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international art world appeared divided between artworks from "developed" and democratic states, and those that were not. !! This created a quarantine effect not unlike thepredicament described by art historian Hans Belting in 1991 of similar exclusions of Eastern
European artists in Western European exhibitions.
Especially prominent from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s for his role in bringing contemporary art from Asia and particularly China to Western audiences through loosely configured exhibitions designed to encourage viewers to consider the relationships between
artworks as opposed to their differences, Hou Hanru put matters more witheringly by insinuating that the interest in what was sometimes called "unofficial" Chinese art coincidedwith renewed Western interest in China after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. ~He implied that it was only after such an exemplary demonstration of a will to democracy
and against authoritarianism that Western institutions could finally accept certain forms ofcontemporary Chinese art.
Consider the remarkable popularity of Xu Bing's Square Word Calligraphy in Europe andthe United States. Begun in 1992, it featured an invented system of writing whereby words
appear to resemble Chinese characters but in fact are English whose forms have beenreassembled and rescaled. Square Word Calligraphy addressed the importance of distinguishing what something looked like versus its capacity to say something other than thatinferred from a literal view of forms. Those literate in Chinese cannot read the script without also knowing English. Likewise, those familiar with English are given the opportunity torethink what they consider so familiar as to forget about the role form plays in enabling thatfamiliarity.
Of his invented Chinese script Xu commented that, "Chinese audiences lose part of themeaning and Western audiences lose another part, but each side gets the part that theother doesn't." ;!!! Yet the actual experience of seeing and interacting with the work suggests that differences are best understood by first recognizing the configuration of forms
as the basis on which communication is made possible or not . Was it a deferred response
to what many critics saw as a profoundly troubling insistence on the part of Western curators and institutions for authenticity? If contemporary Asian art was partly meant to be asocio-political intervention, one of its main concerns was to construct a platform on whichto consider cultural difference without reiterating modernist distinctions pitting the authentic against the derivative.
Serving free rice and curry to a general audience, "Cities on the Move" participant Rikrit
Tiravanija sought to reject what to him may have been an undue obligation to discuss thelinks between race and art . Tiravanija came to the United States to study in the early 1990s,
when debates about the direction of Asian American art were at their height and when theseeming receptivity to non-Western contemporary art was also circumscribed by audience expectations; remarked Tiravanija, "as much as everything is more open, it is also
closed." ~ Instead he focused on building the relationships among their viewers, unrelated in no other way save for their occupying the same space. Left unanswered, however, is whether the aspirations for inclusiveness also limit the scope of production bycompelling artists to make work for the world at large rather than for a particular audience-something that comes across even with the works purported to respond specifically to
local concerns.
Since the mid-2000s, discussion has taken a decidedly entropic turn as numerous institutions and organizations have radically expanded the kinds of work included under thecontemporary Asian art rubric. On the face of it, redrawing the parameters of contemporary Asian art suggests an intention to facilitate a beneficial kind of globalism where theinternational art world functions more like a democracy than an oligarchy. Yet its expansion verges on the point where the idea ceases to have any real meaning. If much of what
I've just said feels suspiciously like a eulogy, it may be because contemporary Asian art

DAY1 MAY23,2015

The Scale Question in Contemporary Asian Art

37
Supangkat, "Multiculturalism/
Multimodernism," p. 80.

38
Hou Hanru, "Entropy, Chinese Artists,
Western Art Institutions: A New
Internationalism," in Global Visions:
Towardsa New Internationalismin the
Visual Arts, ed. Jean Fisher (London: Kala
Press ,n association with the Institute ofInternational Visual Arts, 1994), p.80.
39

Ibid., p.93.

40
Cited by Alice Yang, "Lening Go: The
Work of Rikrit Tiravanija," in Why Asia?
Contemporary Asian and Asian American
Art, ed. Jonathan Hay and Mimi Young(New York and London: New York
University Press, 1998), p.8. Originally
written in 1996.

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41

I have discussedthis issueelsewhere in'What Scale Affords Us Sizing the WorldUp Through Scale," Art Margins 3, no. 2(June 2014). pp.3-30.
42Darnel R Montello, "Scale in Geography,"in lnternanonal Encycloped,a of theSocial and Behavioral Sciences, ed
Neil J . Smelser and Paul B Baltes(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 2001 ). pp.
13501 13503.
43

A good example is "Asia: Redefining theCity," a conference organized by writerand filmmaker David d'He1lly, architect
Rem Koolhaas. and editor Ota Kayoko
as a "direct" predecessor to "Cities on
the Move " It focused on six cities orurban areas (Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur,
Singapore. Shanghai. Hong Kong, Zhu
Jiang Delta) and took place in Tokyo in
1996. hnp:/lwww tnprobe.com/eng/act/
symOl.html(Accessed June, 2015)44

For examples of such collaborations In
Myanmar and India see Grant Kester,
The One and the Many: Contemporary
Co/laboratNe Art m a Global Context(Durham and London: Duke University
Press, 2011 )has outlived its discursive usefulness . It sounds anachronistic , for example, to describe
some of the most internationally celeb rated Asian artists like Murakami Takashi, Cai GuoGiang or Rikrit Tiravanija as "contemporary Asian art ists ."ByWhich Measure? The Variable Scales of Asian Art

But the widespread recognition of a tiny handful of Asian artists does not make the scalequestion go away. We still parse the wo rld using words like "local," "global ," "nation ," and"region" even when we find them limiti ng and problematic. Neither does the matter of scale
disappear by expanding what we regard as "Asian ." In fact, all th is expansionism reads as
an alibi for avoiding a question foregrounded by the disparities between those artists able
to transcend or move across certain scales and those who do not. ~ To specify what the"scale question" means, I turn to three definitions of scale in geography . The first concerns
cartographic scale, which "refers to the depicted size of a feature on a map relative to its
actual size in the world. " ~ In this conte xt , such cartographic scale refers to the physicalsize of a place relative to its actual influence on the international art world. The second isanalysis scale, or "size of the unit at which some problem is analyzed." In post-World War II
Asia, the most important unit of art wor ld organization was the nation ; only from the mid1990s did the city emerge as a significa nt unit via the establishment of biennials and otherlarge-scale arts events by specific cities . ~ The third is phenomenon scale, or the "size at
which human or physical earth structur es or processes exist, regardless of how they arestudied or represented ." This may be th e most difficult scale question to answer . Indeed,
the recent vogue in academic and museum circles for notions of the "contemporary " is a
symptom of having to deal with rapidly conflating scales of operation without actually having to face its specificities .

