Saturday University: Lecture
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Photo: Alborz Kamalizad
Welcome to Saturday University, a monthly lecture series featuring experts from around the world. Gain new insights on Asia throughout time as our visiting scholars, authors, artists, and thought leaders delve into new themes each season.
Alam: Art, Cosmology, and the Environment in Minangkabau
Katherine Brunh
Environmentalism and spirit Indigenous Indonesian art
In modern Indonesian, the Arabic-derived word alam is translated variously as “nature,” “universe,” and “realms of perception.” Although the term is used throughout the Malay world, it holds particular significance in Minangkabau, where alam is understood not simply as the physical environment but as a world that teaches. This understanding has shaped Minangkabau philosophy for centuries, yet it has rarely been considered as a framework for interpreting modern and contemporary art.
This talk explores how alam has informed the work of Minangkabau artists from the twentieth century to the present. Bringing contemporary art into conversation with earlier visual traditions—including architecture, textiles, and proverbial forms of knowledge—it argues that alam helps explain a recurring artistic orientation toward abstraction, spirituality, and ecological relationships. Rather than approaching these concerns separately, the talk suggests that they emerge from a shared cosmological understanding of the world. At a moment when artists and scholars are increasingly looking to local systems of knowledge to rethink humanity’s relationship with the environment, alam offers a way of understanding ecology that is grounded not simply in nature as an object of representation or conservation, but in the natural world as a source of knowledge, ethical reflection, and spiritual meaning.
About the speaker
Katherine L. Bruhn is Assistant Professor of Global Art and Visual Culture at Illinois State University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, with a geographic focus on Indonesia. Her current book project examines how the concept of alam has shaped the work of Minangkabau artists from the twentieth century to the present and offers new perspectives on art and the environment. She received her PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published in journals including Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, World Art, Indonesia, and Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas.
Photo: Alborz Kamalizad
Welcome to Saturday University, a monthly lecture series featuring experts from around the world. Gain new insights on Asia throughout time as our visiting scholars, authors, artists, and thought leaders delve into new themes each season.
Alam: Art, Cosmology, and the Environment in Minangkabau
Katherine Brunh
Environmentalism and spirit Indigenous Indonesian art
In modern Indonesian, the Arabic-derived word alam is translated variously as “nature,” “universe,” and “realms of perception.” Although the term is used throughout the Malay world, it holds particular significance in Minangkabau, where alam is understood not simply as the physical environment but as a world that teaches. This understanding has shaped Minangkabau philosophy for centuries, yet it has rarely been considered as a framework for interpreting modern and contemporary art.
This talk explores how alam has informed the work of Minangkabau artists from the twentieth century to the present. Bringing contemporary art into conversation with earlier visual traditions—including architecture, textiles, and proverbial forms of knowledge—it argues that alam helps explain a recurring artistic orientation toward abstraction, spirituality, and ecological relationships. Rather than approaching these concerns separately, the talk suggests that they emerge from a shared cosmological understanding of the world. At a moment when artists and scholars are increasingly looking to local systems of knowledge to rethink humanity’s relationship with the environment, alam offers a way of understanding ecology that is grounded not simply in nature as an object of representation or conservation, but in the natural world as a source of knowledge, ethical reflection, and spiritual meaning.
About the speaker
Katherine L. Bruhn is Assistant Professor of Global Art and Visual Culture at Illinois State University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, with a geographic focus on Indonesia. Her current book project examines how the concept of alam has shaped the work of Minangkabau artists from the twentieth century to the present and offers new perspectives on art and the environment. She received her PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published in journals including Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, World Art, Indonesia, and Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas.
