48th Annual UBC AHVA Graduate Symposium
Navigating the Image: Toward and Beyond Representation
October 30–31, 2025
Keynote lecture: Idols and Figural Images in Islam: A Brief Dive into a Perennial Debate
Dr. Christiane Gruber
Mehmet Ağa-Oğlu Collegiate Professor of Islamic Art History in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Thursday, October 30, 2025
5:30–7:00 pm
Room 102, Frederic Lasserre Building
6333 Memorial Road
Symposium Presentations
Friday, October 31, 2025
10:30 am–4:30 pm
Room 1002, Audain Art Centre
6398 University Boulevard
Schedule
10:00–10:30 am
WELCOME
11:00 am–12:00 pm
Sanja Savic | Cloe Cho | Lily Callender
12:15–1:00 pm
LUNCH BREAK
1:10–2:10 pm
Aurora Yaratzeth Aviles Garcia | Lina Xin Weng | Jojo Tang
2:15–2:30 pm
BREAK
2:30–3:30 pm
Ozan Yildiz | Ambreen Shehzad Hussaini | Michael Dang
3:40–4:40 pm
Dr. Christiane Gruber Response
The AHVA Graduate Symposium Committee has selected mimetic representation as the theme for this year’s symposium. A foundational concept in art-historical discourse, the terms “mimesis” and “representation” are often associated with imitation and realism, and inevitably raise questions about the relationship between an artwork and the objective “real world.” As a cornerstone of art-historical inquiry, mimetic representation has long served both to define the parameters of interpretation and to reinforce Eurocentric frameworks within cultures that maintain distinct representational value systems. Our modus operandi is to create a forum for charting novel approaches toward a more inclusive and transhistorical history of art for the twenty-first century. During the selection process, we intentionally kept the theme open-ended—without restrictions on geography or period—to bring together a diverse group of graduate students from our own department and across North America.
The symposium’s content spans a wide range of subjects, from the video art of Vancouver-based artist Theodore Saskatche Wan and contemporary Japanese “flowerscapes” to manuscript paintings from Ottoman Empire, medieval mirrors and an ewer from sixth-century China. To further facilitate these discussions, we have invited Professor Christiane Gruber, a renowned historian of Islamic art from the University of Michigan, to deliver the keynote address on the relationship between idols and figural imagery in Islam.
By presenting this mélange of topics and perspectives, we aim to continue the legacy of challenging Eurocentric narratives while expanding lines of dialogue among art historians across traditional boundaries within the discipline.
The 48th Annual Graduate Symposium coincides with the final days of Loosely Bound, the annual exhibition of new work by the 2nd-year Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art cohort. The attendees are invited to visit the exhibition before it closes on Friday, October 31, at AHVA Gallery, 6398 University Boulevard.
We acknowledge that the UBC Vancouver campus is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam).
The Annual Graduate Symposium is generously supported by the Joan Carlisle-Irving Endowment, the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the Office of the Provost & Vice-President Academic at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
