Eliza Tan

I am an art historian whose interests centre on recent and contemporary artistic engagements with decolonial and feminist memory activism, particularly across the expanse of East and Southeast Asia and their diasporas. My research addresses the criticality of image-making, performance practices and community-based processes which grapple with histories of violence, colonial erasure and exploitation. 

Prior to joining the University of Brighton, I was co-unit leader on the MA Modern and Contemporary Asian Art course at Sotheby’s Institute of Art London, where I continue to serve as Consultant Lecturer. I currently teach on the BA Fine Art and Fine Art and Art History courses as an external faculty member of Kingston University, where I also completed a PhD as an Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC) doctoral awardee. My thesis--which explores the intersection of postwar memory, feminism and art activism in Japan in the 1990s through the lens of pioneering feminist artist Yoshiko Shimada’s praxis--locates her work in connection with broader artistic constellations which developed as women artists' and performance networks gained visibility across East and Southeast Asia. I hold an MA History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and BA (Eq Hons) History of Art and English from the University of York.

In addition to various exhibitions which I have independently developed and curated in close collaboration with contemporary artists, I have worked in the areas of curation and curatorial research, public programmes, visual arts grants management and press and public relations with organisations including the Stanley Picker Gallery, Solomon R. Guggenheim New York, Singapore Art Museum, National Arts Council Singapore, and Art Forum Berlin. My writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues, broadsheets and peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Oxford Art Journal, n.paradoxa, ArtAsiaPacific and documenta 12 magazines project. 

I welcome projects concerned with the impact of material and sociopolitical transformations on artistic developments in East and Southeast Asia; which query relationships between art and globalisation; the representation of memory and construction of diasporic subjectivities in post-colonial, post-conflict contexts; feminist interventions and strategies of resistance; artists and the archive; performance and the aesthetics of protest.

I teach modern and contemporary histories of art and approaches to heritage, critical art theory and visual methodologies, with a particular interest in decolonial art historical perspectives. I lead core Level 5 modules 'Spaces and Bodies'; Level 6 modules 'Art and Visual Culture in Communities' and 'Constructing Histories' and the MA module 'Heritage in a Global Context'.