The many feminisms of the Asian world are introduced in this series of essays on contemporary women artists written by art critics and historians from the region. The relevance of the western feminist model is negotiated and new perspectives on gender issues are revealed through the experiences of women from China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. Prominent women painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, installations and performance artists are profiled with more than one hundred coulor reproductions testifying to the quality and vitality of their art.
Subject matter is as diverse as the Asian region itself.
The vocabulary of the modern Asian woman can as well include a critique of consumer culture worked in fake fur and fibreglass as it can an environmental statement constructed from traditional materials such as bamboo sticks. She may manipulate sophisticated technological equipment, or work with indigenous found objects, to express spiritual concerns that may be Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or Muslim in origin. She is as likely to be a postmodernist as she is to be a tribal artist. Asian Women Artists has been compiled and introduced by Dina Dysart and Hannah Fink , the editors of ART AsiaPacific , the journal dedicated to the contemporary visual arts of the Asian and Pacific regions.