45

Luc Boltanski and l:ve Ch1apello, The
New Sp,r,t of Cap,tahsm (London and
New York: Verso. 2005).

In the 1990s, the scale question meant scale disjunction, or a lack of correspondence
between analysis scales . A great deal of discussion tended to revolve around the crude
dichotomy pitting the so-called "local " against the "global. " Expatriate artists , or artistsof Asian nationality living outside their home countries, felt this keenly. They struggled
for their works to be seen outside the frameworks of nationality , ethnicity , or race while
also agreeing to exhibit them in shows organized around such tropes . Many consequently
rejected being known as an "Asian " artist, a refusal that now reads as a qu intessentially'90s attitude.
Likewise, the "outsourcing " model of curation so widely prevalent in the mid -to -late
1990s has led to a troubling conflation of scales, where the chosen native informant is
automatically regarded as a legitimate and comprehensive representative of an entire
artistic ecology without necessarily being made to account for his or her choices.
Witness, for example , how certain curators are repeatedly tapped by institutions outside
their home countries to organize shows of a part icular region . What accordingly happens
is that certain artists tend to be selecte d again and again to represent the whole of a given
territory, leading to reduced diversity . Few processes in the art world are less democratic(or more authoritarian) than artist selection patterns for exhibitions intended to survey art of aparticular nation or region .
The pressure of having to simultaneously deal with multiple scales of operation was especially intense for the spate of non-governmental exhibition spaces throughout East andSoutheast Asia that emerged in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. During the peakof the crisis from 1997 to 1999, governments across Asia desperately tried to balance theirbooks by slashing their support of the arts, a move that all but compelled non-governmentalorganizations to take over many of the functions otherwise performed by national museums . Intense pressure was brought to bear on these organizations which found themselves
having to cater not only to both local and international audiences , but also to effectively
serve as a national institution . Who, or what, was the audience? More importantly, was itsustainable for institutions to address certain analysis scales even when it was physically or

Joan Kee

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financially impossible to do so? In other words, what of the phenomenon scale of non-governmental institutions?
On many levels, the late 1990s was when a new epoch began, one marked by a renewedinterest in artistic collaboration. Such collaboration directly responded to the breakdown ofsocial hierarchies on which the ideas of nation, city, or state once depended . ~ The affirmative nihilism so championed by Hou and Obrist in "Cities on the Move" and their later collaborations may have fully given way to the kind of "connectionist" capitalism sociologists Luc
Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (among others) have pointed out as the core of the new market. ~Over time, Tiravanija, for example, has performed in increasingly more upscale surroundings. What we are left with are people scattered around the world, wondering about thecommunity to which art branded as "contemporary Asian art" is directed .
Yet we ignore the scale question at our peril. Doing so will only compromise the efficacy oforganizations; it is as important to know one's limits as it is to recognize areas for growth .
Moreover, paying close attention to the scale question is needed in order to reexamine theracist and imperialist assumptions underpinning the use of many scale terms . The challenge
remains as to whether it is possible to embrace indiscretions and deviances from a systemof overlapping scales to which we assign the name "world" as a matter of convenience.

DAYl

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The Scale Question in Contemporary Asian Art

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DiscussionI Session2
DoryunChong)1scuss1on

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The Burden of Representing
Contemporary Asian Art

Thank you, Dinh and Joan, for the really stimulating presentations that are different in theirown ways. There were so many questions andtopics that came up in my mind, and I don't
know how many of them we can deal within the next twenty minutes, but let me givea word to the audience. You are going to be
included in the discussion when all of us comeup on stage later, so if you have any burningquestions, please hold it until later.
Maybe I will start with a more specificquestion directed to Joan. You used the word
"scale" several times in your presentation, but
I clearly don't think that you are just talking
about the physical scale; I think you are using it
in at least a couple of different notions . Could
you elaborate on that a little bit?

One of the things that was very significant about the first panel was you have these"alternative" organizations and all of them arevery small in scale, not just in terms of size but
also the kinds of communities to which theiractivities were directed . But at the same time,
there is also a kind of this palpable burden ora certain expectation to represent all of, say,contemporary Thai art, or all of contemporary Indonesian art. That's a real burden thatin some ways, I think, contributed to making
or putting the idea of the "alternative" undersuch pressure that it's now become sort of acompromised idea. Just as it was discussed
earlier, "What does 'alternative' really mean
anymore?"So when I am thinking about "scale," it's
about a lot of artists, institutions, or organizations in Asia having to endure a real burden,
again, of the kind of cliched global-local dichotomy. But I think these pressures of having to

DAY 1 MAY23 , 2015

deal with so many different audiences at once,
for instance, is one real issue that hasn't been
sufficiently addressed especially at the national
level; there is not enough dialogue between
small organizations and larger, public organizations. That is one way to think about scale,
which concerns the relationship between different kinds of entities .
Size, or absolute proportions, is anotherissue as well. We had those giant, sprawling
exhibitions such as "Cities on the Move" andwhat not, and now we have moved towards
very focused solo exhibitions of particular artists. But the unresolved issue here, is, "whathappens to the 'middle'?" Is there a middle
ground in which to think about both individual
artists but also artists as a group? Because
what is happening now is that, if you don't
have that middle ground, you just have individual artists who, unintentionally or not, take up
the burden of being a star; you kind of become
the canonical point. I mean, you cannot really
write a history of contemporary art in Vietnam
without talking about Dinh . It's just unavoidable. But at the same time, what happens to,say, artists who kind of fall between the cracks;
those who may not have been given the honorof having a solo show and who may have gotten lost in these big, large shows that were so
popular in the 1990s?

