This publication focuses on the practice of curating in Southeast Asia, a region experiencing a time of increased global visibility as well as nation and institution building. How do curators engage with the intricacies of a particular place, and how do they respond to the specificities of the local under the expectations of the international? The diversity of voices in this publication mirrors the complexity of the region itself: its various curatorial spaces, infrastructures, and political systems. What emerges is a highly diverse art system that shifts away from traditional formats to embrace new or alternative platforms—from symposia to fieldwork—with the aim of emphasizing curating as a process of critical thinking that goes beyond presentations and representations.
The Jahresring series is edited by Brigitte Oetker and published on behalf of Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e. V.
Contributors Ute Meta Bauer, Zoe Butt, Kevin Chua, Patrick D. Flores, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Tony Godfrey, Yin Ker, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, Seng Yu Jin, Simon Soon, Nora A. Taylor, David Teh
Reading SouthEast Asia Spaces of the Curatorial has led me to look at the idea of ‘traces’, tracing the contribution to knowledge production and artistic formation within certain regions, particularly in South East Asia.
“the curatorial has come to replace art history - searching for new critical interpretations, pushing the frontiers of artistic knowledge” (Kevin Chua, p. 14).
“If the exhibition catalogue was a conventional platform of curatorial articulation in Western art history, the curatorial thinking in SouthEast Asia unfolds in new sites and situations” (p.13). —> how might this relate to performativity, how performing may open up spaces for the critical dialogue to take place? How do art spaces and exhibition events differ between regions?
How can contemporaneity build upon local identities, traditions and criticalities? How is state repression dealt with? How can one succeed in eluding the tight embrace of the Western art world perceived by some as recolonisation?
How is the production and presentation of art interconnected with globalisation processes, the colonial past, and current power relations?
Performance enacting reclamation - the link between academic realism and portraiture, as soon as SouthEast Asian artist began photographing themselves, they began to ‘exist’ and reclaim their identities. “Several examples may be cited, and foremost of these is the case of portraiture in SouthEast Asia in which representation would be key in creating a space of presence, as if to say: “we are over here”… This likeness or yearning for likeness, or what the Filipino hero Jose Rizal would call the “spell of recollection”, ought to be read allegorically as a narrative of human progress, both in the facture of art and the consciousness of posing for posterity” (p. 34).
The practice of the artist-curator - “It is through the practice of the artist-curator that certain discourses of the local germinated and conveyed to a global audience” (p. 36).
Reconstructing histories based on collective memories and on texts that are recalled and rewritten, spoken, or produced in other ways that stray from a classical Western art history model (p. 37).
The ‘performing of’ national identity and exotic differences to ‘cultural consumers’ in large-scale exhibition programming (p. 37).
The archival - the body as archive - "…the archive may actually be rendered more dense and complex if it was to be informed by precious excursions by both artists and theorists… These modalities have implications in our apprehension of the archive as a structure of feeling, an affective milieu, and not merely documentation on our notions of the contemporary and the constellation of the global” (p. 40).
“Installations is a case that should support the fact that painting as art is purely Western phenomenon… It may be that our innate sense of space is not a static perception of flatness but an experience of mobility, performance, body-participation, [and] physical relation at its most cohesive form. Thus installation is akin to fiestas and folk rituals, from our ethnic groups” (p. 36)