomas Höllman, Tabak in Südostasien; Ein ethnographisch-historischer Überblick, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1988. Bibl., tab., ill., append., 233 pp., - Nico de Jonge, Jowa Imre Kis-Jovak, Banua Toraja; Changing patterns in architecture and symbolism among the Sa’dan Toraja, Sulawesi - Indonesia. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1988, 135 pp., Hetty Nooy-Palm, Reimar Schefold (eds.) - L. Laeyendecker, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Durkheimian sociology: Cultural analysis, Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 227 pp. - Thomas Lindblad, W.A.I.M. Segers, Changing economy in Indonesia. A selection of statistical source material from the early 19th century up to 1940. Vol 8. Manufacturing industry 1870-1942. Amsterdam, 1987. 224 pp. - C.L.J. van der Meer, Akira Suehiro, Capital accumulation in Thailand 1855-1985, The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Tokyo, 1989. xviii + 427 pp., maps, figs, app. - Niels Mulder, Nancy Eberhardt, Gender, power, and the construction of the moral order: Studies from the Thai periphery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph 4, 1988. viii + 100 pages, softcover. - Gert Oostindie, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Wit over zwart; Beelden van Afrika en zwarten in de Westerse populaire cultuur. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Insituut voor de Tropen, 1990. 259 pp., ills. - Gert Oostindie, Raymond Corbey, Wildheid en beschaving; De Europese verbeelding van Afrika. Baarn: Ambo, 1989. 182 pp., ills. - R. Ploeg, Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent conquests; Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. xi + 243 pp. - S.O. Robson, Luigi Santa Maria, Papers from the III European Colloquium on Malay and Indonesian Studies. Istituto Universitario Orientale, Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici (Series Minor XXX). Naples 1988. 276 pp., Faizah Soenoto Rivai, Antonio Sorrentino (eds.) - R.A. Römer, J.M.R. Schrils, Een democratie in gevaar; Een verslag van de situatie op Curaçao tot 1987. Van Gorcum, Assen: 1990. xii + 292 blz. - Patricia D. Rueb, Han ten Brummelhuis, Merchant, courtier and diplomat: A history of the contacts between the Netherlands and Thailand, Lochem, 1987, 116 pp., illustrated.

Первый и единственный в России музей Библии расположен в Иосифо-Волоцком ставропигиальном мужском монастыре. Он был создан по инициативе и при непосредственном участии митрополита Волоколамского и Юрьевского Питирима вскоре после возвращения Иосифо-Волоцкого монастыря Русской Православной церкви. Экспозиция размещена в трёх музейных залах и содержит более пятисот экспонатов. Научный фонд вместе с экспозиционным составляет более тысячи экземпляров. Музейная коллекция содержит книги Священного Писания, богослужебные книги, святоотеческую литературу, книги по истории церкви, альбомы по иконописи и другие издания. В экспозиции музея представлены книги Священного Писания на 40 языках (европейских, азиатских, народов России). В числе редких экспонатов музея - Острожская Библия (1581), Московская Библия (1663), несколько изданий Елизаветинской Библии (XVIII в.), венецианское издание Вульгаты (1609) и прочее. Также в коллекции музея размещены издания Священных текстов с редкими иллюстрациями: копия знаменитой рисованной Велиславовой Библии (чешской рукописи середины XIV в.), двухтомное издание Библии на французском языке с 228 гравюрами Гюстава Доре (1866); издания, содержащие произведения Лукаса Кранаха, Рембрандта, Альбрехта Дюрера; немецкое издание Библии, иллюстрированное Сальвадором Дали (1990), четырёхтомная Библия на французском языке с иллюстрациями Эди Леграна (1949) и другие издания. Возникший на основе библиотеки владыки Питирима музей в настоящее время прирастает экспонатами, приобретёнными наместником Иосифо-Волоцкого монастыря архимандритом Сергием, а также благодаря вкладам Института перевода Библии и других жертвователей и меценатов. The first and only Russia Bible museum is situated in the St. Joseph-of-Volotsk stauropegial monastery. It was founded on the initiative and with the direct participation of the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and Yurievsky Pitirim soon after the return of the St. Joseph-of-Volotsk monastery to the Russian Orthodox Church. The exhibition is located in three museum halls and contains more than five hundred items. It makes more than thousand copies counting museum funds. There are books of the Holy Scriptures, liturgical books, patristic literature, books on the church history, some albums with icon painting and other publications. The museum exhibits books of the Holy Scripture in 40 languages - European, Asian and indigenous languages of the peoples of Russia. Among rare museum exhibits there is the Ostrog Bible (1581), the Moscow Bible (1663), several editions of the Elizabethan Bible (XVIII century), the Venetian Vulgate edition (1609) etc. One of the pearls of the collection is a Czech manuscript of the mid XIV century as well as a two-volumed Bible edition in French with 228 engravings by Gustave Dore (1866) and editions containing works of Lucas Cranach, Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer; German Bible edition illustrated by Salvador Dali (1990), a four-volumed Bible in French with Edie Legrand’si llustrations (1949) etc. The museum, which has emerged from the Bishop Pitirim’s library, is currently growing with exhibits purchased by Archimandrite Sergiy, Abbot of the St. Joseph-of-Volotsk monastery, and generous gifts of the Institute of the Bible Translation as well as other donators and patrons.

