India! Art On The Move

A one-day conference is being held at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art located in Copenhagen next month.  The speakers at the important event, ‘India! Art On The Move - Contemporary Art & Migration’, are Gayatri Sinha, Anne Ring Petersen, Mieke Bal, Suketu Mehta, and Stine Høholt, among other distinguished names.

Introduction to the event

An introductory note states: “India is one of the countries in the world with the highest rate of migration. Today, 25 million Indians live in more than 100 countries in all the continents. Human mobility is taking on more and more complex and dynamic forms and is thus breaking down traditional notions and concepts of home, belonging, cultural identity and cultural memory. Its main issues are:  

Contemporary Art: going beyond Local and global

What analytical tools should be brought into play when art becomes ‘glocal’ – that is, relates simultaneously to a local and a global aesthetic? How are the cultural effects of migration and globalization represented in ‘global’ contemporary art? 

Trans-cultural art curating from India

How can we develop new curatorial models for showing art from different cultural spheres on the global art scene? What kind of discursive and conceptual framework can we work with and what are its potentials and challenges? In connection with this special conference, the museum is going to publish a thematic issue of its research journal that focuses on the subject of migration & contemporary art practice.

The conference background

On 26th October 2012, on the occasion of ARKEN’s exhibition ‘INDIA: ART NOW’, the museum is holding this conference. It’s organized by ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with associate professor, dr. phil., PhD, Anne Ring Petersen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. The conference will take place at the museum venue located just 20 km south of Copenhagen.

The museum was opened in March 1996. Since its establishment ARKEN has worked towards enhancing the quality of all aspects of the museum's affairs, and since 1997 is firmly established among its peers in the national and international circle of museums.