Trade Routes: Converging Cultures—Southeast Asia and Asia America explores social issues that women cultural practitioners face in the 21st century.

During an Asian Cultural Council Humanities Fellowship in the summer of 2006, the concept for Trade Routes grew out of group and individual dialogues with nearly 200 artists from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand — mostly women, who shared their experiences and frustrations as cultural practitioners at different stages of their careers. Angel Velasco Shaw discovered that many from the younger generation knew next to nothing about the pioneers who came before them, and were thus unaware of the many difficulties these women faced.

The dynamic convergences between eastern and western cultures within the Southeast Asian region and in the United States became of primary interest. Consistently, the concern about the complex multi-layered “state of identity crisis” could not be clearly articulated, and hence needed to be taken up through discourse.

With transmigration and transnational experiences come different kinds of artistic expressions, new community formations and an evolution of empowerment via outreach and production. The examination of historical and present day commonalities and dissimilarities within global cultural exchange can lead us towards a greater understanding of how to strengthen social practices.

The central focus of the overall project is to highlight the works of the project participants, specifically how they create out of being a part of the local and global Asian Diaspora and how they represent the experiences of individuals and collective groups within the Diaspora.

Thus, one of the objectives of this project is to bring together cultural practitioners who critically examine stereotypes and other mythologies about Southeast Asian and Asian American identity politics, experiences, local and global prejudices, and socio-economic differences within an international environment. Another objective is to introduce a new generation of emerging artists to more seasoned practitioners, paving the way for their participation in future collaborations with each other.

Hence, issues that will be discussed include but are not limited to:

- critical debates on cultural preservation and contemporary art practices;
- the demystification of Southeast Asian and Asian/American perceptions;
- the dismantling of stereotypical Islamic practices, particularly of Southeast Asian Muslim women in relation to Middle Eastern practices; and,
- an examination into the representation of issues within Animist, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim contexts in relationship to pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial conditions.