<p>自1990年代後期以來，臺灣當代藝術發展出社會參與式藝術實踐的趨勢，亦即走出美術館展覽的藩籬並企求與公眾面對面、與社群連結的藝術創作。此一歷程發展適逢後解嚴時代，在地文化認同與本土意識抬頭，反映在文化政策上的則是1990年代的社區總體營造運動乃至於近年來倡議的地方創生。此後，各地的藝術祭更是持續不斷地帶來參與者對地方人文與環境的新感受，發展出在獨特的臺灣文化脈絡與社會變遷的背景下所帶動的「環境美學」復興&mdash;&mdash;對自然與人文環境的重新發現，以及對地方文化歷史脈絡的重思與再建構。對環境與地方的自然和人文關懷是目前亞洲地區正歷時與共的境況，本文以臺灣的社會參與式藝術和地方藝術祭為主要探討對象，自其所帶來的環境美學復興，延伸思考社會參與式藝術暨地方藝術祭的亞洲觀點所帶來的啟示，並以更全觀的視角來思辨藝術的社會實踐，啟發藝術工作者，面對此一全球共同的環境議題。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Since the late 1990s, Taiwanese contemporary art has developed a trend of socially-engaged art practice that goes beyond the usual framework of museum exhibition and with the aim of reaching public audiences. Moreover, such progress involves a degree of community engagement. The post-Martial law era saw the emergence of issues of local cultural identity and the rise of ideologies of the vernacular. Equally, socially-engaged art practice in Taiwan addressed throughout the 1990s issues of cultural policies for community reconstruction and ideas of &ldquo;creative placemaking&rdquo;. The result of such trend has also brought the prevalence of local art festivals. Such a socially art practice and local art festival has since developed into a genuine environmental aesthetics that has led to the rediscovery of human landscape, the natural environment, and to the reconstruction of local culture and history. This latter specificity, though, differs from its Western counterpart model of social art practice.This paper will explore the socially-engaged art and local art festival in Taiwan, their process of development, content and approach through surveys and fieldwork. Their relations to each other, differences, similarities, and sustainability will be also discussed in this research. However, the impacts that they triggered for the revival of environmental aesthetics, has significances to what are related to ecological and environmental issues in the whole world. Attending for local environment, people, history and culture is currently experienced in the Asia is also a common issue. This research takes socially-engaged art practice and local art festivals as a subject, as well as addressing their implications on revival of environmental aesthetics in Taiwan. Moreover, this research not only intends to expound socially-engaged art practice and local art festival from the local perspectives of Taiwan; it also seeks to enrich how we understand such practice in a broader Asian and even global contexts. </p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Abstract Background: Endogenous and exogenous processes are active in leukemia initiation. Single-base substitution (SBS) data permits aggregation into mutational signatures [MS] with potential for clinical application. Acetaldehyde and Benzo [a] pyrene (BaP) are tobacco mutagens that "drive" signature SBS4 [Catalog of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC) https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/signatures/sbs/] in lung cancer characterized by C&gt;A transversion. This specific MS is associated with favorable response to immune-checkpoint therapy (ICT). Previous epidemiologic data correlate smoking with cancer including leukemia. Tobacco mutagens are ubiquitously distributed in organs once inhaled. However, how mutagenicity develops in hemopoietic stem cell/progenitor is unknown. In this study, our primary objective was to investigate the incidence of MS among patients (pt) diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) with smoking exposure. Methods: After IRB approval, we performed retrospective analysis using the BCM AML database. Data from 58 AML pt was available. For all analysis, current and past smoking were aggregated into "positive exposure". SBSs (C&gt;A, C&gt;G, C&gt;T, T&gt;C, T&gt;G, G&gt;C, G&gt;A, GT and AG) in smokers and never smoker were annotated from ELN 2017 predefined subgroups [i.e. CEBPA, NPM1, P53, ASLX1, RUNX1 and FLT3ITD] and all additional mutations in individual pt. We used descriptive statistics to detect differential clinical predictors for smoking induced MS. Chi-square was used to determine association between SBSs and smoking history. Stepwise logistic regression allowed identification of independent MS that correlated with smoking. Results: Median age for 58 AML pt was 65.5 years [y] (range, 22-89) and 58.3% were male. Smokers were 26/58 (44.8%). Whites, African Americans, Hispanics and Asians comprised 35/60 (58.3%), 7/60 (7.1%), 16/60 (26.6%) and 2/60 (2.3%), respectively. 112 myeloid mutations [91 SBSs, 16 duplications, 16 deletions, and 3 insertions] were recorded. 32/58 (55.1%) had positive smoking exposure. Previous reports suggest that C&gt;A [COSMIC=SBS4], G&gt;C [COSMIC= SBS2 and SBS13] and T&gt;C [COSMIC=SBS5] retain strong smoking association with cancer. However, in addition to C&gt;A [HR=0.10 (0.01-0.6), p=0.02], our logistic model identified G&gt;A, HR=0.12 (0.02-0.4), p=0.002, as predictors of exposure. C&gt;A+G&gt;A MS was observed in 19/25 (76%) of AML pt with smoking exposure, OR=6.56 (1.8-23.9), p=0.002. By ELN-2017 defined subgroups, P53, ASXL1, RUNX1, FLT3 and NPM1 mut were detected in 11/58 (18.9%), 5/58 (8.6%), 4/58 (6.8%), 13/58 (22.4%) and 5/58 (8.6%). RAS was seen in 12/58 (20.6%), IDH 12/58 (20.6%), DNMT3A 10/58 (17.2%) and TET2 7/58 (12%). Interestingly, among smokers exhibiting or not C&gt;A+G&gt;A SBP substitution, P53 was identified in 3/3 (100%) v 0/3 (0%), p=0.05 and RAS in 75% v 25%, p=0.08. Conclusions: Our data suggest that C&gt;A and G&gt;A SBS substitutions are frequently observed in AML pt with smoking exposure. Hemopoietic stem cell/progenitors exposed to smoking products may initiate similar SBSs substitutions as those observed in tobacco induced solid tumors. Previously, lung cancer studies demonstrated that TP53 and KRAS mutations tumors exhibited high rate of C&gt;A transversion associated with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and high program-death 1 ligand (PD-L1) expression. Further similar studies are needed in adult diagnosed with P53 AML. Figure 1 Figure 1. Disclosures Mims: IDEC: Current holder of individual stocks in a privately-held company; Biogen: Current holder of individual stocks in a privately-held company; Incyte: Research Funding; Pfizer: Research Funding; AVEO: Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding.

As an artist who refuses categorically to shy away from both the “history of slavery” and the “contemporary grievances” arising from a white-dominated British art world, Lubaina Himid created a curatorial tour de force with her Thin Black Line(s) exhibition, on display at Tate Britain in 2011–2012. She adopted an array of signifying practices designed to riff off, reclaim, and revise the ideological biases and racialized blind spots of the Tate as a national institution. Himid’s long history of exhibiting Black British women’s work reflects her determination to fight against their “collective invisibility in the art world” as they “engaged with the social, cultural, political and aesthetic issues of the time” by undertaking a “conceptual reframing of the image of black and Asian women themselves.” Working with the spatial constraints of just one room in which to exhibit a decades-long history of Black British women artists and art making, Himid also had to rely upon numerous strategies to confront the obstacles presented by the Tate’s decision to mount Thin Black Line(s) not as a full-scale exhibition but as an “in-focus display.” This meant that it was not given as extensive a budget or as large an exhibition space as the Tate exhibitions appearing as part of their regular programming, and also not accorded the same levels of marketing, advertising, and scholarly attention. Himid set about solving these problems by engaging in diverse extra-curatorial practices and also by contesting and critiquing these limitations within the space itself. Himid’s self-reflexive strategies became a form of “guerrilla curating” as she engaged in a multitude of methods designed to critique, interrogate, and displace—if not outright reject—the challenges presented by the ideologically confining and tokenizing framing of the Tate as an exhibition space.