I think we should try to pick up first about scale
when the presenters from the first panel comeup in the next session. I was actually struckby this notion of the burden of representing
the bigger picture, because it is somethingthat I would have also expected from thesepresenters. But it seems to be more absentGridthiya's scandalizing admission that she
wasn't even thinking about the audience backwhen she started .[laughter)
So I think it is really an interesting toask, "What is the burden that you put upon

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yourself, and what are the external expectations?" Just as Flaudette May discussed, youhave curators from abroad "parachuting"in and basically asking, "Tell us everythingthat has happened in your country or in yourregion." So I do think that there is this dichotomy between the internal or self-imposed pressure and the external pressure or expectation,
which, again, I think would be more interestingwith the first panel's presenters here. So we
can pick that up later.
On another note, there is an interesting
resonance between both presentations talking about a moment of origin, if you would like,which is some time in the 1990s. Dinh, I wasreally struck by what you said that when you
first returned to Vietnam, in 1994, that there
was no contemporary art. So I think you definitely played a very instrumental role in creating contemporary art or at least a context for
it. Joan, I think you are also suggesting thatthe rubric of contemporary Asian art was created through specific exhibition-making practices, perhaps surprisingly or maybe obviously,around the same time.
So I am wondering if you can talk about
this issue a little more because I think you aretalking about a specific notion of contemporary
art. What I mean by this is that, for instance, if
you can define contemporary art as "art thatis being made today," then, I assume, clearly
there was contemporary art in Vietnam backwhen you returned.
Also you are bringing in certain experiences, definitions, and notions having returnedat that time from the United States as an
American-educated artist. So I think we kindof need to parse that issue out a little more. In
Joan's case, we could ask, "What does it mean
when these exhibitions created this rubric, 'contemporary Asian art'?" which I think you prob lematized . But if it was created in the first place,then what was the utility of it back then, if at all?

You are definitely right about the art
scenes in the 1990s. Actually, it was very
vibrant. In certain areas, particularly in Saigon
and Hanoi, what was so interesting was thatwhen the country had opened up its doors, collectors from Hong Kong and Singapore came
flooding in because there were so many artistsof the older generations who made very beautiful paintings, derived from modernist andsome social realist traditions. They were very
beautiful because these artists were very welltrained. So there was an influx in the arts . But
the younger artists who were interested in newforms were completely excluded from it.
So I think there was the moment where,
again, the break between generations cameinto play. I mean, the younger artists could havemade a lot of money, actually, by just pandering to these collectors. Many of the senior artists actually did; they were producing so many
paintings because it was the first time where
they were able to make money . Moreover, dollars at that time was just a lot of money .
I think the younger artists refused to dothat; they wanted something else. So that waspart of the system then, but I am sure the next
generation now will refuse our model as well.
So I think in every generation, there are thosethat get excluded .
For me, it was just coming in at the righttime, because the younger artists were interested in the knowledge that I had acquired.
With that and some connections, it justhelped to raise those interests toward a larger
audience .
Now, our model, or what we define as"art," is definitely taking over Vietnam and thesenior artists and the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art
Association, who used to control all of this, has
slowly become obsolete.

I am going to just follow-up and maybe dig a

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little deeper. This may be a question that is alittle provocative, but if these older-generation artists were making contemporary art atthat moment, their lineage is a modernist one,which, I assume, was several generations after
the one from the French education of modernism. Then, when you and your community ofartists in the mid-1990s onwards brought in a
new notion of contemporary from outside, wasthat replacing the existing model? Or was there
something fundamentally different from thatmodel of origin, reception, and naturalization?
QinhO~ LeIn a way there was not much difference.
You are talking about the French introductionof modern art to Vietnam and, prior to that, I
don't think we really had "art." We had crafts
and craftsmen. But that, again, is importing
Western concepts. Now, I think younger artists, or artists in general, in Vietnam are slowly
starting to look at Vietnamese tradition andtrying to somehow connect it to their current
practices. But I think at that point, there was
not much difference.

That brings us back to the original
point you made about translation. The ideaof "contemporary Asian art" as a standalone idea was first coined in Japan in 1968
by the art critic Hariu lchiro. He criticized theshow "Contemporary Korean Painting" [atthe National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo]
describing it as totally derivative, how they are
all just copying their European or Americancounterparts, and he asks in Asahi Journal,"Why is there no gendai ajia bijutsu [contemporaryAsianart]?" One thing that is very telling
was initially when this idea of "contemporary
Asian art" emerged, Hariu's main goal was toexplore whether it was possible to think about
contemporary art beyond simple dualities pitting Japan (or morebroadly,"Asia")against theDAY1 MAY23,20 15045

West. But what happened towards the late1970s and early '80s when the Fukuoka Art
Museum held large Asian art shows, despite
it being specifically created, in part, to include
as many countries as possible, there were stillcertain art works that were particularly considered champions, such as artworks that
had a "primitive" or "natural" quality thatlooked "non-Western," so to speak . But at thesame time, you had someone like Hariu whoformed an organization called Nihon ajia afurika
raten-amerika bijutsuka kaigi (JAALA:Japanese,
Asian,African,Latin-American
ArtistAssociation),
which intended to purposely include works
that would have been considered "traditional" and would have been excluded from"contemporary."
So Doryun, I think your question is reallygetting to the heart of the assumptions on
which "contemporary Asian art" itself isgrounded. So what happened since the early
1980s is that the Fukuoka Art Museum was
accumulating all kinds of artworks; they are
one of the few museums, to my knowledge,that doesn't have North Korean works, but they
have socialist realist paintings and many otherworks in their collection. That started to reallychange after the mid-'80s when you had these
big, blockbuster shows of Japanese art.
Dinh, you briefly discussed earlier about
how the '80s was a "lost decade" when it
comes to the history of contemporary Asianart. But, for instance, Gutai was a big deal inFrance and Italy during the '80s. And so what
happened was that certain avant-gardeI hate to say the word "expression," but there it
is-forms of expression became the dominantparadigms in which artists thought, "Okay, thisis sort of the track that we are going to take."
There is a little bit of push back which,I think, was triggered by Apinan Poshyananda's
show, "Traditions/Tensions," because of thekinds of works he chose, trying to, again, incorporate what the audiences would consider

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Doryun Chong"pre-modern" or "traditional"-whatever thosewords might mean-as the face of a contemporary Asian art, and displaying them for North
American audiences. I think there was a little
bit of a push back in terms of what he saw asthese sorts of shows that championed a very
particular way of thinking about art; one thatwould link back to, quite frankly, a very EuroAmerican modernist trajectory.
So what we have now are different media
that get overlooked-ink painting, for instance .
Ink painting almost never gets talked about
unless the subject is something considered"modern" or when it takes digital form. Or in
Vietnam, lacquer painting. Lacquer painting
has been practiced for many, many yearsdecades really. I would say a large percentage
of artists worked in lacquer painting. That gets
excluded .
So in thinking about contemporary Asianart, is our task actually about trying to recuperate these sorts of forms? That's a question I have for you, Doryun, as Chief Curator of
M+. What do you think the task is in terms ofcollecting?

If I can follow-up before Doryun. The
younger generations in Vietnam now arerecuperating lacquer painting, as well as silk
paintings and all that. They are doing reallyinteresting, new things with them . So now
those forms of works are coming back as well.

Well, first of all, I'm not recuperating anything ,and definitely not "contemporary Asian art."
But the question of modern and contemporary ink art, vis-a-vis what we normally thinkof as modern or contemporary art, is a reallyinteresting question . I prefer not to talk about
myself but since you, Joan, put me on thespot, I will.
One of the most stimulating and jarring

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things I encountered when I first landed in
Hong Kong was how important ink art isthere . It is because of its historical condition;
Hong Kong was the "gateway"-to use theword of the day-and the main exit point for
all of those fleeing China because of the wars
and revolutions. This was especially true forthose who were trained in literati ink painting
amidst a condition and environment that was
highly anti-intellectual. These literati ink painters often settled there . There was somethingcalled New Chinese Painting Movement in
the late 1960s or the early '70s which playeda very important role. While in many places,
including Japan, the state ran a policy of educating the first generation of artists in Western
media and genres, there was no such thing in
Hong Kong due to the British colonial policy .
There was no established tradition of modern ist painting or sculpture, so ink art became areally important tradition.
What that entails, for me, is a question ofwhat does a collection that aspires to include a
lot of modern and contemporary works as weunderstand it, as we are talking about it today,
look like when you give equal weight to the
tradition of modern ink painting? I do think thatthese are two parallel traditions. That is to say,it's easy to say that they often crossed paths,
but, in actuality, they didn't. The same thingcan, of course, be said with the topic of socialist realism which is a modern and contemporary movement. So when you put all of thesetogether, the story definitely becomes very,
very messy and complex. But very few institutions have these issues in one location and try
to narrate them together . So that's the aspiration M+ has as an institution .
Now that you put the curator on the spot,
I want to come to my next question : the roleof the curator. Again, it's not coming from myself-interest here, but Joan, since you commented on Hans Ulrich Obrist, Hou Hanru, andApinan Poshyananda, I was also beginning

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to think about this when you were discussingthe "Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean
and Korean American Art"(1993) and "Asia/
America: Identities in Contemporary Asian
American Art"(1994) exhibitions. These exhibitions have very different kinds of curators, I
think. They is not usually quoted. Jane Farver
was the curator for "Across the Pacific,"
wasn't she?
Jga11_K_(NActually "Across the Pacific" is really aninteresting exhibition. It was one of the very
few exhibitions to include both Asian and Asian
American artists, which actually started withthe artists Bahe Mo (known later as Bahe Yiso) andYong Soon Min, telling the Queens Museum[formerly, Queens Museum of Art], "You have a lotof Korean people living in Queens. We want ashow." Then, Jane Farver, who was also thecurator for "Global Conceptual ism: Points ofOrigin, 1950s-1980s" (1999)said, "You know
what, that is a good idea. Let's do it."
Doryun ChQ!lg

That really is an interesting question. Jane
Farver, who very suddenly and tragicallypassed away just a few weeks ago in Venice,
was working on the US Pavilion for the 56th
Venice Biennale. Those of us who have had
the pleasure of meeting her, remember her as
an incredibly kind, generous, and supportive
curator. When curators who were not white
Americans were coming up in the 1980s, '90s,
and 2000s, she acted as a mentor for so manyof them.
That kind of curator of an institution like
Queens Museum-a museum outside ofManhattan-to organize this show is quite
different from "Cities on the Move"(1997-2000),or even "Traditions/Tensions"(1996-1997),
although some parts took place in Queens
Museum. So I think it is also important to keep
note of the many different kinds of curators:

DAY 1 MAY23 , 2015

those who are often cited as globetrotting
curators; those who are really committed totheir local context in doing their work; andothers who unintentionally became curators,
like Dinh during the first three years of San Art .
So maybe I would turn that into a question
to you, Dinh. Having been embedded in theSoutheast Asian context or, more specifically,
the Vietnam context for almost the last twenty
years, what is your perception of the evolutionof the role of curator in Vietnam or maybe in thewider Southeast Asian region?
Manifold Forms of the "Curator"
Q_inhQ Le

I think in Vietnam, the idea of "curator"
is still not very well understood. I think Zoe
Butt, who is the current curator and directorof San Art, was asked by a magazine interviewer, "What is a curator?" Zoe answered,"You are like a stylist, so you make the work
look better in the exhibition ." [laughter] So theidea itself is still not very clear in places like
Vietnam.
I think many of us became curators outof necessity. I still don't see myself as a curator even though I was running the place forthree years. I think it was just necessary andso we just had to take on the role. And what I
found interesting, recently, is the phenomenonof artists claiming this [curating] as part of theirpractice. I think in Asia, we had to do what wasnecessary and so it became part of our lives:
making artworks, organizing things with andfor our friends, and coming together, et cetera.
But now I see more and more artists, notonly in the Southeast Asian regions, but also
artists in America and Europe, discussing it aspart of their practice, too. So this idea of "curator" is still changing, but for me it was a necessity. I took up the role because I had to, and it
just became a part of my life.

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Joan, do you have any thoughts about thedifferent definitions and roles of curators who
were wittingly and unwittingly involved incontemporary Asian art?
J

I think it was different, for instance, withDinh. You are talking about Asia versus Europe
or North America, where you already havethese infrastructures and you have someone
like Hans Ulrich Obrist, who had already set
forth this paradigm of "anyone-can-be-a-curator." But in reality, that wasn't really quite true.
One of the things that is a paradox, especiallywith any sort of non-Western contemporary art
exhibition, is that there is a real kind of elitismthat is involved ; you have people who get tocurate these shows over and over again. Hou
Hanru is everywhere, at least when you think of
the 1990s. It's Hou Hanru, Obrist , and a coupleof other people. But then the question is," What about some of the other shows that
didn't have this kind of, how shall I put
it,'celebritization' of the organizers?"
The "Under Construction: New
Dimensions of Asian Art" exhibition (2002)
would be an example of a show which wasvery, very important in Asia, primarily because
it came after the IMF crisis which, in many
parts of Asia, gave rise to an "alternative system" because the national governments drasti cally cut their spending on the arts. So how is itthat the artists are going to be able to show
their works? They are going to have to takethings on and organize shows themselves. But
those who organize these shows are kind ofunder the radar in a way.
So, one issue, here-especially withhistories of contemporary art in Asia that tend
to get circulated-is you care more about the
curator than the actual artist. That also goesback to the question of "scale." Whose scale
do we privilege the most? Do we privilege the

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person who gets on a plane and has a gazillion
frequent flyer miles, or do we think about theartist who is working for a very specificcontext?
But again, the problem there is that itbegs the cliche of global-versus-local. Do wewant to really go back to those discussions?
Probably not.

I have been really interested in all theimportant exhibitions that have been mentioned today . I've heard about many of them,but how important are they really? I'm actuallyquite fascinated because while they're important in the West, not many of us in Asia havebeen aware of these exhibitions.

Except for "Cities on the Move." Gridthiya
was very instrumental in that one. So, except
for that one.

True. But that idea of "importance" andhow important it is in a region is interesting. I
must say, in Asia, we hardly know anything
about them. "How important is it to us?" isquestionable.

Or maybe it depends on the countries thatwere included in the exhibition. So, forinstance, "Traditions/Tensions" does get talked
about in the countr ies that included their artists. So that, again, also brings up the questionof inclusion/exclusion.

Maybe this is a good point to bring back panelists from the first session to join us.

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DiscussionI Sessions1 and 2.. .
~DoryunChong
KamiyaYukie-

DAY 1 MAY23, 2015

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Kamiya-san and I just had the idea of asking
you if you have questions for one another . We
don't want to go overtime and we should
definitely give the audience the chance to ask
questions, but if there is anything that panelists
from each session want to say or respond to,this is the moment to do so.

I'd like to ask Joan a question. I am now
reading her article in Third Text, and I think it's
very important that you provide an introduction
about Southeast Asian contemporary art. The
title of the article is, "Contemporary Southeast
Asian Art: The Right Kind of Trouble," ( Third Text
25, no. 4, 2011) and there is one interesting pointthat you mention that I would like for you toshare with us, which is the question, "What iscontemporary art, and how can we write about
contemporary art in Southeast Asia as a history?" Could you speak a little about that?

I think that's a really tough question, justbecause, for one, there aren't that many
History of Art departments [in universities inSoutheast Asia], for example. There used to be
one at the National University of Singapore butthat was eliminated. The other difficulty is what
you and a lot of the panelists brought up over
and over again: funding . There is a reason why,say, events in Japan, Singapore, Australia, andthe United States tend to dominate the discussion. I think, Dinh, you bring that point up
implicitly in your last comment about why does
everyone talk about "Cities on the Move" or"Traditions/Tensions," when it is not reallytalked about in Vietnam. It is, again, this idea orassumption that somehow what is being said
in countries with money, tends to set the stakes

O,scuss,onfor the histories of contemporary art
elsewhere .
So one issue here is, if one were to think
about, say, a different kind of contemporary art
history in Southeast Asia, what would that
actually look like? Is that even possible? So, in
writing that introduction in Third Text, the mainquestion is, "is it really feasible to write about
this kind of history?" It is almost like a dog
chasing a car; it is just something you will neverquite grasp, in a way .
But I think that is also why we emphasize
exhibitions, and I apologize if I came across as
being sort of exhibition-centric. For me, what
are really more interesting are the artists andthe works. But it is just the way that discussions tend to get written; they tend to follow
these big events. So I think that a real problem
is, "How do you get away from a history ofcontemporary art that doesn 't just privilege thebiennial circuit, or the well-known curators
coming from outside and organizing theseshows?"
So, again, going back to Doryun's question earlier, when "Cities on the Move" went to
Bangkok, it really was the organizers of all the
spaces where the show took place who were
the key; they were the actual organizers. But
none of that ever gets talked about . That's
another reason why, say, historicization is
becoming even more urgent now than before.

I think lately we, as curators and researchers, have started to talk about the history of
exhibitions as part of the historicization ofcontemporary art, because, I mean, one thingthat we are trying is to justify why we selectthis work and not another, why we choose towrite about this exhibition, but not on another,
et cetera .
One thing that I would like to follow-up on
Dinh's comment is that we have been thinking
about the impact or effecting factors of "Cities

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Chapter1

on the Move" and "Traditions/Tensions ." For"Cities on the Move," in particular, it was the firsttime that at least a hundred artists from Asia were
circulated, not only in America, but also in Europe
and back to Asia. If you compare the number ofartists in the "Traditions/Tensions" show, it was
only twenty-something, and it was really within
the circle of the "regional" framework such as the
Asian Society and others alike. And I think in termsof "Cities on the Move," when it toured back toThailand, it was the first time that everyone in
Thailand worked together . The local art scenes are,of course, very fragmented; it is very territorial.
There were two important facts : firstly, it was
the first time that curators from outside Asia
organized a show; and secondly, the whole exhibition was endorsed by the French Embassy, so they
were the ones who facilitated it. I think it was very
important for us to realize that, and in the end, towork together . To me, this was very important, in
terms of the local impact. But that had to be triggered by external factors.

If I may give a comment. Every time we talk about"modern" or "contemporary," how to define themalways becomes a big issue. But I think that "contemporary" is not a style or a form; it has more to dowith periodization. Sometimes it is used to describeor refer to a certain style or form, which can get
confusing . But Asian art is also often introduced as
an area of study, as we see in "Cities on the Move ." I
don't think those approaches have been able toshow enough respect to individual expressions;rather, the mentality has been that anyone can be
included as long as they are living and working in
the particular region. So rather than specific artistic
contexts, Asia has often been introduced just as aregional or a geographical mass.
The "Global Conceptualism" exhibition wasorganized around the same time in the late 1990s
where it introduced a "style" of conceptual art,
how ubiquitous instances occurred globally in
different areas. So there are two different

DAY1 MAY23, 2015051

approaches in the '90s : one is the "regional "specificity; and the other is the "global" presentation for one specific style. So those two strands
existed. I don't mean to suggest that either one isgood or bad. It is more to do with the variety ofways in introducing "Asia." While there are thesedifferent approaches, I think contemporary Asianart still tends to be introduced within the regionalrhetoric .
So the question is, "How can we move awayfrom or extend this idea?" I think that could be oneof the challenges of exhibition-making .

Recently, the Asia Art Archive did somethingthat I thought was really interesting. They
expanded their research into independent art
spaces. Some of them migh t be defunct by now ,but they try to archive their programs from thevery beginning to the end, and analyze how impor tant that organization was to a particular area,
country, or even region . That itself is a different
way of looking at art programs. It is not only about
these big, traveling exhibitions, but more about
giving attention to the local, smaller organizations
and how big an impact they were . We just don't
know about them. So this is a new way of looking
at the history of the region, I think .

Maybe a slightly different way of asking thisquestion would be to go back to one of my earlier
questions . I do think that "contemporary Asianart" was a very problematic rubric , a default termthat was used mostly by Western institutions andexhibition-makers, and which also often times has
obscured the actual works and artists. I think
what Joan said is right, and now that the researchand study of the histories of exhibitions is so invogue, that ends up in kind of perpetuating thecentrality of the curators, their concepts, venues,
and other contextual factors . But at the sametime, I would imagine, and in some cases I doknow, that it did bring a lot of artists in the region

~
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Session2

across national borders. It brought together those
who may not have met before then. I think it
formed relations . I have heard such stories fromartists in many different instances.
So, I will turn that into a question, especiallyfor the panelists from the first session. When you
have been included in such exhibitions or when
you had interface with other colleagues fromdifferent regions through projects and initiatives
by Western curators, institutions, or funding
bodies, what was your experience like? Did it have
any impact on what you were doing at your own
site or not?
r

I agree with you . What is "contemporary
Asian art"? What is Asia? Baguio and Bacolod, forinstance, already are two different contexts which
are very complex . What is "contemporary" is amoving target. For example, in the Philippines, themodern and contemporary are seen in colonial,
art historical, stylistic, and cultural terms and it is
impossible to define and characterize the "modern," "traditional," and "contemporary" in definitive ways. Aside from these disciplinal issues, weare also under political and economic pressure
from inside and from outside. The Philippines, andconsequently, the University of the Philippines
which is a State University, is now gearing up for
ASEAN integration, which has consequence to
our curriculums in the next two years . One ofthese changes is the recent addition of two more
years into the Philippine high school curriculum(K12 curriculum), which has become a challenge forus educators . I am leading a group of writers who
are writing a textbook for a core subject in the
proposed K12 curriculum on contemporary art in
the Philippine regions. The challenge is how to
avoid homogenizing such a complex context, but
at the same time, taking care also to ground thestudents on some common key concepts andbasic vocabularies, given that our general student
try has little-if at all-knowledge of contemporary art, a result of a faulty education system that

C

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pays little attention and importance to art and art
education.
When the parachuting curators-not all ofthem, by the way-come, we, the local gatekeepers, are also consulted. In the academy, for example, the kneejerk response is, "we are going to be
co-opted ." But at the same time, another sectionof the faculty would say, "But it's the artists' turnto be visible." So there is this tension between
being visible and being under the radar. For some,the latter, to be under the radar, is better because it
is a very productive space to be in. For example,
one of my projects,"Women Imaging Women"
was funded by the Japan Foundation. It featured
around sixteen artists from Indonesia, thePhilippines, Thailand and Vietnam. It came out of
my research in those countries in two phases: an
exhibit-conference of women artists from thePhilippines in 1997; and an exhibit-conference of
women artists in Southeast Asia in 1998. It
resulted from the research in the countries theprevious years, which became my lifework. But it
is not included here and they are not part of thecanon because such small scale events withmodest objectives are really under the radar. But
as I said, it's sometimes nice to be under the radar
because a lot of productive inquiries can be madethere beyond the pale of blockbuster exhibitions.
Of course, if we do get consulted, we can be
civil and collegial about it . [laughter] But personally, I really prefer not to talk to curators who aregoing to be in our country for just three days. Go
home. You come here, already with your assets,
and all you need is affirmation. It's really very niceto be consulted for three days.

Well, this is interesting. I'd like to follow what
Flaudette May was saying, but firstly I think weshould maybe see it from a different angle. I think theattempts in representations of Asia have always
been institution- and State-driven and, therefore,
always problematic. I mean, we have been here for
only half-a-day,and I've lost count of how many

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times the questions, "What is contemporary art" and"What is Southeast Asia?" came up.
These are really interesting questions, butthere will never be a single definitive answer. It isvery unstable; you can't really say with confidence,"this is contemporary art, this is Asian art." I think itreally is a trap of the institution, a trap of categorization, and a trap of identity politics.
So to respond to your question, I think myexperience as an artist, a member of a collective,
and a curator became really different after the
1980s and '90s. This is actually interesting,because in the '80s and '90s, I think so many, or
too many projects were always described as"representing so-and-so" or related to defining
political identities.
We can see also how Asian countries orSoutheast Asia have been presented in Europe. I
mean, it is hardly ever shown in a contemporary
art museum. For example, works from Asia
toured to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt [Houseof the Cultures of the World) in Berlin, Germany,but it never traveled to a contemporary art
museum there. So we have to consider that as
well: how they view Asia or Southeast Asia . I
mean, we were on that stage in the '80s, in the'90s a bit less, and I think it's less and less now.
But the interesting thing is that, I think, there
were a lot of networks and interfaces on which
many met, just as Flaudette May and Joan said,"under the radar."
We should see how the performance art
scene developed for example. They're like bees.
They have their own frequencies and networks;
they don't have to be trapped by State identity
politics. It really is amazing. They just connect
with each other from all over the place, they
organize tours together without really representing any flags-any national flags, not to mention-and is still growing. Video and new media isalso like that. It's really the different media andpractices that are producing different strategies
and approaches that can be more economical,
cheaper, movable, flexible, and also temporary.

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053

Things really are different, and the medium has
played a role in this change.
We started the OK. Video Festival, for example, in 2003, and have organized it for six or seventimes up to now. We are surprised by the numberof submissions, and how it has attracted many
known artists. They were really eager to send theirworks to a festival in Indonesia .
Something has changed. We used to try to bepart of the bigger scene, but now there are a lot of
events, initiatives, or "points" that attracts theglobal scene. That, I think, is what has changed in
the last ten or fifteen years; it has really changed
how country representations are made. There isless and less of that kind of tendency.
Just another example. When ruangrupa wasinvited for the 31st Sao Paolo Biennale, we had abig debate because most of the artists did notwant be mentioned where they were from. We
were able to negotiate with the organizer andfinally it was settled. Obviously, the organizing
foundation has a certain obligation to indicate thenationality because, again, funding is involved. So,again, I'd like to reiterate that performance andvideo art as a new media can, to a degree, be cut
off, liberated, and detached from the big source offunding, I think, allowing the media to be free.
The Art Market Dynamics in Asia
QQ.IYUJ::i
C:QQQgThank you, Ade. I think we should open the discussion to the floor, now . Would anyone in the audience like to ask questions for any of us or them?
QuestiQner 1

I am an art collector so I would like to ask aquestion about the [art) market. There are galleriesin Asia, and they have the same system; there areart fairs and these art fairs are spreading throughout Asia. In conjunction with that, the markets are
becoming global. Money is becoming more powerful. For better or for worse, I think countries may
be becoming less individual, in other words, more~Session2

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similar . I would like to ask for your thoughts, if any,
about this phenomenon where the art markets are
actually diminishing individual differences
between the different countries.

Ade or Dinh, maybe you could respond as artists?

At San Art, we have actually discussed
about participating in these art fairs as a way tosustain ourselves, as a way to survive, because
sources of funding have become less and less.
Europe is where large sources of funding havebeen cut drastically . So we have been discussing
about this.
I understand where you are coming from ;I think there are many complaints about art fairs .
Everything just looks very shiny . It doesn't matter
where the artworks come from. So yes, I agree,
there is a problem, and we do worry about it . But
at the same time, I think the context of each artist
is very different, nevertheless .
Vietnam is completely different from theUnited States and our concerns are very different
from their concerns. And I think there are artist
who keep to themselves, remember who they are,and not just cater toward the market.
I think a lot of artists do cater to the market,
but I think many artists are still situated in places
like Vietnam . In Vietnam, in particular, there aremany artists who can still make very beautiful
paintings , sell them, and make a comfortableliving. But they refuse to do so, because, as I said
before, they want to do something else. Theyexperiment with video, performance , and othernew media because somehow what is "sellable" isnot appealing to them. It just doesn't reflect who
they are, so they refuse to do it even though thatmeans they might live in poverty or get a second
job. So I think artists are very interesting in thatway. Money, wealth, and the market are not ourpriority, and so we just keep doing what we do .

01scuss,on

I think, perhaps, part of your concern deals
w ith the fact that when you are in an art fair, it justlooks like one booth after another . It is the worst
possible condition in which to see art and I can see
why differences and specificities might seem todisappear . But in terms of who is actually buying
the work, there is a real difference . Chinese collec tors don't buy Korean art . It's the same withIndonesian collectors, for instance; they don't buy
art from India, for example . There still is this real
nationalist ic tendency .
The other issue, too, is when it comes togalleries in the market-for instance, Indonesiaauction houses have enormous power, possibly
much more so than other parts of the world. Or in
Singapore, with the Gillman Barracks, Ahmad[Mashadi) might disagree with me, where there is areal kind of crumbling at the foundations. You have
the Singaporean government saying , "Okay, weare going to create this oasis of galleries." But
nobody is going there, nobody is buying anything .
The real market is taking place among a very
selected handful of collectors , and they are buying
these particular kinds of works .
So even though all the artworks might seemalike-that you have a lot of artists going to thesame art schools , reading the same magazines ,showing up at the same biennials-there is adifference not only in terms of what the work looks
like, but also who is actually buying the work .

In Thailand's case, I am actually very happy
that the art market is not as powerful as the othercountries in Southeast Asia, so artists have more
freedom in their practices. But on the other hand, a
few of them are represented by international
galleries; something I found to be very interesting.
Some of them are represented by a gallery in New
York, Italy, or Singapore, but for countries without
good infrastructure, governmental support, or
strong culture of collectors, I think it's important
for artists to earn the ir living, and, for that, maybe

Session1 and2

Chapter1

art fairs are a necessary condition .
But I agree with Joan. Our collectors in theregion are very, very nationalistic. It is very rare forThai collectors to fly to Basel and buy Indonesianartists' works. Now, I am trying to educate andadvise them that they should look beyond national
borders, especially because now there is theASEAN Economic Community (AEC). You reallyhave to extend beyond the borders, otherwise
nationalism would stop it all.

Let me pitch in. Chinese collectors were only
buying Chinese artworks until last year, but thisyear it's a totally different story. Of course, I am notspecialist in the market, but by being so close towhat is now the most important art fair in contemporary art, Art Basel Hong Kong, I have had thechance to talk to all of these dealers and collectors,
and you really hear all these stories . The learning
curve of Chinese collectors is like this [ holding hand
up in steep angle], and last year they were like this[holding hand horizontally].This year their knowledge base is completely different, and I think that
this doesn't just apply to Chinese collectors.
Things will really change very quickly. And yes, I
think Joan's point about having to think about who
is buying and what is being bought is important.
As a buyer myself-not as a collector, but
because I buy for the institution using publicmoney-I end up spending quite a lot of time atdifferent art fairs, and I'd like to add that you do
actually see quite a lot of differences between art
fairs . Art Stage in Singapore looks totally different
from Art Dubai, and totally different from Art Baselin Hong Kong . So I think it's a bit of a stereotype tosay that this proliferation and increasing power ofart fairs are flattening or homogenizing the differences. That in itself is a cliche that has beenaround for several decades now, and I think,overall, what we are saying here is that, there is nosuch thing . Whether it's a re-entrenchment, redefinition, re-localization, or whatever you call it, I
think the contexts are quite different even at art

DAY 1 MAY 23, 2015055

fairs. Despite all the same-looking booths, youactually end up seeing many, many diverse kindsof practices, even though they may look similar on
the surface. I mean, you may see something thatlooks familiar because you know the history ofconceptual art that is based primarily in Europe
and America. But then, when you start talking to a
dealer whom you never seen or met before, andlearn that the work is by an artist considered to be
the father of conceptual art in Armenia-I am not
making that up, that is a real example-the story
completely changes.
So I do think that the languages or vocabularies of contemporary art, globally, are limited. WhatI mean by that, is that it's also so easy to just settlewith this tailback saying, "we are all different, havedifferent contexts, speak different languages." I do
think that there is a shared language of contemporary art-I shouldn't say singular shared languagesof contemporary art in existence, but there arelimited numbers of languages-especially in thisage of the internet, easier travel, and large-scale
exhibitions that bring artists together. I think they
all get informed and learn from each other, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that they are homogenized and are taken away of all their differences
and independence . I think it is just more about
being able to speak to each other while retaining
your specificities.

Joan-san mentioned that the Triennale-lndia
was one of the influencing factors, and Gridthiyasan also spoke about "P_A_U_S_E," the Gwangju
Biennale in 2002, as being influential. Furthermore,
I heard that Ade-san is also planning a biennale inIndonesia which is scheduled to open in
November this year. In Japan, too, there are international exhibitions held every year, with thenumbers increasing in the last five or six years. I
am curious what the people of Asia think about
these international exhibitions. Especially,Il!illiQI

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Ade -san, how do you plan to carry out the exhibi tion and what are your thoughts on these largescale, international exhibitions that aremushrooming all across the globe?

I can't speak for the globe, but I think there isa specific reason for every context. In Indones ia
or maybe Jakarta, for instance, I think there
should be a bigger platform to talk about certain
issues or discourse, and, I think, the biennale canfunction as that platform. In Jakarta or Indonesia,
we don't have the tradition of museums . We just
don't have that.
In this kind of condition, I think it's really
important also for the biennale to try to find strategies . For the Jakarta Biennale 2009 , when I was
the artistic director, for example, we combined theindoor "exhibition" experiences with the outdoor
experiences of the city, having really diverse projects and public art spreading into the streets.
That's the only way that we could reach out asmuch as possible. Of course, when I say "public
art," I am aware that the experiences of audiences
who have the tradition of museums and those who
don't are quite very different . So I think in thatsense, also, I think we can say that we are sort ofcreating new approaches and experiences as well
as something that can't be simply reduced to
become the "official" arts. This is particularly sobecause most of our audience, maybe seventy oreighty percent of them, has never been to galleries
to see art. It is not their custom to do so.
So in that sense, what we are trying to
explore or achieve is totally different compared to ,maybe, other biennales in the world . When I
participate in biennales as an artist or a collective,of course, it has always been really exciting, but, atthe same time, it has also very challenging . When
we are invited to participate in one of those largescale exhibitions , we always don't know what toexpect. We know what we do within our own
context, but to go and do something in anotherplace, in another context, is not an easy task

Di,.cuss1on

because it is not just about transporting art
objects. Working on another site is always more
complicated. So it 's always been a creative process for us as well. It has also always been a crucial point for us.

Thank you very much. I think the discussion could
continue further, but I think we would like to close fortoday. We will have the third and final panels tomorrow, so we hope we will see many of you again.
Thank you, again.

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Day2
Session3
Artistic Engagementsof
PublicInstitutions:
The Visualizationand
Discourseof "Asia"
The Southeast Asian art scenes of the 1990s have inno small part been affected by the artistic exchanges
conducted by Singaporean, Australian, and Japanesepublic museums and government bodies. Throughpractices that connect the differences in historical
processes, shared awareness, and visions in the arts,
these institutions not only instigated the transformation of art scenes from individual units to a joined web
or field called "Asia"-from the national to theregional-but also opened the path toward its entire
discourse. Entering the 2000s, the rise of internationalart exhibitions and the art market, followed by thefurther developments in museums stimulated the
expansion of audiences and consumers of the arts,
ultimately shifting the expected roles of the "public."
The attention directed at these initiatives by Australia
and Japan, as well the local artistic engagements in
Singapore, were elaborated and evaluated in thissession.

~058

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Contexts and Predicaments:
Singapore 1996-2006

Art Studies_02

Ahmad Mashadi
Head, National University of Singapore Museum

Preamble

Kaplan: What do you think about t he idea of choosing a city and a decade as a way offraming thoughts about the relationsh ip between modernism and urbanity. m.
From its attempts to establish a regiona l art market to institutions, Singapore's current
position of privilege is remarkable, seen as an inevitable expression of its economic status
and the continuing project of the global city . ~ This year it will inaugurate a new National
Gallery, an institution that will displace the Singapore Art Museum as a premier curatorial
agent for Southeast Asian modern art. Although arguably formative in its shape and direction, the Singapore Biennale very much remains in place as a major event regionally.
Singapore is among few Asian countrie s to maintain a permanent pavilion at the Venice
Biennale. It also continues to present Southeast Asia to the Western public, the latest being" Secret Archipelago" at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, organized by the National Heritage
Board. All in all, Singapore struggles to condition itself to the tropes of nation and culturethat defines production and reception of art in the region, attempting ways in which
conceptions of region can be afforded as signs that are simultaneously appropriative andproductive. Opened in March this year (2015), "Secret Archipelago" is promoted as an
exhibition that exposes a region with " f irm roots in ancient tradition ... plunged into an
ultra-contemporary world ."The opening quote comes from an interview question raised by Janet Kaplan to curators
participating in "Century City: Art and Culture in the Modem Metropolis" (Tate Modern, 2009).
In responding to Rasheed Araeen's critic ism that the third world cities of Lagos and Bombay
were presented from a "sociological point of view, while the rest are being presented froman art-historical point of view ." Olu Oguibe remarked that the turn was a necessary one
given the curatorial focus on cities, their geo-economic conditions, density, and stratifica tions, and the need to suggest that "art is relational." Its value is to be harnessed by way oflocating it within the matrix of production and consumption, in particular , the tropes thatdefine the modes of art making, the spaces it occupies in social and political contexts, andways that the broader discourses of nations and communities are regarded, in this case, inAfrican and the Indian Sub-Continent. Consider this against "Secret Archipelago" exhibition's urging for its Paris visitors to "leave behind your Western vision and interpretation ofart." Here, illumination is defined by a temporary suspension held values and regard, not asways to complicate expectations and receptions .
Among world biennales, the associated struggles against or for hegemony, symptomized by the decentralization of art, away from the previously centres of Europe, according
to Oliver Marchart, "also needs to be understood as a ... struggle for consensus and con sent: for a specific legitimate yet imagined cartography of our world. This symbolic struggle is simultaneously carried out in local, national and transnational contexts ." ~ Further,
Marchart argues that "biennials can also be called 'hegemonic machines,' which link the
local to the global within the field of symbolic struggles for legitimation ." ~ Singapore

Ahmad Mashad1

Presentation1