March 19, 2015
Second recipient of the Artexte Prize since its inception in 2012, Alice Ming Wai Jim is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Art History at Concordia University in Montreal.
The Artexte Prize is awarded in recognition of Jim’s original and sustained contribution to the study of contemporary art in Canada. Her work focuses on contemporary Asian art and Asian Canadian art; she is co-editor of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA). The thorough and always insightful manner in which Jim has conducted her research activities throughout her career has contributed to a better understanding of the ethnocultural dimension of art history, while bringing to light the work of artists from all over the world.
Alice Ming Wai Jim has published both in Canada and abroad. Her numerous essays, articles and exhibition catalogues, including, “Dealing with Chiastic Perspectives: Global Art Histories in Canada.” in Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014); “The Maraya Project: Research-Creation, Inter-reference and the Worlding of Asian Cities.”in Third Text: Third World Perspectives on Art and Literature (Winter 2014) ; and “How to Occupy Retreat: dOCUMENTA (13) from Kassel to Banff,” in Journal of Curatorial Studies (June 2013) are references in the field of art history and have influenced countless researchers. As a teacher, her courses and seminars have inspired artists, authors, publishers, museologists, art historians, art critics, journalists, students and cultural workers alike.
This eminent researcher’s intellectual endeavours have received financial support by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Concordia University
By awarding her this prize, the Artexte’s Board of Directors and team wish to acknowledge Jim’s determination and resolve throughout her career. In doing so, they reaffirm their support to researchers who contribute in a tangible way to the development of knowledge on contemporary art in Canada – a daunting and precarious undertaking with few rewards.
The Award ceremony of the Artexte Prize for Research in Contemporary Art will be held at Artexte on March 19, 2015 at 6 PM. During this event, Alice Ming Wai Jim will briefly present her current research projects. The presentation will be followed by the Montreal launch of the inaugural issue of Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Culture and the Americas, a new scholarly publication that she co-edits with Alexandra Chang[1]. Published by Brill[2] (Leiden/Boston), this Journal is a partnership between the Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University (New York) and Concordia University’s Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art (Montreal).
The recipient will lead a researchers’ conference supported by Artexte in 2015.
Alice Ming Wai Jim is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She is co-editor of the scholarly journal, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill). Her main areas of research are in media arts, networked art practices, ethnocultural and global art histories, and curatorial studies, with a focus on contemporary Asian art and Asian Canadian art from a transnational perspective. She was recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Faculty of Fine arts in 2014.
Alice Ming Wai Jim is recipient of grants from the Fonds de recherche sur la societé et la culture (FQRSC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for her research on contemporary Chinese art. She is co-investigator of the project “Networked art history: assembling contemporary Canadian art from the 1960s to the present, ” an initiative supported by a SSHRC INSIGHT Development Team Grant (2013-2016). She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Curatorial Studies and Open Arts Journal (Milton Keynes, UK). She is a Research Member of The Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University, Research Associate with the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton University, Ottawa and Regular Member of Hexagram International Network for Research-Creation in Media Arts, Design, Technology and Digital Culture. As a member of Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN), a College Art Association (CAA) Affiliated Society, Jim chairs the DAAN panel committee and is DAAN Canadian regional representative. She is a core exchange scholar (Canada) of the inter-institutional Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange organized bythe Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, which focuses on Asian/Asian diasporic art globally.
Alice Ming Wai Jimhas organized many exhibitions and convened major academic symposia in her areas of specialization since 2004, including, more recently, as co-organizer of the workgroup, “Performing Asian/Americas: Converging Movements,” for the ninth Encuentro of The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (Montreal, 2014), as co-director of the workshop “Contemporary Art and the Inter-Asian Imaginary” for Inter-Asian Connections IV (Istanbul, 2014), and the conference “Can-Asian, Eh? Diaspora, Indigeneity and the Transpacific” for the Canadian Asian Studies Association (Vancouver, 2009). Jim was Curator of the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A) from 2003 to 2006 and has curated “Yam Lau: A World is a Model of the World” at the Darling Foundry, Montreal, in 2013.
Her writings appear in various publications, including Third Text, Journal of Curatorial Studies, Journal of Visual Culture, Amerasia Journal, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Precarious Visualities: New Perspectives on Identification in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture (2008), Reel Asian: Asian Canada on Screen (2007), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture (2005), Racism, Eh? A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (2004). Most recent publications include: a reprint of “The Different Worlds of Cao Fei” (2012) in Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the 21st Century (MIT Press, forthcoming 2015, first published in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art May/June 2012); “Love the Future: Ai Weiwei and Art for Human Rights,” in Human Rights and the Arts: Perspectives from Global Asia (Lexington Books, 2015); a reprint of “Articulating Spaces of Representation: Contemporary Black Women Artists in Canada” (2004) in Black Canadian Art (McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming 2015); “20 Years of ‘Departure Lounge Art’: Airplanes, Airports and Visa Centres in Contemporary Art,” in Triennial City: Localising Asian Art (Asia Triennial Manchester, 2014); “Dealing with Chiastic Perspectives: Global Art Histories in Canada.” in Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014); “The Maraya Project: Research-Creation, Inter-reference and the Worlding of Asian Cities.”in Third Text: Third World Perspectives on Art and Literature (Winter 2014) ; and “How to Occupy Retreat: dOCUMENTA (13) from Kassel to Banff,” in Journal of Curatorial Studies (June 2013).
[1] ADVA gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art (Chicago) and Concordia University’s Office of the Vice-President, Research & Graduate Studies and its Aid to Research Related Events (ARRE) and Assistance for Scholarly (CASA) Activity Programs in making the journal’s first volume possible.
[2] http://www.brill.com/products/journal/asian-diasporic-visual-cultures-and-americas