Abstract The mainstream studies of the East Asian tributary system have been exhibiting a stance that tends to stress the importance of Confucianism in forming and sustaining the tributary system throughout its long history. However, there are still several questions (especially those of a theoretical nature) that historians have yet to answer: How could Confucianism have contributed to the formation and sustenance of this tributary system? Why could this Confucian-based tributary system be recognized and employed in relations with non-Confucian frontier tribes? Why could this system have worked with both the nomadic tribes on the northern frontier and the South-East Asian countries that were neither Confucian nor nomadic? Drawing on the results of ritual studies in anthropology, Chinese historiography and Chinese philosophy, this author seeks a broader methodology that can be used to conceptualize the tributary ritual and its constitutive power structure, which forms the foundation of the central part of the East Asian world order. This paper is a theoretical attempt to find a non-Sinocentric way to interpret the formally Sinocentric tribute system in premodern East Asia.

AbstractThis article explores the emergence of fine art photography in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s, bringing to the fore the significance of Ahmad Aali and his early photographic works for this transformation. It sheds light on the confluence of the main trajectories that paved the way for the formation of fine art photography in Iran, firstly by exploring historical practices of photography, secondly by addressing the influences of transforming political and social agendas after World War II on photographic developments, and finally by underlining the involvement of photography in the artistic sphere of that time. Central to the latter is Aali’s contribution to theoretical discourses about photography as an artistic medium and the major role he played in the first photographic exhibitions in art spaces. In that perspective, this article argues for the pivotal role of Ahmad Aali in bridging the gap between photography and art for the first time in Iran’s long history of photography. It analyses Aali’s photographic works exhibited during the 1960s and 1970s to comprehend the circumstances of the emergence of fine art photography in Iran, and does so by discussing the modernist aesthetics in photography that emerged at the time. Going beyond Aali’s regional importance, it examines his conceptual approaches to overcoming the ‘static realism’ and the limitations of the medium. Aali’s novel photographic concepts of space and time that emerged therefrom should be accorded their full autonomy and uniqueness in the (re-)writing of a narrative of art history on their very premises. This article thereby seeks to support a critique of the narrow epistemological boundaries of the discipline of art history and its resulting marginalization of locally developed art forms and concepts.

Abstract The jewel orchids (Goodyerinae), named after their often colourful leaves, have a pantropical distribution with a clear Asian centre of diversity. However, the Nearctic and Neotropical America together form a second centre of diversity, with one-third of known species of Goodyerinae. Previously, only a few American samples have been included in phylogenetic studies, and their putatively Asian origins and American divergence times were poorly known. To elucidate these topics, we inferred phylogenetic trees, performed molecular dating and reconstructed biogeographic history using nuclear ribosomal ITS and plastid matK sequences for 34 species of Goodyerinae from the New World and 76 previously published accessions of Cranichideae. Our well-supported phylogenetic topology suggests two independent dispersal events to the New World from the Indomalesian region during the Miocene. The first inferred dispersal of a Neotropical clade diverged c. 11 Mya from their most recent common ancestor (MRCA), comprising three highly supported subclades that do not match the limits of Aspidogyne, Kreodanthus and Microchilus as previously circumscribed. The second dispersal involved a largely Nearctic clade of Goodyera s.l. diverging c. 8.4 Mya from the MRCA and exhibiting a complex biogeographic history with subsequent dispersals between the Nearctic and Indomalesia. The occurrence of these species in gallery forests putatively prevented vicariance events imposed by the expansion of the Chacoan region as previously detected for epiphytic Orchidaceae. Eighty-nine nomenclatural combinations and three new names in Microchilus are proposed.

The past few years have represented a radical shift in the way the world views collectors of contemporary art. With globalization, collectors from around the world engage in shared platforms that were not available in the past, such as art fairs, biennales, and exhibition events, which enable collectors to share and promote their respective individual and national identities. This is especially true for collectors of contemporary art in China. In recent years Chinese collectors have allocated a significant amount of personal wealth and time toward creating a platform for both the Chinese and global art communities to engage in a stimulating cross-cultural dialogue. Many Chinese collectors of contemporary art now aim to create a long-term dialogue with the local general public that reflects the challenges of today, coupled with a vision for tomorrow. What makes their collections remarkable is their ability to blend Chinese, Asian, and Western pieces into a narrative of globalization and multiculturalism.

Abstract Within an art exhibition, the disposition of space is fundamental in experiencing artworks. A study of the exhibition space as discourse enmeshes art within a framework of relationship and processes instead of viewing art as an isolated and autonomous object. This paper features the case study of Art ‘76, the inaugural exhibition of Singapore's first large-scale institution of art, the National Museum Art Gallery (NMAG). The NMAG's opening in 1976 had been much anticipated by artists and the art audience since the 1960s, it was also an important milestone in the National Museum of Singapore's process of modernisation and revitalisation. During Singapore's post-independent period, the National Museum began to redefine itself as a civic museum focussing on Singapore's history and culture, shifting away from its previous incarnation of a research-focused colonial institution, the Raffles Library and Museum. Singapore was not alone in exploring the role of modern art in nation-building, as neighbouring Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand also began to moot for their own institution of modern art around the same period of time. Art ‘76 and the NMAG represent a case of distinct spatial typology that arose out of unique institutional and socio-political dynamic in post-independent Singapore. In analysing the legacy as well as the relationships and contentions that shaped the spatial articulation of Art ‘76, this paper studies existing visual and oral archive, as well as critically evaluating the concepts of space as a subject of historical study.

Chinese quarters developed significantly during the eighteenth century along the coasts of East and Southeast Asia, exhibiting a common urban milieu in cities such as Manila, Batavia, Hoi An, and Nagasaki. Sharing similarities, they can be found both in states ruled by Asians and by Europeans, allowing for a comparison. This paper aims to prove that urban and architectural approaches of Chinese enclaves in these ports were similar in the eighteenth century and clearly referenced historic water towns of southern China. To do this, historical plans and textual sources of the aforementioned four overseas cities will be used. These results aim to be valuable as an historical basis for studies on acculturation processes in contemporary Chinese quarters.

