Harvard Visual China - Enclosures: In and Out of Worldmaking

Throughout history, the meeting of images and architecture has generated spaces of imagination, devotion, and meaning. From murals and sculpture ensembles in Buddhist cave temples to digital projections and immersive installations, images and architecture have long collaborated in the making of worlds. Yet the relationship between images and architecture in artistic worldmaking is anything but monolithic. Architecture does not merely contain or frame images, but situates and conditions their visual expressions and interpretations. Conversely, images transform the built environments that hold them, reconfiguring space into realms of vision, ritual, and belief. Harvard Visual China invites submissions to our fourth annual graduate symposium on how images and architecture in Chinese and East Asian art at large construct, sustain, and reimagine worlds, including but not limited to:  

·       Interplays and tensions between architecture and images (murals, sculptures, etc.) in the making of worlds 

·       Framing and enclosure: thresholds, niches, city walls, gardens, and other devices of worldmaking 

·       Interactive worldmaking through embodied viewing, ritual movements, and material imaginations 

·       Cross-cultural and transmedial approaches to worldmaking in art and visual culture shedding light on the relationship between architecture and images