Fall 2018 seminar: Ph.D. candidate, history of art and visual studies
Astara Light is a Ph.D. student in the history of art and visual studies department. Her research centers on modern and contemporary Balinese and Indonesian art forms including painting, sculpture, and performance from primarily the 20th and 21st centuries. She looks broadly at curatorial methods and Southeast Asian art. Her research examines religious practices and identities in Bali, as well as the representation of physical movement and dance in visual media. She received an M.A. in art history and visual studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, an M.A. in Southeast Asian studies from the University of California, Riverside, and her B.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Her most recent work includes a focus on how art practices in Bali intersect with national political issues as well as Balinese artists who are exhibiting internationally and in Japan. Light is the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays and Foreign Language Area Studies award for language training, and a Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts award for arts education. Light has done several curatorial projects, including at the Legacy Art Gallery in British Columbia and an exhibition titled Posing Japan: Photographs of Kusakabe Kimbei at the California Museum of Photography in 2015.