History Projects: art's ethical engagement with the past (Melbourne)

Between 2005 and 2019, Hong Kong-born Australian artist John Young Zerunge created a body of work called ‘The History Projects’, exploring diasporic memory, transcultural identity, and what Young has described as an ‘ethical responsibility’ towards the past. This panel builds on themes from a major new publication discussing this cycle of works, The History Projects, edited by Olivier Krischer and published by the Power Institute.

John and Olivier will be joined by Professor Lisa Slade, the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History at the University of Melbourn  Shuxia Chen, and Shuxia Chen, a curator and writer based at the University of NSW. Together they will discuss how artists and curators today are tackling the medium of history as an ethical project, navigating contentious and contending histories, and how art can still foster new forms of subjectivity and community outside the stubbornly narrow narratives of Australia's settler colonial history.  

Co-presented by the Power Institute at the University of Sydney and Art History and Curatorship at the University of Melbourne.