Asia Art Archive announces new Head of Research and Programmes
Asia Art Archive is pleased to welcome Hammad Nasar as Head of Research and Programmes. Working closely with AAA’s Executive Director, Nasar will play a major strategic role in developing AAA’s collection and guiding its growth as a platform for research. He will focus on developing initiatives and programmes that generate new thinking around the material in the collection and about the art of the region. Nasar will step down as Director of Green Cardamom, and will assume his new role leading AAA Research at the end of September 2012.
AAA Research is the platform from which AAA conducts research, develops residencies, produces publications and online projects, and initiates exhibitions related to its research. AAA’s Research activities help to define the Archive’s overall framework and act as a catalyst in expanding the possibilities of the material in the Archive beyond the walls of the collection. Through thematic archiving projects and research grants, AAA’s Research team works closely with the library to identify areas of priority and oversee the development of the collection. The Research team also helps to develop public programmes, including symposia, workshops, talks, and lectures, that serve to introduce as wide an audience as possible to this rich resource, bring new readings to the Archive, and continually reshape and redefine the idea of the ‘archive’ itself.
Comprised of Archive staff in Hong Kong and researchers currently based in Baroda, Beijing, Delhi, Manila, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo, the Research team works directly with regional art communities to locate and preserve rare material, conduct interviews, develop programmes, and document key events and exhibitions integral to the development of art in the region.
About Hammad Nasar
Formerly based in London, Hammad Nasar is a curator and writer, and co-founder of Green Cardamom, a not-for-profit organisation with a focus on art from South Asia and a commitment to exhibition-led enquiry. He was a Fellow of the UK’s Clore Leadership Programme and Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, London. He has lectured at, curated exhibitions for, and contributed to public programmes at numerous institutions internationally, including the Sindh Museum in Pakistan, the British Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, SOAS, and Whitechapel Gallery in the UK, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (CT), Asian Art Museum (CA), and the Pacific Asia Museum (CA) in the USA. He most recently organised an exhibition and symposium at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (NY) entitled ‘Lines of Control,’ part of an ongoing project that looks at the idea of partitions as a productive space—where nations are made.
About Asia Art Archive
Asia Art Archive is an independent non-profit organisation dedicated to documenting the recent history of contemporary art in Asia within an international context. Founded in 2000, AAA is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading public resources for contemporary art in Asia and it continues to grow through a systematic programme of research and critical engagement. AAA is committed to creating a collection that belongs to the public; the collection is accessible free of charge from AAA’s physical space and searchable from anywhere in the world via its online catalogue. In order to make more of its collection available to the public, AAA recently launched the Collection Online with an initial batch of 3,000 items drawn from five Special Collections. Through public, educational, and residential programmes, AAA instigates critical thinking and dialogue that generate new ideas and works that continually reshape the Archive itself. Please visit www.aaa.org.hk for more details.
