The Arts of the Indian Ocean conference, held online 27April 2024, and in Toronto 2–4 May, brought together more than 75 knowledge producers from diverse backgrounds and scholarly arenas to present and discuss research and work on the materialities and artistic expressions in the Indian Ocean world, across geographies—from eastern and southern Africa, through the Gulf and Red Sea to South and Southeast Asia and the south China Sea—as well as across temporalities —from antiquity up until the present-day. Through the examination of the creation, production, and circulation of material culture in a wide range of forms including the visual arts, portable objects, manuscripts and maps, ships and navigational instruments, landscape, architecture, and the built environment, textiles and dress, photography and film, as well as the digital and plastic arts, the conference provided a platform for scholars and artists to exchange current research, map the field of Indian Ocean arts, and open up new questions on Indian Ocean pasts, presents, and futures.
The conference was convened by Ruba Kana’an (University of Toronto, Mississauga), Zulfikar Hirji (York University) and Sarah Fee (Royal Ontario Museum) with support from Sanniah Jabeen (University of Toronto). Collaborators included Deepali Dewan (Royal Ontario Museum) Kajri Jain (University of Toronto), Pedro Machado (Indiana University), Chantal Radimilahy (University of Antananarivo), Fahmida Suleman (Royal Ontario Museum), Nancy Um (Getty Research Institute), and Richard Vokes (University of Western Australia). The conference was generously supported by a range of departments and research institutes at the University of Toronto Mississauga, University of Toronto Scarborough, University of Toronto, York University including YCAR, the Aga Khan Museum, the Art Gallery of York University, and the Royal Ontario Museum.
The conference included 18 panels and featured three keynote speakers including Stephen A. Murphy (Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS, University of London), Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya-based writer, author of Dust (2014) and the Dragonfly Sea (2019), and winner of 2003 Caine Prize for Writing), and Iftikhar Dadi (John H. Burris Professor and Chair of Cornell University’s Department of History of Art).
The complete conference program can be downloaded here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/dvs/media/2709/download?inline.
