Hammad Nasar, Navigating the Geographies of Contemporary Art

Centre A & SFU’s Vancouver Office of Community Engagement host talk with Hammad Nasar, Head of Research and Programmes at the Asia Art Archieve (AAA) of Hong Kong, September 19, 2013 at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts.

Visiting International Speaker:
Hammad Nasar, Head of Research and Programmes
Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong

Thursday, September 19, 7pm
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre Room 2555
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Simon Fraser University
149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver.

Presented with the support of SFU Woodwards Cultural Unit, Vancity Office of Community Engagement and the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver.

Hammad Nasar is a curator and writer, and recently moved to Hong Kong as Head of Research and Programmes at the Asia Art Archive, where he plays a strategic role in developing AAA’s collection and shaping initiatives, partnerships and programmes that generate new thinking around the material in the collection and about the art of the region. Earlier, he co-founded and was Curatorial Director of the London-based arts organization Green Cardamom. He was a Fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme, Research Fellow at Goldsmith College, and Arts Director for the UK’s Festival of Muslim Cultures (2006-07). His recent projects include: Safavids Revisited at the British Museum (2009); Where Three Dreams Cross at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); Beyond the Page: Miniature as Attitude in Contemporary Art from Pakistan at the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA (2010) and Drawn from Life at Abbot Hall Gallery & Museum, Kendal, UK (2011). His ongoing curatorial projects include Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2005-ongoing) and Mashq: Repetition, Meditation, Mediation (2009-ongoing). Prior to entering the art world, Nasar worked as a management consultant and banker.

Nasar will speak on questions of geography, region and nation with insights into developments in contemporary art from West Asia or the “Middle East”, and with relation to the current exhibition at Centre A, “Minutes from a Second Story” by Hajra Waheed.

Asia Art Archive is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to documenting the recent history of contemporary art in Asia within an international context. Founded in 2000, AAA is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading public resources for contemporary art in Asia. It continues to grow through a systematic program of research and critical engagement.