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Transcultural Exchange through Art provides an exploration of two countries and their capital cities, two regions and their growing cultural engagement with one another, soft and hard power and their impact on the arts, multiculturalism, museums, globalization, cosmopolitanism and postcoloniality.
Drawing on the author's experiences of working in Kenya and living in South Korea, as well as interviews with artists, curators and other practitioners, the book demonstrates that experiencing "otherness" through the imaginative engagement of art can cultivate appreciation of cultural diversity. Various case studies from Nairobi and Seoul are analyzed to unpack narratives about nation, self and other through the cultural and creative industries. By focusing on two non-Western regional capitals whose urban contemporary development is affected by their colonial pasts, the book explores the larger dynamics of postcolonial nation building and the formulation of cultural identities in the face of rapid economic development and demographic changes. The issues identified in the study are linked to wider debates concerning the role of the arts and art museums in relation to migration, globalization and multiculturalism.
Transcultural Exchange through Art will be of great interest to academics and practitioners working in the cultural and creative industries, museum and curatorial studies, visual culture studies, African studies and Asian studies. The book transcends disciplinary boundaries and relates academic research to pragmatic issues such as diversity and inclusion in public cultural spaces.
List of contents
1. Introduction; 2. Multiculturalism, globalization and otherness in Korea; 3. Multiculturalism, aid and trade in Kenya; 4. Exhibiting Africa at museums in Korea; 5. Experiencing Africa through art in Korea; 6. Exhibiting Korea at museums in Kenya; 7. Experiencing Asia through art in Kenya; 8. Concluding reflections
About the author
Kristina Dziedzic Wright has a PhD in Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies from the University of Leicester. She taught art history and English at Ewha Women's University and Seoul National University in South Korea from 2011 to 2019 and consulted on a project at the National Museums of Kenya to develop a comprehensive cultural heritage management system. She works as an independent curator and is the 2025 Okwui Enwezor Postdoctoral Fellow in Visual Culture, Performance Studies and Critical Humanities with the Africa Institute at the Global Studies University in Sharjah, UAE.
