5. Along the Ecological Grain: Art and Empire in Southeast Asia

Art historical writing on ecology has boomed recently, from studies on Land and Eco Art to scholarship on the Anthropocene through new materialist or Indigenous eco-frameworks, and compendious edited volumes on ecologically engaged art. While this work has transformed understandings of environmentally oriented art, it largely focuses on Euro-American contexts and present-day crises, with Global South histories remaining underexamined—including the imperial systems largely responsible for producing today’s cascading socioenvironmental damage. “Along the Ecological Grain” takes inspiration from Ann Laura Stoler’s exhortation to read with the archival grain, or to read along the colonial archive’s grain with care through ethnographic immersion, rather than extractive mining (Along the Archival Grain, 2010). This is not to adopt colonial epistemic frameworks as common sense, but rather to read the granular epistemic anxieties imbedded within such structures.

This panel invites papers on contemporary and diasporic Southeast Asian art that look to longer histories of imperialism and ecological violence in the region. Participants could propose topics on (but not limited to) contemporary artwork engaged with the enduring harms of Southeast Asia’s entrenched plantation complex (rubber, palm, coffee, etc.), mining extraction (tin, coal, nickel, etc.), damming, wildlife trafficking, aquaculture, or chemical toxins (pesticides, fertilizers) through warfare and/or industrial agriculture. How are artists unearthing and highlighting more invisible, hidden, or neglected histories of aggression inflicted on the landscape by imperial regimes (British, Dutch, French, American, etc.)? In light of such histories, how are artists proposing alternative ways or epistemologies of living more sustainably with a more-than-human environment?

Themes: Contemporary Art, Ecology, Empire

Additional format comment: Standard format.

Lead Convenor: Brianne Cohen, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Co-convenors: Philippa Lovatt, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.