Zheng Lücheng (1914–1976) is famed in China as the composer of “March of the People’s Liberation Army” (C. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jinxingqu). Less well known, but of more interest to readers of this paper, is his “March of the [North Korean] People’s Army” (K. Inmin’gun haengjin kok), the official army march of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea until the late 1950s. Zheng was a transnational musician, crossing the shifting borders of Korea, Manchuria and China during turbulent years of war. Zheng’s is a fascinating story of revolution, migration, music, romance and diplomacy at a crux in East Asian history. In the 1930s, Zheng left southern Korea to join anti-Japanese forces in China; he studied and then worked in the Lu Xun Arts School in Yan’an—the crucible of Maoist cultural policy; he married a Han Chinese cadre; returned to North Korea to compose for the army, establish orchestras and conservatoires; was repatriated to China and almost immediately returned to Pyongyang with the Chinese forces. Finally, he returned for good to China as an army composer. A literate and wellconnected musician, he was adept at negotiating the power of nation states. Since Zheng’s death in 1976, his legacy has continued to cross borders. He is celebrated in a North Korean biographical film, The Musician Zheng Lücheng (K. Ŭmakka Chŏng Ryulsŏng; 1992) and in a Chinese film Going towards the Sun (C. Zouxiang taiyang; 2005). He is commemorated in exhibition halls, memorials and festivals in both China and in his birthplace in Kwangju, South Korea. Zheng’s story and music evoke nationalist sentiment, and at the same time are used in cultural diplomacy between these states. Drawing on interviews, archival documents and more recent materials, this examination of Zheng, who played such a central part in the creation of East Asian musical modernity in the mid-twentieth century, illustrates a fascinating interaction of nationalism, internationalism and, now, soft power.

IntroductionThree broad stages of Australia’s arts and culture sectors may be discerned with reference to the Northern Hemisphere. The first is in Australia’s early years where artists travelled to the metropoles of Europe to learn from acknowledged masters, to view the great works and to become part of a broader cultural scene. The second is where Australian art was promoted internationally, which to some extent began in the 1960s with exhibitions such as the 1961 ‘Survey of recent Australian painting’ at the Whitechapel gallery. The third relates to the strong promotion and push to display and sell Indigenous art, which has been a key area of focus since the 1970s.The Allure of the NorthFor a long time Australasian artists have mostly travelled to Britain (Britain) or Europe (Cooper; Frost; Inkson and Carr), be they writers, painters or musicians for example. Hecq (36) provides a useful overview of the various periods of expatriation from Australia, referring to the first significant phase at the end of the twentieth century when many painters left “to complete their atelier instruction in Paris and London”. Many writers also left for the north during this time, with a number of women travelling overseas on account of “intellectual pressures as well as intellectual isolation”(Hecq 36). Among these, Miles Franklin left Australia in “an open act of rebellion against the repressive environment of her family and colonial culture” (37). There also existed “a belief that ‘there’ is better than ‘here’” (de Groen vii) as well as a “search for the ideal” (viii). World War I led to stronger Anglo-Australian relations hence an increase in expatriation to Europe and Britain as well as longer-term sojourns. These increased further in the wake of World War II. Hecq describes how for many artists, there was significant discontent with Australian provincialism and narrow-mindedness, as well as a desire for wider audiences and international recognition. Further, Hecq describes how Europe became something of a “dreamland”, with numerous artists influenced by their childhood readings about this part of the world and a sense of the imaginary or the “other”. This sense of a dream is described beautifully by McAuliffe (56), who refers to the 1898 painting by A.J. Daplyn as a “melancholic diagram of the nineteenth-century Australian artist’s world, tempering the shimmering allure of those northern lights with the shadowy, somnolent isolation of the south”.Figure 1: The Australian Artist’s Dream of Europe; A.J. Daplyn, 1898 (oil on canvas; courtesy artnet.com)In ‘Some Other Dream’, de Groen presents a series of interviews with expatriate Australian artists and writers as an insight into what drove each to look north and to leave Australia, either temporarily or permanently. Here are a few examples:Janet Alderson: “I desperately wanted to see what was going on” (2)Robert Jacks: “the dream of something else. New York is a dream for lots of people” (21)Bruce Latimer: “I’d always been interested in America, New York in particular” (34)Jeffrey Smart: “Australia seemed to be very dull and isolated, and Italy seemed to be thrilling and modern” (50)Clement Meadmore: “I never had much to do with what was happening in Melbourne: I was never accepted there” (66)Stelarc: “I was interested in traditional Japanese art and the philosophy of Zen” (80)Robert Hughes: “I’d written everything that I’d wanted to write about Australian art and this really dread prospect was looming up of staying in Australia for the rest of one’s life” (128)Max Hutchison: “I quickly realised that Melbourne was a non-art consuming city” (158)John Stringer: “I was not getting the latitude that I wanted at the National Gallery [in Australia] … the prospects of doing other good shows seemed rather slim” (178)As the testimony here suggests, the allure of the north ranges from dissatisfaction with the south to the attraction of various parts of the world in the north.More recently, McAuliffe describes a shift in the impact of the overseas experience for many artists. Describing them as business travellers, he refers to the fact that artists today travel to meet international art dealers and to participate in exhibitions, art fairs and the like. Further, he argues that the risk today lies in “disorientation and distraction rather than provincial timidity” (McAuliffe 56). That is, given the ease and relatively cheap costs of international travel, McAuliffe argues that the challenge is in adapting to constantly changing circumstances, rather than what are now arguably dated concepts of cultural cringe or tyranny of distance. Further, given the combination of “cultural nationalism, social cosmopolitanism and information technology”, McAuliffe (58) argues that the need to expatriate is no longer a requirement for success.Australian Art Struggles InternationallyThe struggles for Australian art as a sector to succeed internationally, particularly in Britain, Europe and the US, are well documented (Frost; Robertson). This is largely due to Australia’s limited history of white settlement and established canon of great art works, the fact that power and position remain strong hence the dominance of Europe and North America in the creative arts field (Bourdieu), as well as Australia’s geographical isolation from the major art centres of the world, with Heartney (63) describing the “persistent sense of isolation of the Australian art world”. While Australia has had considerable success internationally in terms of its popular music (e.g. INXS, Kylie Minogue, The Seekers) and high-profile Hollywood actors (e.g. Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman), the visual arts in particular have struggled (O’Sullivan), including the Indigenous visual arts subsector (Stone). One of the constant criticisms in the visual art world is that Australian art is too focussed on place (e.g. the Australian outback) and not global art movements and trends (Robertson). While on the one hand he argues that Australian visual artists have made some inroads and successes in the international market, McAuliffe (63) tempers this with the following observation:Australian artists don’t operate at the white-hot heart of the international art market: there are no astronomical prices and hotly contested bidding wars. International museums acquire Australian art only rarely, and many an international survey exhibition goes by with no Australian representation.The Push to Sell Australian Cultural Product in the NorthWriting in the mid-nineties at the time of the release of the national cultural policy Creative Nation, the then prime minister Paul Keating identified a need for Australia as a nation to become more competitive internationally in terms of cultural exports. This is a theme that continues today. Recent decades have seen several attempts to promote Australian visual art overseas and in particular Indigenous art; this has come with mixed success. However, there have been misconceptions in the past and hence numerous challenges associated with promoting and selling Aboriginal art in international markets (Wright). One of the problems is that a lot of Europeans “have often seen bad examples of Aboriginal Art” (Anonymous 69) and it is typically the art work which travels north, less so the Indigenous artists who create them and who can talk to them and engage with audiences. At the same time, the Indigenous art sector remains a major contributor to the Australian art economy (Australia Council). While there are some examples of successful Australian art managers operating galleries overseas in such places as London and in the US (Anonymous-b), these are limited and many have had to struggle to gain recognition for their artists’ works.Throsby refers to the well-established fact that the international art market predominantly resides in the US and in Europe (including Britain). Further, Throsby (64) argues that breaking into this market “is a daunting task requiring resources, perseverance, a quality product, and a good deal of luck”. Referring specifically to Indigenous Australian art, Throsby (65) reveals how leading European fairs such as those at Basel and Cologne, displaying breath-taking ignorance if not outright stupidity, have vetoed Aboriginal works on the grounds that they are folk art. This saga continues to the present day, and it still remains to be seen whether these fairs will eventually wake up to themselves.It is also presented in an issue of Artlink that the “challenge is to convince European buyers of the value of Australian art, even though the work is comparatively inexpensive” (Anonymous 69). Is the Rite of Passage Relevant in the 21st Century?Some authors challenge the notion that the rite of passage to the northern hemisphere is a requirement for success for an Australian artist (Frost). This challenge is worthy of unpacking in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and particularly so in what is being termed the Asian century (Bice and Sullivan; Wesley). Firstly, Australia is far closer to Asia than it is to Europe and North America. Secondly, the Asian population is expected to continue to experience rapid economic and population growth, for example the rise of the middle class in China, potentially representing new markets for the consumption of creative product. Lee and Lim refer to the rapid economic modernisation and growth in East Asia (Japan to Singapore). Hence, given the struggles that are often experienced by Australian artists and dealers in attempting to break into the art markets of Europe and North America, it may be more constructive to look towards Asia as an alternative north and place for Australian creative product. Fourthly, many Asian countries are investing heavily in their creative industries and creative economy (Kim and Kim; Kong), hence representing an opportune time for Australian creative practitioners to explore new connections and partnerships.In the first half of the twentieth century, Australians felt compelled to travel north to Europe, especially, if they wanted to engage with the great art teachers, galleries and art works. Today, with the impact of technology, engaging with the art world can be achieved much more readily and quickly, through “increasingly transnational forms of cultural production, distribution and consumption” (Rowe et al. 8). This recent wave of technological development has been significant (Guerra and Kagan), in relation to online communication (e.g. skype, email), social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) as well as content available on the Web for both informal and formal learning purposes. Artists anywhere in the world can now connect online while also engaging with what is an increasing field of virtual museums and galleries. For example, the Tate Gallery in London has over 70,000 artworks in its online art database which includes significant commentary on each work. While online engagement does not necessarily enable an individual to have the lived experience of a gallery walk-through or to be an audience member at a live performance in an outstanding international venue, online technologies have made it much easier for developing artists to engage from anywhere in the world. This certainly makes the ‘tyranny of distance’ factor relevant to Australia somewhat more manageable.There is also a developing field of research citing the importance of emerging artists displaying enterprising and/or entrepreneurial skills (Bridgstock), in the context of a rapidly changing global arts sector. This broadly refers to the need for artists to have business skills, to be able to seek out and identify opportunities, as well as manage multiple projects and/or various streams of income in what is a very