Beyond the US-China Dilemma: The Art of Diasporic World-Making

Starting with Pheng Cheah's distinction between globe-making and world-making, this paper uses the diasporic investments of an Australian artist of Chinese descent, John Young, to suggest how transnational forms of art can engage triangular models of relationality. In particular, it examines Young's exhibition Bonhoeffer's involvement with U.S racial politics in the early 1930s created an early opportunity for transnational and transracial connections, of the kind that were to become theoretically influential and culturally widespread later in the 20th century.