Sydney Asian Art Series 2026
This series brings together researchers from across the world to discuss critical issues in early, modern and contemporary Asian art via lectures, seminars and other events. In 2026, the series asks the question: what is/where is/when is Asian Art?
The Sydney Asian Art Series, which was established in 2017, invites leading researchers from across the world to share their research on critical issues in early, modern and contemporary Asian art.
This year’s theme What/where/when is Asian art? tackles a central tension: how can a single idea (Asian art) encompass the diversity of peoples, geographies and cultural practices grouped under ‘Asian art’?
Over the past 30 years, artists and scholars have proposed various answers to this question, from the diasporic and postcolonial frameworks of the 1990s to today’s distinct yet intersectional concepts of the transcultural, culturally hybrid, Indigenous and decolonial. This series examines why the question of Asian art continues to provoke debate and how the stakes of defining it shift across nations and contexts.
Convened by art historian Dr Yvonne Low, University of Sydney, and the Art Gallery’s curator of Asian art, Dr Natalie Seiz, this year’s Sydney Asian Art Series engages with ideas explored in the exhibition And Still I Rise.
The 2026 Sydney Asian Art Series is convened by Yvonne Low and Natalie Seiz, and co-presented by the Power Institute and VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Explore the 2025 Series
Explore the 2024 Series
Explore the 2023 Series