different career type and pathway (Beckman; Bridgstock and Cunningham; Hennekam and Bennett). These opportunity seeking skills and agentic qualities have also been cited as critical in relation to the fact that there is not only a major oversupply of artistic labour globally (Menger), but there is a growing stream of entrants to the global higher education tertiary arts sector that shows no signs of subsiding (Daniel). Concluding RemarksAustralia’s history features a strong relationship with and influences from the north, and in particular from Britain, Europe and North America. This remains the case today, with much of Australian society based on inherited models from Britain, be this in the art world or in such areas as the law and education. As well as a range of cultural and sentimental links with this north, Australia is sometimes considered to be a satellite of European civilisation in the Asia-Pacific region. It is therefore explicable why artists might continue this longstanding relationship with this particular north.In our interesting and complex present of the early twenty-first century, Australia is hampered by the lack of any national cultural policy as well as recent significant cuts to arts funding at the national and state levels (Caust). Nevertheless, there are opportunities to be further explored in relation to the changing patterns of production and consumption of creative content, the impact of new and next technologies, as well as the rise of Asia in the Asian Century. The broad field of the arts and artists is a rich area for ongoing research and inquiry and ultimately, Australia’s links to the north including the concept of the rite of passage deserves ongoing consideration.ReferencesAnonymous a. "Outposts: The Case of the Unofficial Attache." Artlink 18.4 (1998): 69–71.Anonymous b. "Who’s Selling What to Whom: Australian Dealers Taking Australian Art Overseas." Artlink 18. 4 (1998): 66–68.Australia Council for the Arts. Arts Nation: An Overview of Australian Arts. 2015. <http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/arts-nation-final-27-feb-54f5f492882da.pdf>.Beckman, Gary D. "'Adventuring' Arts Entrepreneurship Curricula in Higher Education: An Examination of Present Efforts, Obstacles, and Best Practices." The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 37.2 (2007): 87–112.Bice, Sara, and Helen Sullivan. "Abbott Government May Have New Rhetoric, But It’s Still the ‘Asian Century’." The Conversation 2013. <https://theconversation.com/abbott-government-may-have-new-rhetoric-but-its-still-the-asian-century-19769>.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.Bridgstock, Ruth. "Not a Dirty Word: Arts Entrepreneurship and Higher Education." Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 12.2–3 (2013,): 122–137. doi:10.1177/1474022212465725.———, and Stuart Cunningham. "Creative Labour and Graduate Outcomes: Implications for Higher Education and Cultural Policy." International Journal of Cultural Policy 22.1 (2015): 10–26. doi:10.1080/10286632.2015.1101086.Britain, Ian. Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.Caust, Josephine. "Cultural Wars in an Australian Context: Challenges in Developing a National Cultural Policy." International Journal of Cultural Policy 21.2 (2015): 168–182. doi:10.1080/10286632.2014.890607.Cooper, Roslyn Pesman. "Some Australian Italies." Westerly 39.4 (1994): 95–104.Daniel, Ryan, and Robert Johnstone. "Becoming an Artist: Exploring the Motivations of Undergraduate Students at a Regional Australian University". Studies in Higher Education 42.6 (2017): 1015-1032.De Groen, Geoffrey. Some Other Dream: The Artist the Artworld & the Expatriate. Hale & Iremonger, 1984.Frost, Andrew. "Do Young Australian Artists Really Need to Go Overseas to Mature?" The Guardian, 9 Oct. 2013. <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2013/oct/09/1https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2013/oct/09/1, July 20, 2016>.Guerra, Paula, and Sacha Kagan, eds. Arts and Creativity: Working on Identity and Difference. Porto: University of Porto, 2016.Heartney, Eleanor. "Identity and Locale: Four Australian Artists." Art in America 97.5 (2009): 63–68.Hecq, Dominique. "'Flying Up for Air: Australian Artists in Exile'." Commonwealth (Dijon) 22.2 (2000): 35–45.Hennekam, Sophie, and Dawn Bennett. "Involuntary Career Transition and Identity within the Artist Population." Personnel Review 45.6 (2016): 1114–1131.Inkson, Kerr, and Stuart C. Carr. "International Talent Flow and Careers: An Australasian Perspective." Australian Journal of Career Development 13.3 (2004): 23–28.Keating, P.J. "Exports from a Creative Nation." Media International Australia 76.1 (1995): 4–6.Kim, Jeong-Gon, and Eunji Kim. "Creative Industries Internationalization Strategies of Selected Countries and Their Policy Implications." KIEP Research Paper. World Economic Update-14–26 (2014). <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2488416>.Kong, Lily. "From Cultural Industries to Creative Industries and Back? Towards Clarifying Theory and Rethinking Policy." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 15.4 (2014): 593–607.Lee, H., and Lorraine Lim. Cultural Policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the State, Arts and Creative Industries. Springer, 2014.McAuliffe, Chris. "Living the Dream: The Contemporary Australian Artist Abroad." Meanjin 71.3 (2012): 56–61.Menger, Pierre-Michel. "Artistic Labor Markets and Careers." Annual Review of Sociology 25.1 (1999): 541–574.O’Sullivan, Jane. "Why Australian Artists Find It So Hard to Get International Recognition." AFR Magazine, 2016.Robertson, Kate. "Yes, Capon, Australian Artists Have Always Thought about Place." The Conversation, 2014. <https://theconversation.com/yes-capon-australian-artists-have-always-thought-about-place-31690>.Rowe, David, et al. "Transforming Cultures? From Creative Nation to Creative Australia." Media International Australia 158.1 (2016): 6–16. doi:10.1177/1329878X16629544.Stone, Deborah. "Presenters Reject Indigenous Arts." ArtsHub, 2016. <http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/audience-development/deborah-stone/presenters-reject-indigenous-arts-252075?utm_source=ArtsHub+Australia&utm_campaign=7349a419f3-UA-828966-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2a8ea75e81-7349a419f3-302288158>.Throsby, David. "Get Out There and Sell: The Visual Arts Export Strategy, Past, Present and Future." Artlink 18.4 (1998): 64–65.Wesley, Michael. "In Australia's Third Century after European Settlement, We Must Rethink Our Responses to a New World." The Conversation, 2015. <https://theconversation.com/in-australias-third-century-after-european-settlement-we-must-rethink-our-responses-to-a-new-world-46671>.Wright, Felicity. "Passion, Rich Collectors and the Export Dollar: The Selling of Aboriginal Art Overseas." Artlink 18.4 (1998): 16.

