Thinking Currents

Thinking Currents will be a signature exhibition within Seattle artfair focusing on new media, video, sound, and film works by some of today’s most compelling artists based in Pacific Rim & beyond.
It’s curated by Leeza Ahmady, Director of ACAW, as an extension of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW).

This exhibition activates Seattle’s geo-economic position in the Pacific Northwest of the United States as a significant new arena for transnational connectivity with creative communities based around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, and other regions of the Global South. Thinking Currents consciously underscores individual art practices while examining common denominators and collective manifestations to stage the intensity of a wide range of pressing inquires launched by artists in recent years. Beyond a broad exploration of formal aesthetics, works reflecting issues of migration, the environment, identity, technology, nation building, conflict and stagnation within the various liquid and land territories of East and Southeast Asia are especially considered. “An investigation into the cartography of globalization—and the myths, realities, and dreams associated with our planet’s primordial yet last frontier: the ocean.”

Thinking Currents refrains from engaging in overarching statements in an effort to yield fresh and nuanced contextual stratum. It raises numerous questions in search of unexpected connections, undercurrents and reflections to facilitate visibility for a great knowledge base of historical and contemporary insight. Ultimately, through critical inquiry into the making and thinking about art within the specificities of The Pacific Rim, which includes three of the world’s major continents: Asia, Australia & America (North and South), Thinking Currents seeks to contribute to a rethinking of global contemporaneity.