Paper Presentation
The Society for the Study of Modern Asian Art Conference
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, 2 November 2025
Abstract
In 1947, Indonesian painters Agus Djaya and his younger brother Otto Djaya traveled from Jakarta to Amsterdam, carrying with them a remarkable collection of over a hundred modernist paintings by Indonesian artists, including their own works. A decade earlier, Dutch colonial entrepreneur and art collector Pierre Alexandre Regnault had transported a selection of his European modernist avant-garde collection from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to Jakarta, where it was exhibited at the Kunstkring. This paper argues that the Djaya brothers’ journey — and the artworks they brought — constituted a deliberate artistic reply to the colonial narrative embedded in Regnault’s gesture. The message: Indonesian artists had not only assimilated modernist techniques often claimed as European inventions, but had also infused them with distinctly Indonesian and Asian sensibilities. Focusing on Agus Djaya’s painting Strijd (Dutch for Fight), I situate the work within the broader historical context of the decolonization of modern art practices in Indonesia, the Japanese occupation period, the Indonesian Revolution, and Dutch post-war internationalism. I propose reading Strijd as a visual communiqué and spirited bequest to the Stedelijk and its audience, signaling artistic, Indonesian, and Asian avant-gardist ambition.
アヴァンギャルドの野心：アグス・ジャヤ《闘争》（1944/2604）の強烈なメッセージ
1947年、インドネシア人画家アグス・ジャヤとその弟オットー・ジャヤは、100点を超えるインドネシアの近代絵画を携えて、ジャカルタからアムステルダムへと渡った。その中には彼ら自身の作品も含まれていた。その10年前、オランダの植民地実業家かつ美術収集家でもあったピエール・アレクサンドル・レニョーは、自身の近代ヨーロッパの前衛美術コレクションの一部をアムステルダム市立美術館からジャカルタへ運び、バタヴィア芸術協会で展示していた。本発表は、ジャヤ兄弟の旅と彼らが持ち込んだ作品群を、レニョーのこの植民地主義的振る舞いに対する意図的な芸術的応答として位置づけるものである。そのメッセージとは──インドネシアの芸術家たちは、よくヨーロッパの発明と見なされるモダニズムの技法を単に習得しただけでなく、それを独自のインドネシア的・アジア的感性によって新たに息づかせた、ということである。本発表では、アグス・ジャヤの絵画Strijd（オランダ語で「闘争」）を取り上げ、その作品を、インドネシアにおける近代美術実践の脱植民地化、日本占領期、インドネシア独立戦争、そしてオランダの戦後モダニズムの国際主義という広範な歴史的文脈の中に位置づける。《闘争》をアムステルダム市立美術館とその観衆に宛てた視覚的声明の一つ、あるいは力強い遺言状と読み解き、インドネシア的かつアジア的アヴァンギャルドの野心を明確に示すものとして提案する。
This presentation is supported by the Dr. Catharine van Tussenbroek Fonds.
Paper Presentation
Arts Faculty of the University of Leuven, 2-4 February 2026
Abstract
Feeling Against Empire: Rusli and the Affective Space of Asian Art Avant-Gardes
This paper examines the connection between anti-imperial Asian avant-gardes and affect theory by analyzing the aesthetics and work of Indonesian painter Rusli (1912-2005). His journey included formative years at the Santiniketan School of Art in India (1932-1938), teaching at the nationalist Taman Siswa school in Yogyakarta (1938-1945), and artistic creation both within and outside Indonesia after the Revolution (1945-1949). Rusli’s artistic practice evoked emotional responses through a sensory and poetic engagement with his environment, highlighting spirituality and emotional depth, much like his spiritual guide, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
Trained at the Santiniketan School of Art in India (1932-1938), Rusli later joined Indonesia’s nationalist struggle (1946-1949) and subsequently travelled to Europe (1954-1956). His drawings from Amsterdam, Brussels, and Rome reflect a form of “colorful cosmopolitanism” (Sugata Bose, 2010, 2024), an aesthetic and philosophical stance that actively resists the logics of colonial rationalism, anchored in European universalism. Through his art, Rusli translated site-specific emotional experiences into colors, lines, and shapes formed through brushstrokes applied with rhythmic and dynamic motions. This paper proposes that Rusli’s work exemplifies a decolonial and liberal aesthetics of feeling that expands the twentieth-century art avant-garde’s artistic and poetic repertoire with an anti-imperial spirit.
Methodologically, this paper argues for an expanded understanding of avant-garde art as a generator of affective registers and for a geographically multidirectional approach to the modern art avant-gardes of the mid-twentieth century. Based in his artistic and aesthetic education at the Santiniketan School of Art, Rusli’s sensorial cosmopolitanism challenges dominant genealogies of twentieth-century avant-garde art, inviting us to rethink it not as a reaction to the economic rationality of the grid (Krauss, 1986), but as a container for emotionally and politically charged aesthetic and artistic responses to concrete sensation (Sunderason, 2020). By situating Rusli within Asian aesthetic traditions, this paper contributes to the discussion of affect theory and art avant-gardes beyond Euro-American theoretical frameworks.
Peer-Reviewed Article
Kerstin Winking, ‘The Kantian Legacy in Global Art Exhibitions: Between Enlightenment and Decolonization’ in: Panos Kompatsiaris (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Art Biennials (Routledge: New York, 2026).
Abstract
This paper explores how the legacy of Kantian philosophy continues to haunt the discourse on global art exhibitions and the discipline of art history. It recalls how Enlightenment thought—particularly Kant’s theory of world history—informs the epistemological foundations of modern art history and perpetuates Eurocentric hierarchies under the guise of universalism. While the concept of global art is often framed as inclusive, it frequently reproduces a difference-blind model of equality that marginalizes non-European histories and perspectives. Drawing on James Tully’s critique of Kantian cosmopolitanism, the paper analyzes how institutional frameworks and curatorial practices in Germany continue to privilege European norms while demanding conformity from artists and curators from the global south. As an alternative, it advocates for a difference-sensitive approach to global art history and curatorial practice—one that affirms cultural plurality and recognizes the active role of Indigenous and non-European artists in shaping modernity. By engaging with the concepts of cosmopolitan thought zones and constellational historiography, the paper outlines a more just and multidirectional framework for the study of global art—one that resists Enlightenment developmentalism and embraces entangled, plural histories of aesthetic production and critique.
About The Routledge Companion to Art Biennials
The Routledge Companion to Art Biennials assembles forty-five chapters that explore art biennials as expanded sites of artistic display, cultural policy, economic value, soft power, urban development and political struggle. The volume traces biennials from their 19th-century origins to their explosive post-Cold War growth, critically engaging with debates on globalization, institutional critique, identity, inclusion and resistance.
Structured in eight parts, it maps biennial histories from Venice to São Paulo and beyond, alongside their geopolitical and institutional entanglements. Bringing together contributors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the volume offers a comprehensive account of art biennials in their complexity and ambiguity, while outlining the main orientations and state of research in the field of biennial studies.
The volume will appeal to scholars and students in art history, museum and curatorial studies, as well as cultural geography, cultural sociology, critical theory, public sphere studies, media and communication studies, postcolonial theory, anthropology, and cultural and creative industries, making it essential for examining contemporary art and visual culture’s institutional ecosystems.