Introduction In the elite space of Haute Couture, fashion is presented through a theatrical array of dynamics—the engagement of specific bodies performing for select audiences in highly curated spaces. Each element is both very precise in its objectives and carefully selected for impact. In this way, the production of Haute Couture makes itself accessible to only a few select members of society. Globally, there are only an estimated 4,000 direct consumers of Haute Couture (Hendrik). Given this limited market, the work of elite couturiers relies on other forms of artistic media, namely film, photography, and increasingly, museum spaces, to reach broader audiences who are then enabled to participate in the fashion ‘space’ via a process of visual consumption. For these audiences, Haute Couture is less about material consumption than it is about the aspirational consumption and contestation of notions of identity. This article uses qualitative textual analysis and draws on semiotic theory to explore symbolism and values in Haute Couture. Semiotics, an approach popularised by the work of Roland Barthes, examines signifiers as elements of the construction of metalanguage and myth. Barthes recognised a broad understanding of language that extended beyond oral and written forms. He acknowledged that a photograph or artefact may also constitute “a kind of speech” (111). Similarly, fashion can be seen as both an important signifier and mode of communication. The model of fashion as communication is one extensively explored within culture studies (e.g. Hall; Lurie). Much of the discussion of semiotics in this literature is predicated on sender/receiver models. These models conceive of fashion as the mechanism through which individual senders communicate to another individual or to collective (and largely passive) audiences (Barnard). Yet, fashion is not a unidirectional form of communication. It can be seen as a dialogical and discursive space of encounter and contestation. To understand the role of Haute Couture as a contested space of identity and socio-political discourse, this article examines the work of Chinese couturier Guo Pei. An artisan such as Guo Pei places the results of needle and thread into spaces of the theatrical, the spectacular, and, significantly, the powerfully socio-political. Guo Pei’s contributions to Haute Couture are extravagant, fantastical productions that also serve as spaces of socio-cultural information exchange and debate. Guo Pei’s creations bring together political history, memory, and fantasy. Here we explore the socio-cultural and political semiotics that emerge when the humble stitch is dramatically amplified onto the Haute Couture runway. We argue that Guo Pei’s work speaks not only to a cultural imaginary but also to the contested nature of gender and socio-political authority in contemporary China. The Politicisation of Fashion in China The majority of literature regarding Chinese fashion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has focussed on the use of fashion to communicate socio-political messages (Finnane). This is most clearly seen in analyses of the connections between dress and egalitarian ideals during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. As Zhang (952-952) notes, revolutionary fashion emphasised simplicity, frugality, and homogenisation. It rejected style choices that reflected both traditional Chinese and Western fashions. In Mao’s China, fashion was utilised by the state and adopted by the populace as a means of reinforcing the regime’s ideological orientations. For example, the ubiquitous Mao suit, worn by both men and women during the Cultural Revolution “was intended not merely as a unisex garment but a means to deemphasise gender altogether” (Feng 79). The Maoist regime’s intention to create a type of social equality through sartorial homogenisation was clear. Reflecting on the ways in which fashion both responded to and shaped women’s positionality, Mao stated, “women are regarded as criminals to begin with, and tall buns and long skirts are the instruments of torture applied to them by men. There is also their facial makeup, which is the brand of the criminal, the jewellery on their hands, which constitutes shackles and their pierced ears and bound feet which represent corporal punishment” (Mao cited in Finnane 23). Mao’s suit—the homogenising militaristic uniform adopted by many citizens—may have been intended as a mechanism for promoting equality, freeing women from the bonds of gendered oppression and all citizens from visual markers of class. Nonetheless, in practice Maoist fashion and policing of appearance during the Cultural Revolution enforced a politics of amnesia and perversely may have “entailed feminizing the undesirable, by conflating woman, bourgeoisie, and colour while also insisting on a type of gender equality that the belted Mao jacket belied” (Chen 161). In work on cultural transformations in the post-Maoist period, Braester argues that since the late 1980s Chinese cultural products—here taken to include artefacts such as Haute Couture—have similarly been defined by the politics of memory and identity. Evocation of historically important symbols and motifs may serve to impose a form of narrative continuity, connecting the present to the past. Yet, as Braester notes, such strategies may belie stability: “to contemplate memory and forgetting is tantamount to acknowledging the temporal and spatial instability of the post-industrial, globalizing world” (435). In this way, cultural products are not only sites of cultural continuity, but also of contestation. Imperial Dreams of Feminine Power The work of Chinese couturier Guo Pei showcases traditional Chinese embroidery techniques alongside more typically Western fashion design practices as a means of demonstrating not only Haute Couturier craftsmanship but also celebrating Chinese imperial culture through nostalgic fantasies in her contemporary designs. Born in Beijing, in 1967, at the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Guo Pei studied fashion at the Beijing Second Light Industry School before working in private and state-owned fashion houses. She eventually moved to establish her own fashion design studio and was recognised as “the designer of choice for high society and the political elite” in China (Yoong 19). Her work was catapulted into Western consciousness when her cape, titled ‘Yellow Empress’ was donned by Rihanna for the 2015 Met Gala. The design was a response to an era in which the colour yellow was forbidden to all but the emperor. In the same year, Guo Pei was named an invited member of La Federation de la Haute Couture, becoming the first and only Chinese-born and trained couturier to receive the honour. Recognition of her work at political and socio-economic levels earned her an award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Economy and Cultural Diplomacy’ by the Asian Couture Federation in 2019. While Maoist fashion influences pursued a vision of gender equality through the ‘unsexing’ of fashion, Guo Pei’s work presents a very different reading of female adornment. One example is her exquisite Snow Queen dress, which draws on imperial motifs in its design. An ensemble of silk, gold embroidery, and Swarovski crystals weighing 50 kilograms, the Snow Queen “characterises Guo Pei’s ideal woman who is noble, resilient and can bear the weight of responsibility” (Yoong 140). In its initial appearance on the Haute Couture runway, the dress was worn by 78-year-old American model, Carmen Dell’Orefice, signalling the equation of age with strength and beauty. Rather than being a site of torture or corporal punishment, as suggested by Mao, the Snow Queen dress positions imagined traditional imperial fashion as a space for celebration and empowerment of the feminine form. The choice of model reinforces this message, while simultaneously contesting global narratives that conflate women’s beauty and physical ability with youthfulness. In this way, fashion can be understood as an intersectional space. On the one hand, Guo Pei's work reinvigorates a particular nostalgic vision of Chinese imperial culture and in doing so pushes back against the socio-political ‘non-fashion’ and uniformity of Maoist dress codes. Yet, on the other hand, positioning her work in the very elite space of Haute Couture serves to reinstate social stratification and class boundaries through the creation of economically inaccessible artefacts: a process that in turn involves the reification and museumification of fashion as material culture. Ideals of femininity, identity, individuality, and the expressions of either creating or dismantling power, are anchored within cultural, social, and temporal landscapes. Benedict Anderson argues that the museumising imagination is “profoundly political” (123). Like sacred texts and maps, fashion as material ephemera evokes and reinforces a sense of continuity and connection to history. Yet, the belonging engendered through engagement with material and imagined pasts is imprecise in its orientation. As much as it is about maintaining threads to an historical past, it is simultaneously