Australasian Network for Asian Art
2025 AN4AA Postgraduate Symposium | Asian Art Research Now
Re-(en)visioning the Past and Present of Asian Art
Keynote Speaker: Dr Grace Gassin
Symposium Date and Time: Friday 15 August 2025, 9.00-17.00 AEST
Please register via Humanitix.
Locations: A Zoom link will be provided once registered. If you are attending in person, please select one of the locations below when registering with us.
Adelaide: Collab, Police Barracks Building Level 1, South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000
Auckland: Room 326, B201 Faculty of Arts and Education, The University of Auckland, 10 Symonds Street, Auckland Central
Aotearoa New Zealand 1010
Melbourne: The Garden Building 010.06.089, RMIT University, Bowen Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000
Sydney: F202, F Block, UNSW Art & Design, Oxford St & Greens Rd, Paddington NSW 2021
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2025 marks the eighth year since the establishment of Asian Art Research Now, the annual postgraduate symposium organised by the Australasian Network for Asian Art (AN4AA). Over the years, this symposium has become a flagship event for the network, bringing together early-career Asian art researchers from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (and beyond) to share their research-in-progress with their peers and experts in the field.
Building on last year’s symposium – which encouragingly received an ever-growing number of presentations and audiences, and was structured around four thematic panels – this year’s symposium adopts a broad thematic focus: Re-(en)visioning the Past and Present of Asian Art. To re-(en)vision suggests an act of looking back, holding the desired promise of restoration, reclamation, and resignification by bringing to light histories once obscured, misread, or confined within prescriptive frameworks. This process unfolds organically in both art research and artistic practice today, transforming the past and, at times, re-(en)visioning what can be remembered and imagined for the future – whether in nascent or altered forms.
The symposium will take place in a hybrid format, with in-person hubs in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand hosted at the Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide), RMIT (Melbourne), University of New South Wales (Sydney) and the first-time hub at The University of Auckland (Auckland). The day-long symposium aims to highlight and share the vitality and diversity of Asian art research undertaken by current and recent postgraduate students. It aims to foster supportive critique, feedback, and conversations across institutions and across the diverse geographies and temporalities of Asian art research.
The symposium serves as a platform for connecting with other scholars and emerging academics across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It provides an opportunity to share research in progress among Asian art researchers from various backgrounds, including Masters (coursework or research) students and doctoral candidates in disciplines such as art history, creative practice, arts management, museum studies, and heritage studies.
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This year, we welcome Dr Grace Gassin, Curator Asian New Zealand Histories, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa to present the keynote speech!
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Dr Grace Gassin Lîm Sò͘-chin æž—ç´ çœŸ is Curator Asian New Zealand Histories at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Her wide-ranging interests encompass the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian diaspora communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.
Grace is the former President of Dragon Tails Association, which was set up to promote research into the histories and heritage of Chinese people (and their descendants and associates) in Australasia. She co-convened both the Dragon Tails 2017 conference, held at the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo, Victoria, and the 2019 conference, held at the Victoria University of Wellington – the latter was the first, and remains the only, Dragon Tails conference ever held in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Over the past decade, Grace has led or been involved in several major collaborative initiatives combining the diverse strengths and aims of curators, historical researchers, activists, and artists in various ways. These projects include: Chinese Languages in Aotearoa, the Asian Mental Health project, The Pandemic Chronicles, and the We Are Kiwi Hong Kongers protest collection. She is also the editor of the forthcoming, multi-authored book, Between Dreams: Resistance and Representation in Asian Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2026).
Program Schedule
