2026 marks the ninth 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 to share their research in progress with peers and experts in the field.

 

This year’s symposium explores the afterlives of Asian art—when artworks, objects, and creative practices persist, circulate, and acquire new meanings beyond their original contexts. For example, Indigenous textiles created for ritual or everyday use may become detached from their initial functions and enter colonial museum collections, where they are reinterpreted as craft objects. Over time, processes such as material wear, conservation, and exhibition further transform their meanings. Contemporary researchers and artists, in turn, draw on these histories and aesthetics to produce new interpretations through scholarship and creative practice.

 

By examining these afterlives, we can better understand not only what survives, but how and why it endures. This perspective highlights the influence of archives, museums, historians, and contemporary practitioners in shaping present-day understandings of Asian art. Yet, while these institutions can generate new meanings, they risk reductionist interpretations, particularly in the context of post-colonial legacies that reflect or reinforce power dynamics, privileging certain narratives while marginalising others. Thus, this symposium also invites critical inquiry into the roles and practices of these institutions.

 

What does it mean to practice or research Asian art amid these ongoing transformations? How do fragments, absences, and reproductions shape what can be known? How might attention to afterlives reframe questions of authorship and materiality across epistemological, institutional, and cultural frameworks? Finally, how can we critically reconsider the roles of institutions that shape the understanding of Asian art?

 

This year, the day-long symposium will again be held in a hybrid format, both online and in person, in various cities across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The symposium aims to highlight and share the vitality and diversity of Asian art research undertaken by current and recent postgraduate students worldwide including MA (coursework or research) students and PhD candidates in disciplines such as art history, creative practice, arts management, museum studies, heritage studies and related fields.