Opening Reception | TRANS\art: Transborder and multilayered art history

TRANS\art: transborder and multilayered art history is a paralleled juried exhibition in conjunction with the graduate conference hosted by the Council of Graduate Art Historians (CoGAH) on Friday, November 17th, 2023 in the ASU Art Museum workshop space with the same title. Through this project, we will foster connections between art history and the broader School of Art. This exhibition and conference will be a starting point for further cross-disciplinary and multi-platform collaborations.

Through the exhibition, we seek to call attention to the many layers and meanings of transborder issues, which concern the future of the field of art historical research and the contemporary frontiers of artistic practice. The discussion of transborder exists in multiple bodies of knowledge and practice, as such we divide this broad topic into physical and metaphysical levels. The physical level of transborder involves visual boundaries, those that exist in between and across borders, geographical boundaries, cultural peripheries, as well as the crossing-over of different media.

In parallel, metaphysical boundaries refer to distinctions between different disciplines. In other words, advocating for the field of transborder is a breakthrough at the theoretical level that tears down boundaries and even broadens disciplinary scopes. We will recall this in our call for paper by circulating this not only in the School of Art but also in other interdisciplinary institutions in the ASU community such as the School of Transborder Studies, the School of Social Transformation, etc.

Through the open call, we encourage artists to think about different levels and types of transborder issues and explore their own interests and concerns through artmaking in various media. We encourage submissions from individuals thinking specifically about ASU’s location in the Southwest, as well as more broadly across geographies, temporalities, and borderlands, as well as gender, sexual, and racial identity.

Exhibition Dates: Nov. 16-22, 2023
Opening Reception: Thursday, Nov. 16, 6:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.