Cultural Inheritance: Fracture, Change and Transformation
ACAE Gallery, Collingwood
September-October 2026
An exhibition of practice-led research co-curated by the Australasian Network for Asian Art (AN4AA).
Artists: Kareen Adam, Maryam Attar Bashi, Mita Chowdhury, Wenqin (Echo) He, Lingam. K, Samira Khadivizand, Ching Liang, Yiwon Park, Leo Bagus Purnomo and Maria Thaddea, Pratyay Raha, Shannon Ningfei Xiao, Bea Yu and Mingyu Yan
Curatorial Team: Mita Chowdhury (co-curator), Pratyay Raha (co-curator), Ling Wang (curatorial intern) and Mingyu Yan (curatorial intern), Lead Academic Curator: Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert and exhibition Identity Design: Xinyuan (Caesar) Li
Introduction to the exhibition: Cultural Inheritance: Fracture, Change and Transformation is AN4AA’s inaugural exhibition of contemporary art produced by practice-led researchers, held at ACAE Gallery, Collingwood, Melbourne. The exhibition brings together artists in postgraduate research studies in Asian and Asian diaspora art studies from universities across Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand to showcase the breadth and depth of art-based research inquiry. This exhibition highlights the innovative art practices of researchers, with participating artists engaging in diverse methods, materials and disciplinary approaches to generate new knowledge in relation to Asian and Asian diaspora art.
Spanning a wide range of themes, the researchers explore and interrogate themes of the artists’ individual perspectives and their relationship to diverse communities; the cultures they inherited and their relationship with ancestral knowledge, experiences of diaspora, place, displacement, rupture and belonging. Together, the artists critically examine how culture, subcultures and identities beyond borders are formed, contested and reimagined in shifting social, cultural and political landscapes. By foregrounding art practice-led research, this exhibition offers us a snapshot of emerging artistic practice-led research in Asian Art in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Images: 1. Exhibition Invitation designed by Caesar Li and the Artist Researchers and Co-curators featured in the exhibition, photo by Ling Wang.