Asian Artists' Engagement with Scale in the 1990s Global Turn

During the 1990s, a global shift in contemporary art was marked by artists exploring vast geographical movements, coinciding with a multidisciplinary crisis over globalization and scale. Asian artists such as Suh Do-Ho, Naoya Hatakeyama, and Danh Vo rose to international prominence through this turn, using scale not merely as a metonym for the world but as a response to systems, standards, and hierarchies that imposed assumptions about proper placement. Their work reflected ambivalence toward the expansionism of the global turn, engaging with scale to challenge established orders. This article, published by Joan Kee on June 5, 2014, examines how these artists navigated scale as a means of addressing broader societal structures. The content is available through MIT Press under a subscription-only model, highlighting its academic focus. The analysis underscores the critical role of scale in art during a period of intense globalization debates, offering insights into artistic strategies that question normative frameworks. The piece connects artistic practices to larger discussions on globalization, emphasizing the nuanced ways artists from Asia contributed to and critiqued the global art landscape.