an appeal to present possibilities. In his broader analysis, Anderson explores the notion of parallelity, the potentiality not to recreate some geographically or temporally removed place, but to open a space of “living lives parallel …] along the same trajectory” (131). Guo Pei’s creations appeal to a similar museumising imagination. At once, her work evokes both a particular imagined past of imperial grandeur, against instability of the politically shifting present, and appeals to new possibilities of gendered emancipation within that imagined space. Contesting and Complicating East-West Dualism The design process frequently involves borrowing, reinterpretation, and renewal of ideas. The erasure of certain cultural and political aspects of social continuity through the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the socio-political changes thereafter, have created fertile ground for an artist like Guo Pei. Her palimpsest reaches back through time, picks up those cultural threads of extravagance, and projects them wholesale into the spaces of fashion in the present moment. Cognisance of design intentionality and historical and contemporary fashion discourses influence the various interpretations of fashion semiotics. However, there are also audience-created meanings within the various modes of performance and consumption. Where Kaiser and Green assert that “the process of fashion is inevitably linked to making and sustaining as well as resisting and dismantling power” (1), we can also observe that sartorial semiotics can have different meanings at different times. In the documentary, Yellow Is Forbidden, Guo Pei reflects on shifting semiotics in fashion. Speaking with a client, she remarks that “dragons and phoenixes used to represent the Chinese emperor—now they represent the spirit of the Chinese” (Brettkelly). Once a symbol of sacred, individual power, these iconic signifiers now communicate collective national identity. Both playing with and reimagining not only the grandeur of China’s imperial past, but also the particular role of the feminine form and female power therein, Guo Pei’s corpus evokes and complicates such contestations of power. On the one hand, her work serves to contest homogenising narratives of identity and femininity within China. Equally important, however, are the ways in which this work, which is possible both through and in spite of a Euro-American centric system of patronage within the fashion industry, complicates notions of East-West dualism. For Guo Pei, drawing on broadly accessible visual signifiers of Chinese heritage and culture has been critical in bringing attention to her endeavours. Her work draws significantly from her cultural heritage in terms of colour selections and traditional Chinese embroidery techniques. Symbols and motifs peculiar to Chinese culture are abundant: lotus flowers, dragons, phoenixes, auspicious numbers, and favourable Chinese language characters such as buttons in the shape of ‘double happiness’ (囍) are often present in her designs. Likewise, her techniques pay homage to traditional craft work, including Peranakan beading. The parallelity conjured by these choices is deliberate. In staging Guo Pei’s work for museum exhibitions at museums such as the Asian Civilizations Museum, her designs are often showcased beside the historical artefacts that inspired them (Fu). On her Chinese website, Guo Pei, highlights the historical connections between her designs and traditional Chinese embroidery craft through a sub-section of the “Spirit” header, entitled simply, “Inheritance”. These influences and expressions of Chinese culture are, in Guo Pei's own words her “design language” (Brettkelly). However, Guo Pei has also expressed an ambivalence about her positioning as a Chinese designer. She has maintained that she does not want “to be labelled as a Chinese storyteller ... and thinks about a global audience” (Yoong). In her expression of this desire to both derive power through design choices and historically situated practices and symbols, and simultaneously move beyond nationally bounded identity frameworks, Guo Pei positions herself in a space ‘betwixt and between.’ This is not only a space of encounter between East and West, but also a space that calls into question the limits and possibilities of semiotic expression. Authenticity and Legitimacy Global audiences of fashion rely on social devices of diffusion other than the runway: photography, film, museums, and galleries. Unique to Haute Couture, however, is the way in which such processes are often abstracted, decontextualised and pushed to the extremities of theatrical opulence. De Perthuis argues that to remove context “greatly reduce[s] the social, political, psychological and semiotic meanings” of fashion (151). When iconic motifs are utilised, the western gaze risks falling back on essentialising reification of identity. To this extent, for non-Chinese audiences Guo Pei’s works may serve not so much to problemitise historical and contemporary feminine identities and inheritances, so much as project an essentialisation of Chinese femininity. The double-bind created through Guo Pei’s simultaneous appeal to and resistance of archetypical notions of Chinese identity and femininity complicates the semiotic currency of her work. Moreover, Guo Pei’s work highlights tensions concerning understandings of Chinese culture between those in China and the diaspora. In her process of accessing reference material, Guo Pei has necessarily been driven to travel internationally, due to her concerns about a lack of access to material artefacts within China. She has sought out remnants of her ancestral culture in both the Chinese diaspora as well as material culture designed for export (Yoong; Brettkelly). This borrowing of Chinese design as depicted outside of China proper, alongside the use of western influences and patronage in Guo’s work has resulted in her work being dismissed by critics as “superficial … export ware, reimported” (Thurman). The insinuation that her work is derivative is tinged with denigration. Such critiques question not only the authenticity of the motifs and techniques utilised in Guo Pei’s designs, but also the legitimacy of the narratives of both feminine and Chinese identity communicated therein. Questions of cultural ‘authenticity’ serve to deny how culture, both tangible and intangible, is mutable over time and space. In his work on tourism, Taylor suggests that wherever “the production of authenticity is dependent on some act of (re)production, it is conventionally the past which is seen to hold the model of the original” (9). In this way, legitimacy of semiotic communication in works that evoke a temporally distant past is often seen to be adjudicated through notions of fidelity to the past. This authenticity of the ‘traditional’ associates ‘tradition’ with ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity.’ It is itself a form of mythmaking. As Guo Pei’s work is at once quintessentially Chinese and, through its audiences and capitalist modes of circulation, fundamentally Western, it challenges notions of authenticity and legitimacy both within the fashion world and in broader social discourses. Speaking about similar processes in literary fiction, Colavincenzo notes that works that attempt to “take on the myth of historical discourse and practice … expose the ways in which this discourse is constructed and how it fails to meet the various claims it makes for itself” (143). Rather than reinforcing imagined ‘truths’, appeals to an historical imagination such as that deployed by Guo Pei reveal its contingency. Conclusion In Fashion in Altermodern China, Feng suggests that we can “understand the sartorial as situating a set of visible codes and structures of meaning” (1). More than a reductionistic process of sender/receiver communication, fashion is profoundly embedded with intersectional dialogues. It is not the precision of signifiers, but their instability, fluidity, and mutability that is revealing. Guo Pei’s work offers narratives at the junction of Chinese and foreign, original and derivative, mythical and historical that have an unsettled nature. This ineffable tension between construction and deconstruction draws in both fashion creators and audiences. Whether encountering fashion on the runway, in museum cabinets, or on magazine pages, all renditions rely on its audience to engage with processes of imagination, fantasy, and memory as the first step of comprehending the semiotic languages of cloth. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2016. Barnard, Malcolm. "Fashion as Communication Revisited." Fashion Theory. Routledge, 2020. 247-258. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: J. Cape, 1972. Braester, Yomi. "The Post-Maoist Politics of Memory." A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. Ed. Yingjin Zhang. London: John Wiley and Sons. 434-51. Brettkelly, Pietra (dir.). Yellow Is Forbidden. Madman Entertainment, 2019. Chen, Tina Mai. "Dressing for the Party: Clothing, Citizenship, and Gender-Formation in Mao's China." 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