Geoaesthetics: Art and Environmental Change in East and Inner Asia (14th–19th Centuries)

The interrelationship between artistic production and the natural environment has been a subject of scholarly interest since the 18th century, with growing relevance as global challenges like climate change and pollution become increasingly urgent. Initially dominated by a Eurocentric lens, recent scholarship in eco-art history, such as Sugata Ray’s Climate Change and the Art of Devotion (2019), has broadened its scope beyond Europe and America. This panel aims to further explore the intersection of art history and environmental studies from a global perspective, focusing on East and Inner Asia between the 14th and 19th centuries—a period marked by worldwide climatic fluctuations known as the Little Ice Age and intensified human intervention across landscapes, materials, and sacred spaces.

Building on Ray’s redefinition of the term ‘geoaesthetics’, which examines ‘how human interaction with geographical, geological, botanical, and climatic formations shaped artistic production’, this panel investigates how natural and human-made environmental changes were perceived and represented in artistic and architectural practices. It also explores the agency of environmental factors, considering how issues like industrial pollution and energy shortages affected artistic perception and led to technical innovations.

We welcome papers addressing topics such as resource mobilisation for art and architecture, sensory experiences of environmental cycles, artistic responses to environmental instability and transformations, representation of sacred topographies, etc. By foregrounding the entanglement between environmental processes and artistic imagination, this panel seeks to expand eco-art historical discourse, reframing East and Inner Asian art as a site of active ecological negotiation and material engagement.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Shengnan Dong, SOAS University of London, Dong.Shengnan@outlook.com

Kexin Ma, Courtauld Institute of Art, Kexin.M@outlook.com