The idea and the title for this special issue originally came from the symposium ‘Negotiating Histories: Traditions in Modern and Contemporary Asia-Pacific Art’ organized by the Tate Research Centre Asia-Pacific on 21 October 2013. The symposium’s focus was on the ‘issues around traditions in modern and contemporary Asia-Pacific art, focusing on how art history is legitimised and/or negotiated in artistic practice and its discourse’. The four research papers by Hopfener, Kajiya, Kikuchi and Woo are revised from those presented at this symposium. Other contributions, including a research paper by Cheung, an intervention essay by Mōri, and visual essays by Mitsuyama-Wdowiak and Wu, have been incorporated in order to broaden the scope of this special issue, specifically to explore the idea that participatory art and activism can be another important catalyst for negotiating histories.
