Angelica Santos Bunoan (UCL) - 2024-25 Students
uczcbun@ucl.ac.uk

Ensuring the Agency and Legacies of South East Asian Diaspora Artists in London through Artist-Centred Archiving

This collaborative doctoral research with UCL and iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) is in line with efforts to decolonise British art history, and addresses social, emotional, and epistemic injustices in the arts by developing an artist-centred archive framework, which recognises the importance of artists’ agency in how their archives are created, utilised, and preserved in British institutions. Acknowledging that Asian artists have been historically marginalised in British art history despite their longstanding presence and contributions to art and culture in the UK, it particularly focuses on South East Asian diaspora artists, one of the least represented Asian communities in institutional archives in London.

Highlighting the role of artists’ archives in self and community representation, it uses iniva’s Artists’ Files collection as a primary case study to identify the challenges and reparations needed in order to better represent South East Asian diaspora artists in British institutional archives. It explores how the Artists Files can be enhanced, activated and potentially linked with iniva’s wider collection and other artists’ archives within its local art ecology, including the Panchayat Collection at Tate Britain and the African-Caribbean, Asian and African Art in Britain Archive at UAL Chelsea College of Arts.

Exemplifying Stuart Hall’s concept of a ‘living archive of the diaspora,’ it aims to ‘connect the past, community, and identity’ by providing an opportunity to re-establish and strengthen the bonds between iniva and the artists and institutions who have been part of its history. Using autoethnography, artists’ interviews, and community-informed data collection strategies, it will generate artist-centred, collaborative, and care-informed archive guidelines and methods specifically for South East Asian diaspora artists, which can be used and shared by artists, archivists, and archive institutions in London and the UK.

Primary supervisor: Dr Anna Sexton

Supervisor at partner organisation: Tavian Hunter

Partner organisation: iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts)