Chapter1

031

The idea of "Asia" should not be upheld asrepresenting an oppositional value . Such claims
are not only a simplistic reversal of Orientalism but
could also lead to the uncritical distortion of thecharacteristics of Western modernism in binary
terms . The counterpart of the fantasy of Asia ends
up being the fantasy of the West. This opposition isa convenient formula that anyone can understand,but it is also a dangerous political formula thatlacks substantiation . Anti-modernist theories thatappeal to a na·ive sense of justice often derive fromthis formula-for example, the popular rhetoric that
Cubism is the result of the colonialist exploitation ofprimitive art ( in this case, African art) .
When dealing with another culture it iscertainly "morally good" to treat it as equivalent
to one's own. The problem is that it is easy for
oppositionalism to hide behind the virtue of equality .
The rhetorical critique of cultural exploitation isinevitably linked to reductive claims that the only
acceptable approach to understanding the cultureof the other is by assessing it in its original context.
If this morality is required of artists as well as ofcultural anthropologists doing fieldwork, it becomesvirtually impossible to refer to another culture in awork of art. We are reduced to the either/or choiceof accepting the other totally or giving up on any
kind of communication.
This is the trap into which multiculturalism
tends to fall all too easily. A certain multiculturalist
says, "The standards for judging art are produced
within particular histories and societies, and it isnecessary to take the cool, relativistic viewpoint thatthey are not one or universal." What results from this"good morality," however, is the ideological position
that "Western modernism applies only in the West ."The oppositional concept of Asia that follows fromthis conclusion gets turned into a field of repressive
discourse . This is because oppositionalism in thename of equality (what might also be called absolutist
relativism) in fact entails stifling the ability to imagine
the other. When the West is viewed as a monolithic
set of incompatible values, those criticizing the Westare guilty of the same monolithic thinking perpetrated by the West, only in reverse. The prejudiced
viewpoint that reduces the other to a single entity is
not confined to the dominant culture, but can just as
easily be maintained by the opposition. Without any
consideration for the diversity of the West, with allits contradictions, excessive privilege is uncriticallyaccorded to the peripheral status of Asia . Cautionis all the more required when this situation is takensuperficially as a "new ideology:·
If one wishes to take an objective, relative
position, it would be better to say that Asian andWestern values should not be opposed as if they
were entirely incompatible . The standards of judgment created out of a certain history and culture
can share the judgments and values of a different
culture . Works that seem excellent to us can also
be recognized as excellent according to the other's

1995

ArtaaCrttlclsm

values, and vice versa . It is precisely because thiskind of trust is possible that we accept multiculturalism as a beneficial idea.
I believe that our understanding of modernism
has become highly distorted since the convenientterm "postmodern ism" came into popular use in the
1980s. For example, it is often said that universal
values are an illusion produced by modernism . Even
if this were the case, it is a fact that many civilizations
prior to the modern age also aspired to universalism ,so this illusion is not unique to modernism . Also, it iswrong to claim that multiculturalism is anti-modern .
The intensification of ethnocentrism, regionalism
and the multiplicity of values is also inherent inmodernism . If we say that multiculturalism ispostmodern ism, then postmodern ism must also be
considered to be an aspect of modernism-modernism being the name given to a massive rupture .

The modernism of Indones ia can certainly be said tohave created continuous ruptures in the culture ofthat country. In art , this situation is vividly illustrated
by the dilemma of the PERSAGI(PersatuanAhli-Ahli
Gambar Indonesia ; Union of Indonesian Artists), started in1937 under the leadership of Sudjojono . The grouppromoted the independence of art from ethicalrestrictions and tradition while at the same time call ing from a democratic standpoint for the recognitionof the ethical views and tastes of the common
people . Another example is the conflict seen in the
1950s and '60s between the realist, expressionist
style of the Yogya School , with its strong social consciousness, and the abstract style of the Bandung
School, which departed from Cubism in search ofever-greater formal purity. These conflicts and discords were neither caused by cultural immaturity,
nor were they the phenomena of trivialized frontiers,
but rather they should be viewed as the inevitableaporia implied by modernism. Changing tack , theseissues might also relate to how one perceives theparticular context of modern Japanese art history.
Although the Japanese case is certainly unique interms of its infrastructure and its stylistic changes,
there is a need to evaluate these particularities as
issues that are inherent to modernism itself, rather
than as a "difference" from the "center ."In a symposium held in Tokyo last year
(Contemporary Art Symposium 1994: "The Potential of Asian
Thought"), Jim Supangkat compared the Indonesianterm seni rupa (visual arts), usually understood as

the translation of the English " fine art;· and theword kagunan, a concept of art specific to classicalIndonesian culture . He pointed out the complex
relationship between the semantic rules of the
traditional culture and the genres imported fromthe West .M This situation is reminiscent of that inJapan, where the words bijutsu (fine art), kaiga ( painting), and ch6koku (sculpture ) were coined to designate art genres introduced at the beginning of the
Meiji period . Because these categories eventually01
Jim Supangkat , " IndonesianContemporary Art : A Continuation"(conference paper presented atContemporary Art Symposium 1994:''The Potential of Asian Thought, "Japan Foundation ASEAN Culture
Center, Tokyo, 1994)

Shaping the History of Art
In SOUtheut Asia

02lbid.,61.

03
Ibid.
04
Christine Clark, ''The Natural City:
Yogyakarta Sculptor Anusapati
Interviewed," in Art and Asia-Pacific1,
no. 3 (July 1994): 74

032

absorbed elements of the Japanese tradition, it has
become difficult to see the "difference " between
the Western and Japanese concepts. For example,
when instructors were invited from Italy to open theTechnical Fine Arts School in 1876, courses in painting, sculpture and architecture were established inaccordance with the Western art system . However,even when this school was closed and the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts was established by nationalist
idealists, the classifications of painting and sculpture continued to be used without any sense that
this was problematic .
It might be most appropriate to say thatmodernism did promote the idea of universal values
based on rationalism, but as a result it also produced
unavoidable conflicts(sometimes latent)between
particular traditions . If differences exist, they are
not differences from modernism, but differences
caused by modernism .

Contemporary art in Indonesia actually began in
the latter half of the 1970s with the emergence of
the New Art Movement . The New Art Movement
was a movement of young artists from Yogyakarta
and Bandung who organized in protest against the
judging of the Second Jakarta Painting Biennaleof 1974, which awarded prizes to decorative stylesof painting. The protesters published the "Black
December Statement," fiercely criticizing the lack ofsocial and political consciousness in decorative art
and declaring that it was symptomatic of the lackof creativity in Indonesian art. Attracting the ire of
the jury, they plunged ahead on a course of "artistic
rebellion ." The idea of "new art" they championed
went beyond the rejection of decorative art to thediscarding of the concept of "fine art" itself, limited
to painting and sculpture.
Naturally, this way of thinking required a new
definition of seni rupa . According to Supangkat,
who was personally involved in the movement, thekinds of art favored by its artists were "installations,ready-mades, photographs, found objects andphoto-realist paintings ." ~ Generally speaking,it was an anti-formalist movement, making provocative use of vulgar everyday reality. The artists
involved threw out the concept of seni rupa (thecategoriesof paintingand sculpture)and attempted totear down the barriers between high art and low
or popular art.
Many of the artists emphasized social criticism, and works by artists like FX Harsono (threeof hisworks madeat the beginningof the movementare
reproducedfor this exhibition)could be described aspolitical art . According to Harsono (who livedin
Yogyakartain the 1970s and now livesin Jakarta),eventhough it was organized in 1974 as a protest movement, the New Art Movement arose spontaneously
in both Yogyakarta and Bandung, with neither side
being particularly aware of the other. They armed
themselves with theory after the fact . It was the art

TatehataAklra

Art Studies_03

critic Sanento Yuliman , a teacher at the Bandung
Institute of Technology, who noticed the antimodernist tendency common to the two and joined
them together under the name of the New Art
Movement. Yuliman also provided the theoreticalbacking for the issues they raised by reexamining
the definition of seni rupa . As the movement
developed, the works of Harsono and others began
to take on the character of installations, although
their post-sculptural, post-painterly experiments
were known at the time as "an alternative idiom" ofseni rupa. The word instalasi (installation)came into
common use in the latter part of the 1980s under the
influence of overseas trends.
The New Art Movement was often criticizedby the conservative art establishment as being
derivative of Pop Art, but Harsono says that theartists were more interested in Neo-Dada thanPop. Their aggressive involvement in low art seems
closer to the audacious, chaotic quality of Robert
Rauschenberg's "combine paintings," which "tryto act in the gap" between art and life, than thecool, masterful "icons" of modernity characteristicof Pop Art . Also, the reality of Indonesia wasincompatible with the decadent, nihilistic attitude
Pop artists held toward a rich consumer society .
The kind of found objects used in New York for junkart would be more likely to be salvaged and reusedin Indonesia, taking on the sense of bricolage . Theinterest of the New Art Movement artists in low art
was closely linked to the problems of poverty in thecity, and the maintenance of traditional culture in
the rural regions.

I described the New Art Movement as anti-modernist, but what it rejected in modern art was "avantguardism , the purity of expression, the individualismof the artist , the tendency toward the decorative as
acceptable or formal art" (Jim Supangkat).~ At thetime, young artists understood anti-modernism as
anti-formalism and so had begun to think in postmodernist terms (anti-avantguardism,anti-individualism).
As stated above, I believe that the "will to foment
discord" exemplified by these artists is in itself aninternal criticism of modernism, but in any case,
it is noteworthy that this radical spirit of criticism
was shared by many young Indonesian artists in thelatter part of the 1970s, especially because it roughly
coincides with the critical reevaluation of the uniquecontext of art that was then taking place in othercountries like Italy, Germany and Japan. If one were
to take an ironic view, the anti-universalism raisedby postmodernism itself seems to have been
"universally" shared by young artists in different
cities and countries as a spontaneously arisinghistorical spirit .
At any rate, the issues and methods involved in
the New Art Movement-that is, the social and political criticism and the use of the installation format
and found objects-would be further entrenched byChapter1

033

the questioning of cultural identity that took place inIndonesia in the 1980s, and continue to be applied tothe art of the present day. Three Indonesian artists
born around 1960 are introduced in the contemporary section of this exhibition, and I would like toexamine the current situation of Indonesian art withparticular reference to their work .

Anusapati has been making wood sculptures since
he returned to Indonesia in 1990 after studying in
New York. To him, wood is more than just a material
with plastic possibilities . It is profoundly connected
to his views of civilization and of nature . He is an
artist who clearly understands the massive powerof a block of wood, the effect of contrasting hollows
and volumes, and the simple beauty of the surfaceof ordinary wood, but he treats it as more than aconvenient metier for sculpture . As he faces thewood, he entrusts his chisel with his ideas about theculture and customs of the place where he was bornand raised. That is why Anusapati uses only treesthat are native to Java.
His works often take the form of implements or
furnishings used in everyday life: for example, boats,wardrobes and percussion instruments. Although
they do not always refer specifically to a particular
object, the forms have a metaphorical quality thatevokes images latent in the memories of ordinary
life. Anusapati's primitive forms are related to his
dream of bringing back a way of life based on theearth and a simple relationship between people
and things that is now disappearing even from farmcommunities. From a different point of view, thiswork reflects a quiet and personal response to asociety that is destroying nature and older waysof life. That the outward appearance of the work
resembles tools and furnishings is, of course, afiction derived from the unique critical imaginationof the artist-a virtual reality that produces a strange
sense of ambiguity.
In an interview, Anusapati has said, "These
forms simply pop up in my mind. They come frommy subconscious world, from the world of my innerself." Q! The fact that his work sometimes contains
a concealed sensuality may be due to unconscious
desires aroused by the spirit of the natural material.
Thinking with wood is a way of thinking that, forAnusapati, directly links society and the individual
immersed in regional customs .
Nindityo Adipurnomo's current work is basedon the motif of the konde, a traditional female wig,
and a recent example is included in this exhibition .
The konde is intended for ritual use, as in thewedding ceremony . Its form differs according to
the ceremony or ritual in which it is used, and also
reflects the age and social status of the wearer .
Seeing the form of the konde as a symbol of social
oppression pervading the history of Java, Nindityo
seems to be pushing his unique explorationof Javanese culture through paintings and the1996

Art u Criticism

choreography of Javanese dance toward a more
profound analysis of the social system.
The work shown here, Who Wants to Becomea Javanese, is constructed in the form of a mirror
stand. Copper vessels in the form of konde areattached to either side of the mirror . Inside thesepartially opened jars one can glimpse wooden
models of konde and cosmetics like nail polishand lipstick. There is also a carved wooden konde
attached to the center of the mirror. The title isclearly ironic, but the artist's intention is not obvious.
The work is a puzzle, raising questions and inviting
different interpretations. Perhaps the elegant
mirror stand is a symbol of bourgeois life, whereina woman constructs herself to meet the social
expectations symbolized by the konde. This sort
offeminist reading is certainly possible . Also, thecosmetics arranged together with the konde could
be read as showing the conflict between Javanesetradition and Western modernism. Or perhaps one
could say that the modernity that has inserted itself
into tradition determines the current condition of"gender" in an institutional system of women's
clothing and cosmetics.
In any case, this work demonstrates a senseof the objective criticism of their own culture bya generation steeped in postmodernism, and thishumorous viewpoint that sees "exoticism" ironicallyis fascinating. Like Anusapati, Nindityo lives in
Yogyakarta, and the quiet flow of time in this ancient
capital of central Java seems to form the backgroundfor the elegant ambiguity of their works, appearing
in each in different ways . But of course this may be asuperficial impression, since I have only been studying Indonesian art for a short time .
In contrast, Tisna Sanjaya is a printmakerliving in Bandung . He lived in Germany between
1991 and 1995 and his work, mainly etchings, isdirectly influenced by Neo-Expressionism . These
monochrome pictures overflowing with a proliferation of images depict extreme subjects like death,violence and oppression, allegorically portraying theartist and the absurd conditions that surround him .
Their imagery may be mythological or theatrical,
but the artist is obviously engaged in a struggle
with the absurdity of real society. In the dark
spaces dominated by some ominous power, figures
representing both victims and perhaps saviors areshown in despair and isolation, and yet emanating
light. They demonstrate the artist's determination to
go on living in the face of oppression .
Tisna also makes frequent use of a skull-like
form, which at times appears as a spherical cagethat traps shut notions of freedom, and at others asa ghost floating behind a bustling crowd of people.
These images are also disquieting. The anonymous
darkness looking down on the chaotic conditions in
the pictorial space may be the artist's own shadow.
Although depicting a swirling, discordant drama,
Tisna's powerful imagination does not simply appeal
to violent emotion. It is joined to a calm, criticalShapingthe Historyof Art
lnSOutheutAlla

Author's Note

A number of suggestions for this article were recervedfrom direct interviews
with Jim Supangkat, Yustiono, and FX
Harsono. I would like to thank them fortheorhelp.

Essa 04

attitude that views everything through the objective
eye of a third party .
These etchings fascinate by weaving a spaceof intersecting light and darkness out of finely
vibrating lines. Tisna observes the dangerous
rise of neo-Nazis in post-reunification Germany
and the problems caused by modernization inIndonesia though the expressive line of the etchingprocess, but he also succeeds in creating a hardand profound lyricism in a monochrome world . His
allegories reveal and accuse, but also find hope inpoetic imagination .

These three artists have all studied in the West,

TatehataAklra

034

ArtStudies_OJ

and undoubtedly this experience has helped themto understand the ambivalent aspects of modernism as well as to achieve the objective powers ofobservation necessary to see themselves in relative terms. Of course, this kind of consciousness
is not the exclusive privilege of people who havestudied overseas . Many of the younger generationof Indonesian artists have developed vital forms ofexpression marked by critical irony, a bold senseof satire and the rich sense of humor unique to thiscountry. Their view of the world, which has escapeda narrow antagonism, should be good news to those
who believe in the possibility of sharing the culturalvalues of others, although, of course , one needs toguard against overly optimistic expectations.

CllapterI

035

Shaping the History of Art
In SoutheaatAala..

FiveElements:
An Abbreviated Accountof Installation Art inSoutheast Asia

JulieEwington
Julie Ewington isa writer, curator andbroadcasterliving andworking in
Sydney. A specialist in Australian andSoutheast Asian contemporary art.
she was lead curator in Australian Art
at Queensland Art Gallery IGallery of
Modem Art from 1997-2014, and acontributor to the Gallery's acclaimed
Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary
Art exhibition series from 1996-2012 .
The author of monographs on Fiona Hall
(2005) and Del Kathryn Barton (2014),
since 2014 she has written numerous
catalogue essays and articles. andreviewed exhibitions in Australia andinternationally, including for TheMonthly
andArtforum . A major survey exhibitionof work by sculptor Bronwyn Oliver
opened in November 2016 at TarraWarra
Museum of Art, in Victoria, Australia .

Installation as a term and as a practice is mapped
onto a region in this essay. The main problem is to laybare its origin and its source. Julie Ewington marks
the 1960s in Europe and the Americas as a possible
ground from which installation emerged, largely
through the innovations in collage,assemblage,
and Environments. Botshe alsocarvesout a space
for a different emergencein temples,shrines andcustomary observances in Southeast Asia. She thenproposes another layer of a possible trajectory: the"contemporary context of _globaLcommunications" inwhich the circulation of ideas, forms and technologies
of making art is vigorous. The author offers a tentative
historical context for installation in the region inplaces like the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia,
Malaysia and Singapore. She recognizes a dissident
aspect in the creative formation of the practice andspeculates onwtw:-it has inspired artis;ts'iiff~;&itheast
Asia: "imme~ing
withs
the
excitements cli~!«JM ·workingcollaboratively.
thecontext of art, ofof imported cul
arises from installwith the "indigeninto projects either
cultural engineerinregard, installation
anxiety of identity a
Finally, she points oregional economy athe late 1980s throughmovement of artists

Source:Originally published as"Five Elements : An AbbreviatedAccount of Installation Art in SouthEast Asia," in Art and AsiaPacific 2,
no .1(1995) : 108-115.

Shaping the History of Art
InSOutheastAsia

036

01
lain Chambers , M1grancy, Cuhure, ldentfty(London: Routledge, 1994), 72 .

02
Sompom Rodboon ," Thai Contemporary
lnstallation ;'Att Monthly Australia, no. 72(August 1994): 20-21 .

03
See Rachel Mayo , Att and AsiaPacffic 1,
no . 1 (1993), for a classic statementof the philosophy of the Indigenous
Art Movement in the Philippines , andFlaudette May V. Datum's critical reply," Look Who's Talking Back Now ," Manila
Chronicle, January 30, 1994.

04
I was fortunate to hear Yeoh Jin Lengpresent his research at the ASEAN workshop on indigenous materials , Manila ,May 1993.

The Occident continues to secure itself as
subject, the origin and destination of critical
discourses, while simultaneously ignoring theprocesses and mediations-imperialism, neocolonialism , capitalism, the Western mediathat violently brought those differences, those"natives," those other cultures, into our world ,simultaneously shaping and distributing them .
-lain Chambers Q1

This is a brief, probably premature - certainly rashsketch concerning installation art in Southeast Asia .
Like installation art , this offering is not a permanent
affair . If such disclaimers are theoretical rituals, nocustom should be dismissed as empty of meaning .
But one must begin to speak, to exchange observations, to essay forward .
Installation is the international artistic currencyof the present. But where was it minted? Coinage isnotoriously promiscuous, caring nothing for mythsof origin, less about destinations . Circulation is its
essential aspect. All that is required is the fiction ofvalue, and exchange will occur . Standard accounts
suggest installation originated in Europe and theUnited States, from collage, assemblage and theEnvironments of the 1960s, as a postmodernist
response to the orthodoxies of 20th-century life.
Now another powerful narrative insists that a far
older lineage exists in the temples, shrines andcustomary observances of Southeast Asia . Neither
story is the entire truth. But both are essential forunderstanding installation art in Southeast Asia . And
in the precise relations between the two narratives
can be glimpsed another possibility: the contemporary context of global communications permits
and produces remarkable cultural syntheses, fromelements of more widely diverse origins than art
history (though not traders) had previously imagined .
In the 1990s, the international forum for the arts
has at last opened up to Southeast Asia. Installation
has its own history in the region, but its renewedinternational importance in the last decade has been
seized upon by Southeast Asian artists, deliberately and with vigor. As Thai art historian Somporn
Rodboon suggested recently: "There is no doubt thatthe influence of installations comes from the West,as well as Japan:· ~ At exhibitions and conferences,
artists in the region are in contact with colleagues
from elsewhere . Publications circulate, such as theone on Andy Goldsworthy I saw passed around in
the Philippines in mid-1993 . But if Goldsworthy's
work reconfirmed artists in their use of natural
materials, his works were not their initial impetus .
How may one interpret contemporary installation art in Southeast Asia? Experimentation is necessarily refigured in different contexts . The form was
fitfully practiced in the mid-1970s in Indonesia andthe Philippines, and about a decade later in Thailand
by a small dissident movement. It was definitely aminority practice . But for different reasons in each

Julie Ewington

ArtStudies_03

country-an abbreviated account risks conflations
and oversights-installation is undergoing a renaissance in Southeast Asia . Why is this so? Installation
art-even the term itself-has been adopted because
it is congenial to the cultural contexts of Southeast
Asia . The blurring between art and life sought by
postwar American artists is part of the attraction
Southeast Asian artists see in installation. If the form
itself is transformed by its relocation, installation
literally reconfigures social space.
If this development invites a repetition of older
mythologies about Western artistic dominance andEastern derivativeness, it does not usefully accountfor cultural change . Let me immediately dismiss theidea that installation artists are the fashion victims ofSoutheast Asian art . A secure future lies in painting,the artistic mode favored by all international elites .
Yet installation offers opportunities many artists
admire: immediacy, working with specific sites,
the excitements of combining disparate materials,
working collaboratively and, not unimportantly,
economy , if local materials are used. Further,
installation permits redeployment, in the context ofart , of motifs and materials familiar from social life.
While the tag "Indigenous Art" has been coinedfor it, ~ Southeast Asian installation art is also afine example of the successful indigenization ofimported cultural practice .
1 Indigenous Sources for Installation
Indigenous cultural traditions in Southeast Asia arebeing reassessed. Textiles, ceramics, architectural
decorations and entire rituals are recognized
as invaluable resources for cultural reiteration .
This recognition has strongly influenced artists,many deeply involved in the work of historical
recuperation: Yeoh Jin Leng's remarkable study ofthe ceramic heritages of Malaysia is an excellent
example. JM A new sense of the past is now bearing
on the future. The arts of the postmodern era aretaking nourishment from premodern cultures in an
outright rejection of Euro-American dominance ofcontemporary art . Artists in the Philippines haveeven claimed installation as the quintessential art ofcontemporary Southeast Asia . This bold attempt toclaim artistic legitimacy for contemporary art sees
installation drawing on local sources not merely
as a counter-assertion to the cultural "authority"of
the West, but as a legitimate artistic form. But the
reductive formula-if painting is modern, installationmust be the child of postmodernity-mustberejected. Reinterpreting indigenous cultural sources
is not confined to installation art . In Indonesia, A.O.
Pirous, whose paintings are based on the visualenvironment of his native Aceh, and Heri Dono,
who works with Javanese wayang traditions, aredeveloping new vocabularies from local idioms.
The nuances of these stories depend on thehistories of each country (each region). on the history
and resolution of colonization, and on the present

037

Chapter1

forms of neocolonialism . No single narrative suffices. But the experience of painful modernization
has resulted in artistic controversy around thecultural heritage of the region . Installation drawing
on indigenous sources is not universally admiredin Southeast Asia. It is hotly contested by factions
who want entry to the world of international art,
but disagree on the terms of acceptance, and who
participate in discourses about the appropriate
forms of contemporary culture and the modern
Southeast Asian nation. This is not a debate
between "conservatives " and "progressives ." Artdrawing on indigenous references may support
political opposition to the established regime, or
may be invoked in the name of the state.
In the Philippines, artists from the Baguio Arts
Guild revere the pre-Hispanic cultures of highland
Luzon, a source of oppositional strength to past andpresent colonialisms. ( In 1993,the young artists of theBaguio Arts Guild wanted llocano, the local lingua franca,
used on their festival banner, instead of Filipino or English.) It

seems that the tenuous sense of Philippines national
unity demands that artists seek sources of inspiration beyond the dominant social discourses . But thepolicies of the Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas(Cultural Center of the Philippines), under the artistic
direction of Nicanor G. Tiongson, work for a national
identity constructed through a shared lexicon
synthesized from all the cultures of the archipelago,attempting to make the very cultural diversity of
the archipelago serve nationalism . Thus in thePhilippines reiterating the cultures of the past has (atleast) two destinations : national cohesion throughcultural engineering, or regional resistance. ~The case in Thailand is entirely different, though
Thai artists also identify with the project of exploringindigenous cultures. Montien Boonma's elegant
pavilions at the Adelaide Festival in March 1994
drew on the structure and meditative purpose of thewat, in a confident redeployment of the religious andsocial customs Montien himself, a devout Buddhist,reveres. The value of this cultural heritage has been
articulated by Somporn Rodboon, who explicitly
compares installations to the ancient arts which created the ambience of Thai Buddhist temples, both,in their different ways, combining many sensory
stimuli . Ql! But this reading of Thai cultural history
derives from an inheritance which has survived,
apparently, the advent of modernity. I have not heard
criticisms about the lack of Thai identity in works incontemporary idioms by Thai artists, as I have heard
challenges posed to Filipino artists . Thai artists seemto be free of anxieties about cultural identity-or
at least the national myth in Thailand supports thesense of national cohesion, effectively muting thevoice of regional minorities . m:
On the other hand, in multicultural Singapore,
installation artists draw from the rich cohabiting
heritages of the Chinese, Indian and Malay communities, as in Simryn Gill's glorious roll-call ofdifference and community, a long line of Malaysian

1995

noses cast in tin. In Singapore, the history of modernist repression of socially inconvenient difference
has made art involving cultural recuperation especially valuable. Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran,
artists of two different generations and ethnic
heritages, are remarkable in this respect. But theirwork is in a distinct minority in the city-state, where
the presence of Chinese traditional arts, Nanyang
School watercolor painting and the aggressive
pursuit of modern art styles by powerful patrons
points to contending tradit ions and expectations
with considerable political support . In Singapore,
installation art participates in the delicate balances
struck between the communities as much as anyother practice in social life.
These installation projects are not without
critics. Indeed, nostalgia for the indigenous pastand the troubling claims of "authenticity" made for
installation art based on local sources are regularly
challenged as romantic and parasitical on tradition, inappropriate for a modern society, and artists
using the customs of cultural minorities are subject
to accusations of cultural imperialism, practiced
inside national boundaries instead of across them.
Nevertheless the work of artists like Junyee, Tang
Da Wu and Montien Boonma has clearly opened up
new possibilities for Southeast Asian artists .

As the experience of highly significant impermanent
forms is already part of the audience's cultural
expectations, it is hardly surprising that installation(and the performances associated w ith it) offers morecongenial forms than paint ing and sculpture
introduced from the West . In the countries ofSoutheast Asia, oral traditions remain extremely
strong, and are immediately available to artists
working with non-elite audiences. Performance,in all its manifestations, is at the heart of the arts
in the region, whether relig ious or customary. But
this is not performance as a cultural form, but as asocial force . Notions of community are far stronger
in Southeast Asian societies than the sense of theindividual personality which animates the practiceof art in Western cultures .
Thus the acting out of shared community beliefs
through social rituals is a potent source for artists .
Heri Dono's Kuda Bina/, awkwardly out of context
at the 1994 Adelaide Festival, was first performed in
Yogyakarta in 1992, when Heri recruited local becak
drivers to participate in a modern reworking of thistraditional trance dance . .Q! This is not a forgotten
tradition, but a tool for communication between theartist and the immediate community-an urgent
necessity where rapid modernization and economicchanges are eroding customary forms of social
cooperation. The forms that shared action takes are
not immediately apparent: at the Baguio Arts Festival,
I came to realize that what had seemed a peripheral
activity, the incessant percussion accompanying

FiveElements: AnAbbreviatedAccountof InstallationArt 1nSoutheastAsia

05
See Nicanor G.Tiongson.ed ., Tuklas
Smmg : Essayson the Philippme Arts
(Manila : Sentrong Pangkultura ng
Pilipinas , 1991). 5.
06

Sompom , "Thai Contemporary
Installation ," 21.

07
Apinan Poshyananda , Modern Mm

Thailand: Nineteenth and Twenueth
Centuries (Singapore : Oxford University
Press, 1992), 207ff.

08
See Anne Virgo 's firsthand account of
the performance at the 1992 Yogyakarta
Biennial inMMonthlyAustralia , no . 54
(October 1992): 2

Shaping the History of Art

038

In SoutheutAsla

09
Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The
Remaking of Social Analysis (London:
Routledge, 1993), 20. First published 1989
by Beacon Press.

every installation, was in fact the very medium andlanguage of social interaction , the shared activity thatbound artists from different countries together more
surely than speech.
In the Philippines, the sense of community
cohesion expressed in bayanihan is the highest social
good . A series of installations by Roberto Villanueva
in 1993 and 1994 drew on this traditional sense ofcommunity-works so extensive that they mustof necessity be shared. But these earth sculpturesand excavations in the form of a human silhouette ,drawing on the idea of rebirth and renewal, were also
intended as forms of ritual healing at the physical,
social and psychic levels. As an artist aware of theprofessional contexts of installation , Villanueva
documents his works , but an essential part of theirartistic function ing is not their appearance, however
imposing; it is the opportunity that is offered forshared group act ion by the community .
These installations may be characterized as
the intersections of several cultural practices, as thecultures of Southeast Asia are the "busy intersec tions" of many beliefs, to paraphrase the anthropolo gist Renato Rosaldo writing about llongot rituals in
Luzon, Philippines . Rosaldo suggests that "cultures
can arguably be conceived as a ... porous array ofintersections where distinct processes crisscrossfrom within and beyond [their] borders ." ~ Rosaldo
also suggests this perspective is better able torecognize local perceptions and contexts . A universalist perspective is rejected , the older insistence
on integrated cultural wholes abandoned, in favorof addressing intersecting and hybridized elements .
Thus contemporary art in the region simultane ously draws from traditional sources, but is also
legitimately engaged in the realm of speculation
we call art . Indeed, this ambiguity is recognized in
the uneasiness with which many Filipino (andother)observers receive contemporary works based on
ritual, like those of Roberto Villanueva. Efficacious
works are also dangerous works .

3 The Setting: The New Prosperity
The development of local modes of installation inSoutheast Asia may be read as evidence of the newmood of self-confidence in the region , one fruit ofpeace and prosperity . A growing sense of indepen dent identity in the postcolonial period, whether the
result of freedom from actual colonization or froman internalized sense of dependence on European
cultures, is an essential aspect of this historicalmoment in Asia . It is sustained by extraord inary
economic growth and the greater internationalpresence of the region 's political figures . In this new
mood of assertion, the confidence expressed byartists and intellectuals in the cultural heritages of
the region is contagious .
With greater prosperity some artists (not all)have access to tools and ideas previously inaccessible. Japanese video cameras, American CDs, English

Julie Ewington

Art Studies_OJ

books , catalogues from Australia: the troph ies of the
new international ism are being brought back to thestudios . The acceptance of installat ion in the region
has also been stimulated by artists participating in
global arts arenas, and, importantly, where previously communication between art ists in the region
was comparatively limited, now it is grow ing rapidly.
Intellectuals and artists from Southeast Asia arebeing drawn ever closer to the networks of global
art istic exchange .
In the expansionary climate of the late 1980s
in Southeast Asia , installation art found a recep t ive environment . This is a cont ingent but fortunate conjunction . At the exact moment when many
Southeast Asian artists and intellectuals were com ing into the renewed confidence of their powers ,installation was the international artistic mode madeavailable through expanded global communicat ions and travel. Its flexibility suited Southeast Asianneeds and signif icantly shaped current practice. The
irony is that the ubiquity of installation in international currency (in both senses) has fueled appeals tothe local and indigenous .

4Museums, Continuity and Impermanence

Installation occurs where impermanence meetsthe museum. Currently in an expansionary mode,museums in Europe, Japan and Australia areplaying a key role in presenting installation art fromSoutheast Asia , and benefactions are now maderegularly to ephemeral forms by the appointed
custodians of cultural permeance . Yet while themuseum's traditional brief enjoins the collection ,conservation and research of artifacts, modern
curators are acutely aware of the museum 's role
in recording, sponsoring and preserving cultural
practices . Despite the challenges it poses tostandard museum practice-the difficulties forpermanent storage and exhibition, the expensenecessary for ephemeral works- installation is thehigh -profile cuckoo in the museum 's nest, the mostfavored artform of the large exhibitions of the 1990s.
One irony of the present situation is that someof the best Southeast Asian installat ion art is seenin the museums of Australia , Japan and Germany,
its achievement seen out of original context . For
this reason, the Malaysian artist Liew Kung Yu
determined after the 1993 Asia-Pacific Triennial
in Brisbane to reinstall his work in Penang, thesource of its inspiration . Opportunities are draw ing Southeast Asian artists firmly into cosmopolitan
networks , so that a new exhibition circuit and groupof leading artists is being created , from Fukuoka to
Adelaide . This is the inevitable reward of culturalachievement, and is, in turn, the reason for it .

5_j Postmodern Asia?
In Asia, as in Australia and Euro-America, installation and other innovative artistic modes have

Chapter1

039

been associated with challenges to modernity
since the 1960s. But if installation in Southeast
Asia challenges the vocabulary of modernity, it isstill a matter for debate as to which aspect of thepostmodern era it best represents . In a region so
culturally varied, where the postmodern era coexists
temporally with the premodern and the modern inthe astonishing concatenations of daily experience,
the appeal to life before the Europeans is a powerfulartistic resource and a necessary social and political
tool. For the postmodern in Southeast Asia is not
only a story about the decay of a modernity which
has only partially and fitfully arrived, but must also
concern the future. As Homi Bhabha comments:
If the interest in postmodernism is limited to acelebration of the fragmentation of the "grandnarratives" of post-Enlightenment rationalism
then, for all its intellectual excitement, itremains a profoundly Eurocentric enterprise . !Q
Can these local heritages be recuperated to conceptions of postmodernity which do not merely mockpoverty and educational inequality but are open to
productive redeployment in the region? n Painting
is identified with Europe. In Southeast Asia it was,and is, one of the guarantees of modernity. In the
1990s, installation seems to be the paradigm art ofpostmodern ism in Southeast Asia. If the "progress"
promised by Western modernity has been shown to
be as illusory in Southeast Asia as elsewhere, associated with social disruption, ecological disaster andeconomic exploitation on a grand scale, painting
and sculpture are equally under scrutiny.
Put positively, many artists are searching forartistic forms which they feel embody the cultural

1995

aspirations of their societies. In a region withsuch complex histories of cultural interaction, it isdifficult to judge the "authenticity" of cultural forms .
Nevertheless, in installation art notions of authenticity are made to cohabit with invention, and thefigments of the past with aspirations for the future.
This is not merely the latest reworking of theEast-West debate . Nor for the increasingly complex
international arena (or arenas)will the old centerperiphery model hold. Only through attending toparticular connections, exchanges and similarities,
which need not be regional but must be substantial,
will a useful mapping of contemporary artistic
relations be made . The richness of contemporary
culture demands it. Southeast Asian artists working in installation are influencing each other andexchanging ideas with Japanese and Australianartists, and are continuing those correspondences.
As Homi Bhabha writes:
The wider significance of the postmodern
condition lies in the awareness that the epistemological "limits"of .. . ethnocentric ideas
are also the enunciat ive boundary of a rangeof other dissonant, even dissident, histories
and voices-women , the colonized minority
groups, the bearers of policed sexualities .~On the borders: this is where installation art inSoutheast Asia is located, where new crossings
with indigenous cultural forms will take place .
There are no predictions worth recording in the artssave that there are no certainties . But increasing
confidence in the rich cultural heritages of theregion has opened up a treasure-house for the
future in Southeast Asia.

Five Elementa: An AbbreviatedAccountof InstallationArt in SoutheastAsia

10
Homi Bhabha, "Beyond the Pale: Art in
the Age of Multicultural Translallon;· in1993 BiennialExhibition, exh.cat. ( NewYork: Whitney Museum of American Art,
1993),66.

11
An essential reference Is John Clark, ed.,Modern,ty,nAs,anM (Sydney: Wild
Peony, 1993).

12
Bhabha,"Beyond the Pale;' 66.

040

Art Studies_03

Shaping the History of Art
In Southeast Asia

Glimpses into the Future ofSoutheast Asian Art:

A Visionof What Art Should Be
ShiodaJunichi
Shioda Junichi is Director of the Niigata
City Art Museum. After starting his
career as a curator in 1979 at the Tochigi
Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, heworked at institutions including the
Setagaya Art Museum, the Museumof Contemporary Art Tokyo and theTokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.
In 1999, he was Commissioner of theJapan Pavilion at the 48th Venice
Biennale. He has organized numerous
exhibitions including "Real/Life: New
British Art"(1998) and "The Gift ofHope"(2000), both at the Museumof Contemporary Art Tokyo, and"Connecting with You" (2016) at the
Niigata City Art Museum. He is theauthor of books including lgirisu bijutsu
nofukei(2007).

Organized by the Muse m of Contemporary Art Tokyo,
the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art and
the Japan Foundation Asia Center, the exhibition"Art in Southeast Asia 1997: Glimpses into the Future"
surveyed contemporary art from five Southeast
Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand. This essay was included in the
exhibition catalogue. Shioda states that although rapid
economic development has led to numerous politicaland environmental issues, multiculturalism is quickly
gaining ground in these Southeast Asian countries.
The curators sought to consider how artists in thesecountries reflect these social and cultural conditions.
The 17 artists and groups in the exhibition were chosenon the basis of three themes: "From the Crossroads ofCulture," featuring artists making works that reference
cultural heritage in the wake of modernism; "TheShifting Region of the 'I,"' with artists investigating
issues of identity in fluid social environments; and"Artists Making a Social Statement," with artists
actively engaging social and political problems. In thework of the Indonesian artist Moelyono, who makes
installations in dialogue with the farmers in his village,
Shioda identifies an alternative modernism that finds
its basis in community, rather than the individuality
privileged by Western modernism. Similarly, theFilipino artist Nunelucio Alvarado uses his practiceto create solidarity with laborers and farmers andcontribute to his community. Shioda sees in such
community based practices a parallel to the work ofMiyazawa Kenji, who dreamed of building a uniquefarmers' culture in the villages of Japan's Tohoku
region. As for the five-person Filipino art group
Sanggawa, whose members maintain individual
practices even while collaborating on large murals
together, Shioda argues they are opening a newhorizon in the relationship between individual and art.
Similarly, Navin Rawanchaikul's Pha Khao Mar project,handing out the eponymous traditional Thai loincloth
to museum visitors and having them use it in their daily
lives, receives high praise from Shioda for its attempt
to stimulate communication between people throughacts of giving. All involved in their communities, these
artists seek a way to contribute to society through art.
Shioda thinks that it might be possible to see in this avision of what art should be in the future.
[KK)

Source: Art in Southeast Asia 1997:
Glimpses into the Future, exh.cat. (Tokyo:
Museum of Contemporary Art.Tokyo/
Japan Foundation Asia Center &Hiroshima: Hiroshima City Museumof Contemporary Art, 1997), 153-159 .
Translated by Stanley N. Anderson.
Revised by Andrew Maerkle, 2016 .

•Chapter1

041

A number of exhibitions of Asian art have beenorganized in Japan in recent years, eliciting a varietyof responses . 21 It would be no exaggeration to
say that this has been one of the most heatedly
debated subjects in the Japanese art world . The
surge of interest in Asian art is not limited to Japan .
Similar exhibitions have been organized in Australia
and the United States, where they have also been
the subject of much critical discussion .~ Thesegroundbreaking exhibitions have certainly not
exhausted the subject, and they are likely to befollowed by many more innovative attempts atpresenting the art of Asia . This exhibition is our own
attempt at approaching and understanding the artof the region .
Rather than attempting a broad overview of
Asian art, we have focused on five countries inSoutheast Asia : Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines ,Singapore and Thailand . By limiting the scope in thisway , we hope to get a closer look at the practices
and works of the individual artists in relation totheir particular contexts. ~ Of course , there is no
simple unity between these nations; they differ
significantly from one another in terms of history,
culture, religion and social conditions. In spite ofthese differences, however , there are many things
they undeniably have in common when compared,for example, with the countries of East Asia . There
are similarities in climate and custom , the general
outlook of the people, and certain basic elementsof history and culture. Although works of art are
produced by individuals, individuals are nurtured
and conditioned by the environments and the times
in which they live, and it is impossible for any work
to be completely independent of its time or place .
In order to understand the personal motivation of
any artist , it is necessary to understand the specificnational context in which he or she works .
During the 1990s, the countries of Southeast
Asia achieved rapid economic growth . Led bySingapore, but soon followed by Malaysia , Thailand,
Indonesia and then the Philippines, they became
one of the most dynamic economic regions in theworld . The holding of a meeting in Bangkok in
1996 between European Community and ASEAN
leaders demonstrated the rising status of Southeast
Asia in international society . The major cities of theregion have experienced a building boom, sprouting
with new high -rise structures, but growth has alsobrought serious problems, including traffic conges tion , air pollution and growing concentrations ofpoor people in urban slums. Development has beenaccompanied by destruction of the environment.
Farmers are being forced off their land. There areproblems with violations of human rights and political corruption. Rapid modernization has broughtmaterial benefits and conveniences, but it has also
resulted in upheaval and conflict.
Southeast Asia is marked by cultural diversity .
While the indigenous cultures of each country arequite different, there is a general pattern of cultural

1997

mixing across the entire region . Traditional cultures
are overlaid by the colonia l culture of the West andborder-crossing immigran t cultures-especiallythose of India and China. The urban consumer
culture of the United States has had an overwhelming influence in recent years, and an inundation ofJapanese youth culture in the form of anime andpop music has further accelerated this cultural
diversification . As a result , certain aspects of thepreviously stable cultural identities of these countries are being seriously shaken . Faced with thischaotic situation , ethnic groups are re-examining
their traditional cultures , and individuals are searching for new cultural identi ti es.
This is the unique situation, the concrete reality, in which the artists of Southeast Asia must taketheir stand . In this exhibition , we wanted to examine
the ways in which individual artists have responded
to the social and cultural conditions in which they
are placed , and how they have linked their artistic
expression to these condi ti ons. Of course, one ofour main goals is to present the latest results of thisprocess, the current state of Southeast Asian art
in the late 1990s. The resulting exhibition should
demonstrate the deep commitment of these artists
to the reality of their region.
In organizing this exhibition , representatives
from the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, theHiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, andthe Japan Foundation Asia Center made two visits
to these five Southeast As ian countries, in February
and in May 1996, respectively, and interviewed some
100 artists . We also spoke with local critics andcurators to obtain their views on the current conditions for art in their areas. We learned a great deal
from these discussions and are particularly indebted
to Jim Supangkat of Indonesia. On the basis of thisresearch, the final selection of 17 individual artists
and groups was made in a meeting of curators fromthe three institutions, keeping the goals describedabove in mind . The artists were then divided into
three groups according to t he principal content or
subject matter of their work , as follows :1 Fromthe Crossroadsof Culture
Brenda Fajardo, Chandrasekaran, Liew Kung Yu,
Montien Boonma, Navin Production Co., Ltd.

2_ TheShiftin

Regionofthe "I"
Agus Suwage, Chatchai Puipia, Eng Hwee Chu,
Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Pinaree Sanpitak ,Wong Hoy Cheong
3 ArtistsMakin aSocialStatement
Arahmaiani , Dadang Christanto , Moelyono,
Nunelucio Alvarado, Sanggawa, Semsar Siahaan

The artists presented in Section 1 deal with theparticular culture of their own ethnic group in a
multicultural environment , putting it into newforms of expression with relevance for the present .

Glimpses Into the Future of Southeast Asian Art A Vision of What Art Should Be

01
Major exhibitions of Asian art including artists from Southeast As,a thatwere organized in Japan in the 1990s
include: ..New Art from Southeast
Asia, .. Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space(Exhibition Gallery), Fukuoka Art
Museum, Hiroshima City Museum ofContemporary Art, Kirin Plaza Osaka,
1992; the 4th Asian Art Show, Fukuoka
Art Museum, Hakone Open Air
Museum. Akita Integrated Life Culture
Hall, Setagaya Art Museum, 1994-95;..Creat1v1ty,n Asian Art Now," Hiroshima
City Museum of Contemporary Art,
1994; ..Visions of Happiness: 10 AsianContemporary Artists, .. Japan Foundation
ASEAN Culture Center, 1995; and ..AsianModernism: Diverse Development inIndonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand ...
Japan Foundation Asia Center, 1995

02
In Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery
in Brisbane organized the As,a-Pac,fic
Tnennial of Contemporary Art in 1993 and1996. In the United States, the first largescale exhibition of Asian contemporaryart, ..Contemporary Art in Asia: Trad1t1ons/
Tensions;· was held at the Asia Society
Gallery in New York in 1996.

03
In many countriesin Asia there are mulllple forms of artistic expression withcompletely different tendencies that are
produced and received ,n parallel as art.
They can roughly be divided into four
categones: traditional art based on traditional aesthetic principles and techniques; modem art that refers to Westernmodernism but has become a form ofacadem1c1sm;contemporary art thatstrivesto create experimental modesof expression from a unique perspective that faces up to local realities; andfolk art or kitschy ..low art," which is created and used by the common people as"people's art." Of course, the boundanes
between these categories are not always
clearly drawn, and works may combine
elements from more than one of them.
This ,s the basic analysis made by Kuroda
RaiJi,n h,s paper, "Types of Contemporary
Asian Art," presented at the public seminar, "Contemporary Art and Asia Ill: The
Asian Art I Love,.. held at the International
Japanese Culture Center ,n Kyoto in
February 1996. This exhib1t1onfocuses onwhat is referred to here as "contemporary
art ... It does not cover all the countnesof Southeast Asia. Brune,, Cambodia,
Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam were notincluded, the chief reason being a lackof information or difficulty in conducting
researchdirectlyin those countries.

Shaping the History of Art

042

lnSOUtheutAola

We deliberately avoided including artists whotake a strictly traditionalist position-that is, those
who advocate a return to or contemporary reinterpretation of traditional artistic techniques witha narrowly nationalistic intent. Rather, we choseto present artists who include a broad range ofcultural phenomena in their subject matter-myths
or folktales, religious feelings, traditional tools andimplements used in everyday life, kitsch elementsof folk culture-and handle it with the language ofinternational contemporary art that developed outof modernism. This is exemplified by the works of
Brenda Fajardo and Montien Boon ma, for example .
It should be noted that in Southeast Asia thecultural identity of ethnic groups does not always
coincide with national identity. That the ChineseMalaysian Liew Kung Yu or the Indian-Singaporean
Chandrasekaran should refer to Chinese or Indianculture in their works, respectively, is not a reflection of their national identities as Malaysian or
Singaporean citizens so much as it is an attempt tofreely transcend the artificial national borders thatare the legacy of colonialism. In his case, the Thai
artist Navin Rawanchaikul will make use ofthephakhao mar, a loincloth that is used daily in the contextof Thai vernacular culture. He will give away theseloincloths to Japanese museum visitors to see how
they are used in the context of contemporary Japan.
In changing its cultural context, an item that serves
as the symbol of one culture will be transformed
into something else, demonstrating the variability ofculture and the possibility for producing something
new through intercultural exchange .
The identity of the individual is threatened by
the process of rapid modernization and an influx offoreign cultures . In Section 2, we introduce artists
who are devoted to the search for their own identity
as they try to find their place in a turbulent andconfusing social environment. The caricaturized
self-portraits of Chatchai Pupia-large faces withmouths twisted into crooked smiles that convey
a sense of self-mockery-accurately portray theunstable condition of the self being confronted bypeople in Southeast Asia today. The uncertainty ofthe situation in which the individual is placed canalso be observed in the remarkable image createdby Agus Suwage of a group of severed heads settingout on a journey to seek their bodies . For Wong Hoy
Cheong and Eng Hwee Chu, who are both Chineseminorities in the rnultiethnic nation of Malaysia, theorigins and histories of their families are indivisibly
linked to their present selves. For female artists, thesearch for individual identity entails an inquiry into
the meaning of being a woman. This issue is examined by Eng, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, and Pinaree
Sanpitak, but in a quiet tone of voice, without
unnecessary stridency.
Many Southeast Asian artists demonstratean active social or political commitment, and treat
the social and political problems faced by theircountries as artistic subject matter. Artists of thisShlodaJunlchl

Art Studies_03

kind are presented in Section 3. Nunelucio Alvarado
and Sernsar Siahaan depict the contrast between
the lives of the common people and those of therich and powerful. The five-person Philippine group,
Sanggawa, parody and satirize the corruption
and foolishness of political and religious leaders.
There are other artists, like Dadang Christanto andMoelyono, who make symbolic presentations of therelationship between the people and those in power,
rather than directly addressing specific, concrete
problems . The installations and performances ofArahrnaiani are extremely political, exposing theinvisible forces of oppression and restraint that
affect women. The works of all these men andwomen contain strong messages . They open theirart out to society rather than restricting it to theordinary fine arts context.
These categories have only been set up out of
convenience; they are not absolute . There are many
examples in which a single work fuses a concern
with identity, statements about traditional culture
and messages of social or political import. Thus, thethree categories here are only relative. They are an
indication of the comparatively greater weight given
to one of three areas-culture, individual identity, or
society . Still, we believe that these categories canprovide a rough guide for ordering our knowledgeof the kinds of problems being dealt with by today's
Southeast Asian artists, and understanding how
they go about constructing their own forms ofexpression . They provide a starting point fromwhich to go further .

11I Livingin a Community
One of the artists lives in a small village in Indonesia
near Tulungagung, some 200 kilometers from
Surabaya, in eastern Java. The waves of development have reached this region, and construction ofa darn has left one of the villages submerged at thebottom of a reservoir. The farmers who lost theirland were not adequately compensated and are now
destitute. Due to tourist-oriented development they
are no longer able to enjoy the gifts of nature fromthe mountains and the sea, formerly so abundant.
Modernization has disrupted the peaceful orderof the farming and fishing villages. The people arebeing swallowed up by the logic of capitalism, withno chance to object . Moelyono, the artist living in
the village, teaches drawing to children and joins thevillagers in thinking about and discussing the problems they face . Engaging this reality through his art,
he also participates in the practical work needed tochange the reality .
Last year, Moelyono made an installationin his village, constructing a horseshoe-shaped
embankment at the side of a rice paddy. On it heplaced rice husks, jars and farm tools alongside afiberglass human figure on hands and knees in anarched posture. This figure represents the peasants
who were forced to use chemical fertilizer andChapter1

043

then forced to leave their land when they could nolonger pay for the fertilizer . This is art for the peopleof the village . They helped make it, and as theyobserve the unusual objects placed in the beautiful
green rice paddy, they can ask the artist about themeaning of the work and take part in an openended discussion about it. This experience raises
the consciousness of the villagers . They become
agents who can act on reality and create culture .
This work exemplifies Moelyono's ideas on the roleof art . He believes that an artist should work for thehappiness of the community .
In modernist art practice, the artist questions
established authority and tradition, rejects them,and attempts to create new values. Freedom andindividual subjectivity have absolute value for theartist . It is considered a necessary part of the artistic
process for the artist to oppose and rebel against
the rules and customs of his or her society or community and the conventional values they embody .
Moelyono , on the other hand, feels that the basisof art can be found precisely in the community towhich he belongs , rather than in the individual.
Instead of opposing the community, he takes theside of the villagers in protesting against the logic
of development that violates and destroys the older
ways of life of the community . Thus, it must be said
that his activities establish a clear distinction with
Western modernism .
Commenting on the emergence ofmodernism in Indonesia , Jim Supangkat says,"This modernism ... is not based in the spirit of
the avant-garde-showing a tendency to criticize
tradition and the establishment within society
for the sake of progress. This modernism, to thecontrary, had the purpose of defending the people,
including their traditions and cultures, which were
under pressure and despised ." ~ Supangkat takes
the position that Western modernism is not thesole modernism ; it is possible for many different
modernisms to exist . From this point of view,
Moelyono's approach has a legitimate place in thehistory of Indonesian modernism .
Moelyono is not the only artist who lives in atightly knit community and makes art supportive of
its people based on strong moral principles . Dadang
Christanto, who makes his home in a farming village
on the outskirts of Yogyakarta, one of the ancient
capitals of Indonesia, creates strong, simple imagesof the common people who defiantly resist theforces that oppress them . His works include terra cotta heads and groups of fiberglass figures . Knownfor the social awareness of his work, the Jakarta
painter Semsar Siahaan has said, "For an artist
to take part as an individual in a moral or politicalmovement actually broadens his horizons . It makes
not only his aesthetic experience but his creative
process more fruitful." Q§ While being careful not to
let his work become simple propaganda, Semsar
vigorously advocates the need for artists to play anactivist role.

1997

The painter Nuneluc io Alvarado , who lives
in a village in the northern part of Negros in thePhilippines, also has deep roots in his community .
The main product of Negros is sugar cane, but
farmers have difficulty making a decent living due
to the instability of the internationa l market . As amember of the Negros art ists' group Black Artists in
Asia, Alvarado maintains solidarity with the workers
and farmers and makes a positive contribution to
the region through his creative activities. There isa stark contrast between t he poverty and harshliving conditions of the cane field workers and theirfamilies and the growing wealth and hedonistic livesof the capitalists .
Alvarado portrays familiar subjects, using
garish color and solid forms to create humorous
political caricatures . In addition to making his own
paintings, he teaches art to young people and has
worked together with local farmers to produce
colored prints and t-shirts . He has been able to sell
these items and use the proceeds to make the farmers' lives a little easier. He has shown an admirable
consistency in using his art to serve the community
in practical ways.
The community -based activities of Moelyono
and Alvarado recall the approach of the Japanesepoet Miyazawa Kenji. In the 1920s, Miyazawa, an
agricultural technician and devout Buddhist as
well as poet , taught at an agricultural school innortheastern Japan , a region known for its bitterly
cold climate. He organized what he called theRasuchijin Society to improve the lives of farmers
suffering from poverty and the diff iculty of growing
crops in low temperature s. He led a self-sufficient
life himself, and offered fr ee advice on the use offertilizer and other agricul tural techniques . He alsotaught poetry, music and art to the young people,
and dreamed of building a peasant culture independent of the influences of urban culture . His poems ,children's stories and plays were naturally linked tothese practical activities .
His basic position w as presented in the following passage from "Tenets of a General Theory of
Peasant Culture;· a lecture delivered at a meeting of
his Rasuchijin Society:We are all peasants. We are very busy andour work is hard. We want to find a wayof life that is brighter and livelier ... Unlessthe entire world is happy, there can be nohappiness for the individual. Ql!
Miyazawa's point of view has much in common
with that of Moelyono and Alvarado, although
his thought is more abstr act , conceptual andintrospective than theirs, and does not dealas critically with reality or politics . In terms of
the role played by the art ist in the community ,however, his work in the agricultural villages ofJapan has important impl ications that transcendtime and place .

GllmpHs Into the Future of Southeast Allan Art A Vision of What ArtShould Be

04
Jim Supangkat,"The Emergenceof Indonesian Modernism and ,ts
Background,·· in Asian Modernism
Diverse Development m Indonesia,
the Philippines, and Thailand, exh. cat.
!Tokyo: Japan Foundation As,a Center,
1995). 212.

05
Semsar S1ahaan. ··Ind1v1dual Freedom
Approaching Creative Society," in
Present Encounters: Papers from theConference- The Second Asta-PacificTnenmal of Contemporary Art, Brisbane,
Australia, 1996 !Brisbane. Queensland
Art Gallery, 1996)
06

M,yazawa KenJi,"Nom,n ge,jutsu gairon
y6k6" [Tenets of a General Theory of
Peasant Culture]. in Miyazawa KenJi
zenshu (The Complete Works ofM,yazawa Ken]I]. vol.10 !Tokyo: Ch1kuma
Shobo, 1995), 18.

044

Shaping the History of Art
inSOUtheaatAsla

07
Yeyey G.Cruz. "Sanggawa," in The

Second Asia-Pacific Triennial ofContemporary M, exh .cat . (Brisbane :Queensland Art Gallery, 1996), 99 .

Ill ISang awa or "Working as One":Fromthe
Individual to the Communit
In art since the advent of modernism, it has been
the individual who is the source of artistic creation .
Under this paradigm, new forms of expression thatare based on individual originality and which havenever been attempted by anyone else are given
the highest value . There is value in being different.
Sameness or similarity is discredited.
The five members of the Filipino group
Sanggawa pursue activities directly opposed tothis myth of individual originality. The group wasformed at the end of 1994 and began working
actively in January 1995. It grew out of previous
groups, especially ABAY (Artista ng Bayan, or Artistsof the People),formed in 1985, and Salingpusa (Junior
Players),a group of younger artists. The democracy
movement that toppled the Marcos regime andput Corazon Aquino in power in 1986, and thesubsequent economic and social confusion, would
bring about a major turning point in contemporary
Philippine art. During this period of political unrest,
artists began making realistic paintings with strong
political and social messages for propaganda
purposes . The groups mentioned above, ABAY andSalingpusa, were unabashedly political. Anothernoteworthy trend was the group production of large
murals . Painted in public spaces in Manila where
everyone could see them, these murals were quite
effective as propaganda.
In Filipino, "Sanggawa" means "working as
one," and this group defines its goals even moreclearly than its predecessors. It is made up of three
men and two women, Elmer Borlongan, Federico
Sievert, Mark Justiniani, Karen Flores and Joy
Mallari . The group plans its works by first holding
extensive discussions on the subject, composition
and individual motifs that will make up the whole.
Achieving a stylistic consistency that makes it
seem as if it were executed by one artist, theirwork is entirely collaborative. All five artists work
individually in addition to participating in the groupprojects, and their personal styles clearly differ
from that of Sanggawa. When working together
they deliberately create a common style that differsfrom any of their individual styles. The result is nota suppression of individuality but the formation of aunique Sanggawa style that has its own markedly
individual character. The surfaces of their paintings
are filled which densely brushed, obsessive detail.
They overflow with baroque excess and dynamism.
Sanggawa picks subjects that are especially controversial in Filipino society-national elections, thevisit of the Pope and the Miss Universe contest. The
paintings portray politicians and religious figures
who are familiar to everybody in the Philippines . The
congested pictorial surfaces have a gay, festive air inspite of the seriousness of the subject matter .
In moving away from the solitary work of theindividual and toward community involvement,

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Art Studies_03

the activities of Sanggawa have great significancein the context of artistic development in modern
times . According to the art critic Yeyey G.Cruz,"The group's members work on the idea that
Filipino culture is 'groupist,' shying away from overt
Western individualism ." l!Z This is a group of warm,
friendly artists, who, like a family, form a communityof their own as they work together . The collaborative
works that emerge from their democratic humanrelations demonstrate the illusory nature of Westernmodernism's insistence on individual creation as an
absolute value . While the activities of Salingpusa
and Sanggawa recall the Mexican mural movementof the 1920s and '30s, the difference lies in the way
the individual members of Sanggawa fuse theiridentities into a collective effort, in contrast to thespecial status enjoyed by the stars of the mural
movement like Rivera and Orozco. This does notmean that individualism is entirely rejected by
Sanggawa. In addition to their group activities, theindividual members make and show art done in theirown individual styles, all completely different, andthey move freely back and forth between individualand group work . The collaborations of Sanggawa
are as such always open to the outside world, andthey have opened new horizons in the relations
between individual and art.

IY j_Giving Away Piece_s of Cloth:Art as Gift
The project Navin Rawanchaikul has conceived
for this exhibition is called Pha Khao Mar on Tour.
Navin will give away traditional Thai loincloths, phakhao mar, to museum visitors, providing them theopportunity to use the loincloths in whatever way
they please in their everyday lives . Greeted by anelderly Thai man wearing a loincloth ( in the form of anenlarged photograph presentedin a light box), visitors
will experience Thai culture while watching a video
documenting how the cloths are actually used in
Thailand. With the phrase Pha Khao Mar Uncle Panalso written on the wall in large letters, and boxes
containing the cloths stacked in the gallery, theseelements will come together in the exhibition spaceas an installation of sorts, but the conceptual coreof the work is the act of passing out the cloths to
as many different people as possible . Carried outof the museum by their recipients, the cloths will
be used in different ways at their various destinations. Navin will ask the recipients to report backto the museum with photographs and lettersdescribing how they are using the cloths. Originally
manufactured in Thailand, the pha khao mar will
make a literal journey, crossing the ocean to end up
in Japanese homes. The concept that structures
this work is the mutual exchange between theartist/museum and exhibition visitors through themedium of the cloth.
Works of art may have lost their aura, butthey are still bought and sold and owned as assetsthat have an essential value . They are sanctified

045

Chapter 1

and given authority by being displayed in an art
museum. Navin's project is directly opposed to thisreceived approach to art .
Nowadays there is nothing unusual about
Southeast Asian products being imported to Japan.
Manufactured goods like textiles and clothing, andagricultural and marine products like bananas andshrimp, commonly appear on the market and arepurchased by consumers here. The economic ties
between Japan and Southeast Asia are too strong
to ignore . In this project, however, the manufacture
and consumption of the loincloth takes place in anart context, outside the usual routes of distribution. Navin makes us aware of the significance ofreal-world phenomena by bringing them into theart context. His art opens out toward society . That
is why he is presenting this project under the verybusinesslike name, Navin Production Co., Ltd.
It is noteworthy that the manufactured clothis given away to visitors free of charge, rather thanbeing sold . It is a gift-an important concept inanthropology. The French cultural anthropologist
Marcel Mauss has described ancient and tribal
societies in which the social structure is formedby economies that do not conform to principlesof equivalent exchange, but are instead based onreciprocal gift giving. He refers specifically to thecustom of the potlatch among the native peoples of
the Northwest coast of North America and the kulagift-exchange system of Melanesia . In the winter,
the Northwest coast peoples held large feasts called
potlatches to which they invited people from other
tribes, and the invited guests then held their own
feasts to reciprocate . As these feasts took place one
after another, the wealth accumulated over the summer would be entirely consumed. As an extreme
display of generosity, some property-owners would
even break their most valuable treasures-theircopper plates-and throw them into the sea.
Wealth was consumed and transferred through the
potlatch, and this system of giving property away
without thought of profit determined the basic
structure of social relationships . 08
Commenting on Mauss's concept of gift giving,
Nakazawa Shinichi writes :Giving has the joining power of eras.
An uncanny power of joining people at
a level beyond individuality operates
among people, breaking down the walls of
individuation . According to the reports ofanthropologists, this power is referred toas the effect of the "spirit of giving." Gifts
move between people . When they do, some"thing" visible to the eye is certainly moving,
but an immaterial power also moves alongwith this "thing" ... That is, the "spirit ofgiving" resides in the gift, and as the "thing"moves, this spirit also moves between
people ... Through giving, people are notexchanging "things." They are creating a

1997

moment when this spirit is stirred up in theirhearts and begins moving .!!!

08
Marcel Mauss, " Essai sur le don, " In

Socl0iog1e et anthropolog,e ( Paris: Presses
umversitaires, 1950).

This spirit of giving certainly resides in Navin's gift ofthe pha khao mar . When this piece of cloth is handed
to the visitor , the movement of the "spirit of giving"causes something to move in the heart of the recipient . Extending to the recipient's family and friends,
this single piece of cloth can join people, and theseconnections will in turn feed back to the museum
and artist, creating a circuit of communication.
Navin believes that art to date has been overly
restricted to visual experience . In previous projects,
he has done such things as bottling the water of ariver near Chiang Mai and selling it in Bangkok, andstarting a driving school. The most important thingfor him is to propel his art out into society in order
to communicate with people . Discussing a project
carried out in 1993-94, Please Donate Your Ideas
for Dispirit Artistic Research, he says, "I had 3,000
people of various occupations in Chiang Mai, fromprostitutes to monks, give me things they thoughtof as art, and exhibited them together in one place .
One person gave me a banana as a joke; anotherseriously painted an oil painting . A priest gave me asutra." !.QIn this case, Navin received gifts from others. In the current project , other people will receive
gifts from Navin . The concept is, I think, more
focused than in previous projects, and its effects will
have a broader scope.
Navin is not the only artist who makes works
based on gift giving, creating connections between
people or contributing to society through theexchange of physical objects . A previous example
is Joseph Beuys's concept of "social sculpture,"such as planting 7,000 oaks in Kassel using donatedfunds . Another Thai artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija, who
is based in New York, uses a similar approach inhis project of serving Thai curry to gallery visitors.
Yamaide Junya takes "Something They Have in
Daily Life" from people in the area where he lives
and exchanges these things for "Something They
Have in Daily Life" from people in places where hetravels . This project can be understood in a similar
contex t.11 In these works , the exchange of gifts isused as a way of expanding the circle of communication and giving art stronger roots in society .
Whether or not the act of giving is directly
involved, as in Navin's project, all forms of art are
ultimately products of the spirit of giving . The valueof art is ambiguous and difficult to calculate. It
does not lend itself easily to the market principleof equivalent exchange . It overflows with thepower of eras and is more at home in the territoryof gift giving . In particular , for the many artists
in Southeast Asia who are deeply rooted in theircommunities and attempt to live with other people,
an artwork is a container for a message . It canbe thought of as a gift meant for each member ofthe community. Even where they do not own it, inseeing and experiencing a work people can receive

Glimpses Into the Future of Southeast Asian Art A V1sionof What Art Should Be

09
Nakazawa Shinichi,"Shin z6y6ron
Josetsu" [ Preface to a New Gift Theory],
In Junsui na sh1zen no z6yo [The Pure Giftof Nature)(Tokyo: Senka Shobo, 1996).
175-176.
10
Ushiroshoj1 Masahiro, "Artist Interview:
Navin Rawancha1kul," in Bljutsu Techo 48 ,no.729(August1996): 110-111.

,,
In a project for the 7th Asian Art Biennale
Bangladesh (November 1995), Yama1degathered items from people in Oita andtraded them for "Something They Havein Daily Life" with people he met at thesite of the exhibition . Finally, he "returned
the traded obJects to the original owners,
the people who had offered the things in
Oita ." Document. Japanese Mists ,n the
7th Asian M Biennial Bangladesh (Tokyo:
Japan Foundation, 1996), 26-33 .

ShaplngtheHiotoryof Art
lnSOutheutAala046

the message it contains, have their spirits shaken,
and become enlightened. The spirit of giving that
resides invisibly in the work is communicated to theviewer and circulates endlessly . At some point in
time, it may even move people's hearts and change
society. The artists of Southeast Asia believe this as
they continue to make their art in the present .

VI FortheArttoCome
The art of Southeast Asia is unique. The function ofart in society and the role of the artist there seem
quite different from what we have seen before in
the development of modern art. There are artists
like Moelyono and Alvarado whose activities are
deeply rooted in the life of the community, andwhose expressions are inextricably linked to theimprovement or transformation of the lives of thepeople who live around them . There are groups ofartists like Sanggawa who work together, going
beyond the limitations of the individual. Throughtheir activities they actually create a small community. There are also works of art that are filled withthe spirit of giving and which seek to communicate
with people in a community, as exemplified byNavin's project.
Briefly stated, the expression of individuality ina modernist sense is not the most important issue
for these artists . Their concern is how to participate
in the communities in which they live, how to build
a better future for these communities, and what art
can do to that end. This also holds for the artists whoare involved in the search for their own identities,
since they approach the problem of identity in thewider context of family, community and ethnic affiliation. This position is far removed from the thinking
of Western modernism, in which absolute value isplaced on individual creativity and the artist's task is

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to explore a pure and autonomous artistic world .
The relationship between art and society has
been re-examined over the course of the 1990s, andmany artists are committed to solving the difficult
problems faced by societies and people today. The
establishment of art's independence from societythat occurred in Western modernism is an anomaly
in the history of art. As Jim Supangkat says, theIndonesian modernism based on moralism has beenproactively engaged with society and the defenseof the common people . This can also be said for themodernisms of other countries in Southeast Asia .
Many of today's Southeast Asian artists continue
the moral attitudes of their predecessors. Placing
themselves in their local communities, they findit natural to explore ways to contribute to society
through art . Their works reflect difficult social
conditions but never lose the glow of hope. This isbecause their activities are filled with the spirit ofgiving. The function of art and the role of the artist
found in the contemporary art of Southeast Asia
provide a glimpse of what art could be-what itshould be-in the future .
Like Navin distributing thephakhaomar,
the Southeast Asian artists participating in thisexhibition present their works as gifts to the peopleof their communities and to the Japanese public.
According to Mauss, there are three duties ingiving gifts: the duty to give; the duty to accept;
and the duty to reciprocate. We should unhesitatingly accept the gifts offered to us by the artistsof Southeast Asia. And there is no difficulty inreturning the favor. The best way to do this is to try
to empathize with and understand these artists andtheir art . Only then will the spirit of giving whichpermeates this work begin to circulate between
them and us, leading to the kind of true exchangethat makes art what it should be.