🔎 00. Defining Asian Futurism
What are we talking about when we talk about Asian futurism?
Photo by MJH SHIKDER on Unsplash.
What is Asian Futurism?
Spoiler: As usual, there isn’t really a concrete answer.
At a fundamental level, Asian futurism entails the marriage between “science fiction, culture, and race to create a captivating exploration of what the future holds for Asian societies,” as Soi Books puts it on their website.1 The movement draws major inspiration from Afrofuturism and Gulf Futurism in its creation of speculative futures that empower marginalized communities and highlight contemporary social issues.2
Such visions of the future fall more broadly under the genre of ethnic futurisms. They have risen in recent years in response to the Eurocentrism of mainstream Western sci-fi, a creative space often dominated by white characters and white artists.3 Ethnic futurist works, along with their artists, often tackle the nature of diaspora, reckoning with the obscurity of colonial pasts, Western hegemony, and cultural traditions.4
In particular, Asian futurism grapples with the legacy of orientalism, negotiating with both the enormous role that Western powers have played in framing Asian modernity, as well as the systematic “othering” that the West has engaged in, often through exoticization and exclusion. In fact, the perception of Asian as “Alien” continues to persist today, informing political and social mentalities that antagonize the relationship between East and West.5
Given the unprecedented modernization and westernization of Asia in the 20th and 21st century, many Asian futurist artists also explore the beauty and decay that comes with such rapid urbanization, interrogating the Western ideals of progress.6 Meanwhile, Pasifika sci-fi and other Indigenous sci-fi envision the future through the lens of community, emphasizing the tenacity of native knowledge and traditions. These works often directly subverts or rebutes the modern dystopia of colonialism and imperialism.7
Concluding Note: Overall, there is just an incredible flexibility and vitality that comes with the genre of Asian futurism. By nature, it invites intersectionality and challenges the imagination, facilitating dialogues that transgress time, language, and even humanity itself.
Artists Featured in VPAF
As a part of this project launch, I have included entries on eight artists across Pan Asia and the Pacific Islands: Osheen Siva, Noah Harders, Lintang Radittya, Lee Bul, Kumkum Fernando, Kongkee, Hiroto Ikeuchi, and Derek Tumala. Although the Pacific Islands are traditionally not considered a part of Pan Asia, I purposely chose to include visionaries from the Pasifika tradition as well, because their experiences are equally meaningful to the AANHPI community.
These artists’ diversity in practice and philosophy has helped enrich my understanding of Asian futurism as a movement and/or genre. The entries included in this series (though numbered) are not ordered in any specific way, and they serve as introductory gateways to each artist.
I understand that there are countless numbers of talented and innovative AANHPI artists that I did not cover in this project. Given free time, I would love to research and add more entries on artists working within the spheres of Ethnic Futurism, expanding my own cultural education during the process :)
Footnotes 📄
“Exploring Asian Futurism: Art, Culture, and Tomorrow’s Vision,” Soi Books, accessed May 13, 2025, https://www.soibooks.com/journal/exploring-asian-futurism-a-cultural-odyssey-into-tomorrow. ↩︎
Dawn Chan, “Asia-Futurism,” Artforum, June 1, 2016, https://www.artforum.com/columns/asia-futurism-229189/. ↩︎
Alice Ming Wai Jim, “Ethnic Futurisms and Contemporary Art,” in Art and Knowledge after 1900, ed. JAMES FOX and VID SIMONITI, Interactions between Modern Art and Thought (Manchester University Press, 2023), 245–69, https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.9596429.18. ↩︎
Gary Zhexi Zhang, “Sinofuturism and Its Uses: Contemporary Art and Diasporic Desire,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 7, no. 2 (2021): 87, https://doi.org/10.5749/vergstudglobasia.7.2.0086. ↩︎
Stephen Hong Sohn, “Introduction: Alien/Asian: Imagining the Racialized Future,” MELUS 33, no. 4 (2008): 6. ↩︎
Michelle Antoinette and Caroline Turner, “Epilogue: ‘My Future Is Not a Dream’: Shifting Worlds of Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions,” in Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions, Connectivities and World-Making (ANU Press, 2014), 238-40, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwv81.16. ↩︎
Nixon, Lindsay, Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, and Andrea Smith. “Visual Cultures of Indigenous Futurism.” In Otherwise Worlds, 332. Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness. Duke University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn1vd.21. ↩︎