Shaping the Historyof Art
In Southeast Asia

01
Siva Kuma, "Contemporary Indian
Art : The Last Fifty Years," in Trystwith
Destiny:Art from Modern India 1947-1997(Singapore : Singapore Art Museum,1997), 45-56 .

048

As a major international phenomenon , conceptual
art has been recognized as a Euro-North American
invention that fits neatly into the linear art historicalmodel of the West. The term "conceptual ism"embraces various forms of art in which theidea of the work is considered more significant
than the object itself. However, this definition ofconceptualism has expanded considerably since
its emergence. This article will focus on Asianartists whose work may be allied to Western ideas
of conceptual art but who have created different"concepts" for a specific locality.
Since Western contact with modern Asian art
has been limited principally to Japan, China andSouth Korea, it is often assumed that conceptualist
production is confined to those countries. Recently,
multiculturalism has permitted some artists tofind a niche along with other neglected Others .
Consequently, the Western art infrastructure has
become more inclusive, less hierarchical. Asianartists living abroad (Anish Kapoor, RasheedAraeen,
Wenda Gu,Xu Bing, HuangYongPing,CaiGuo-Oiang,
RirkritTiravanija, Vong Phaophanitand DavidMedalla)
have been situated in relation to "mainstream"
conceptual artists, while those in Asia (Miyajima
Tatsuo,YanagiYukinori, Vivan Sundaram, N.N. Rimzon,Montien Boonma,Lee Bui, Navin Rawanchaikul, Ellen
Pau, SurasiKusolwong,KamolPhaosavasdi,Gu Dexin,
Wong Hoy Cheong,TangDaWu and FX Harsono)have
received attention for their attempts to redefine
conceptualism in terms of local/global contextualization . In the process, they have demonstrated
that conceptual ism is a nonlinear phenomenon
constantly in flux.
During the 1960s and '70s, the impact of theCold War was clearly felt in the regions of Southand Southeast Asia . For many countries , fear ofcommunism and a desire for capitalism resulted
in government promotion of Western curricula
in arts education . For instance, many art schools
in ASEAN countries offered courses on modern
art adapted from English textbooks such as H.H.
Arnason's History of Modern Art. Here, modern
art is traced in chronological order stressing
Euro-North American artists, with virtually no
consideration of modern arts in Asia. As forconceptualism, we were taught that "concept art"
was peculiar to the West, along with happenings,
performance, documentation, earthworks andbody art . This practice of defining conceptual art
through textbooks and lumping it with all kinds ofother "isms" has often led to confusion and misinterpretation, and conceptual art was translated
by Asian teachers and passed on to students invariable ways. At times, the concept behind works
such as Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs(1965)was deemed irrelevant for art practices in
Asia emphasizing technical virtuosity, indigenous
elements and draftsmanship. Then again , manyart schools and academies actively discouraged
the exploration of conceptual ism for fear that it

Aplnan Poahyananda

Art Studies_OJ

would incite students to challenge institutional
authority . In South Asia-for instance, Calcutta,
Mumbai, Madras and Lahore-a deeply entrenchedcolonialist pedagogy, which privileged painting andsculpture, inhibited experimentation in the arts .!11
Moreover, anti-American sentiment contributed
to resistance to "pop" and "cons" from the US. In
the 1960s, talented artists such as M.F. Husain,
Tyeb Mehta and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh weremore interested in European figurative painting
than North American conceptualist work. Althoughplenty of inspiration for "art and life" could be foundin rituals and ceremonies involving the body andperformance in India and Pakistan, relatively few
artists ventured into the realm of conceptual art .
In Southeast Asia, conceptual ism for a longtime was considered less important than criticalrealism, surrealism and abstraction . But as artists
became discontented with mainstream art forms
that emphasized national identity, decoration andelite aesthetic values , they searched for new styles
and media both at home and abroad. Many artists
turned to Pop, Neo-Dada and Fluxus, experimenting with mixed media, assemblage and foundobjects . These forms of expression allowed artists
to escape the confines of painting and sculpture
and their conventional themes and techniques. As
a result, individuals such as Andy Warhol, Robert
Rauschenberg , Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik
found a receptive audience in Southeast Asia. In
particular, Beuys's notion of "social sculpture " hada powerful impact on young Indonesian and Thai
artists, who saw in it a vehicle adaptable to theirown cultural circumstances capable of expos ing social "wounds" and initiating a "healing"process. However, it was not only inspiration fromabroad or the need to catch up to the West thatdrove local artists to challenge the stagnation of
institutionalized art.
During the 1970s, the Pancasila philosophyof Indonesia's New Order did not encourage art
forms to be critical of society . Officially sanctioned
art was characterized by art for art's sake, internationalism and decorative realism or abstraction .
In 1973, mass student unrest and criticism of thegovernment resulted in repressive measures andthe imprisonment of many students . At the sametime, young artists protected the institutional structure of art . The Black December Incident, in which
artists protested the jury selections for the 1974
Jakarta Biennial, represented the beginning of new
directions and values in art production. Artists fromAcademi Seni Rupa Indonesia (ASRI)in Yogyakarta,
Bandung Institute of Technology ( 1TB),and Jakarta
formed a group which became known as theIndonesia New Art Movement (Gerakan Seni RupaBaru). This movement advocated the dismantling ofaesthetic hierarchies through assemblage, happenings, readymades and found objects, and seriously
questioned the relevance of the art education
system in Indonesia. The manifesto accompanying

049

Chapter1

its first exhibition in 1975 called for an art thatreflected the entire spectrum of society, as artists
rejected the limitations of the abstract modernist
schools. The exhibitions of the New Art Movement
were open to all sorts of expression, including
conceptualist. ~ For example, Jim Supangkat's
entries included a framed black canvas with a single
word, dicari(wanted), painted on it. His mixed-media
sculpture Ken Dedes (1975)featured the head andshoulders of the legendary queen of Majapahit,
the 14th-century Javanese kingdom, together witha comic drawing of a woman wearing her jeans
unzipped to expose her pubic hair. This merging of
two seemingly unrelated and contradictory sets ofcultural and aesthetic values into a grotesque image
shocked the public. Supangkat was accused ofdegrading the traditional icon, since the posture of
the work implied that she was a prostitute .
The New Art Movement's next show in
Jakarta, the "Concept Exhibition"(1976), wasframed by the question, "How serious is ourart?" Included were action drawings, newspaper
clippings, texts, everyday objects and lengthy
debates on art . Meanwhile, equally provocative
events were shaping up in Yogyakarta, where
three exhibitions-"What
Identity? (Kepribadian
Apa?)," "Experiments in Living Sculpture," and"Spontaneous Exhibition"-were organized in 1977.
Young artists such as Semsar Siahaan introduced
body performance, while political satire and cynicalcommentary aimed at the government were conspicuous. Authorities began to suspect many artists
of involvement in leftist groups . In 1978, student
leaders were jailed and prominent newspapers
banned after protests against President Suharto
and the revival of Sukarnoism. Artists of the New
Art Movement responded with overt condemnationof Suharto and his policies in their third and largest
exhibition. For instance, Hardi's photomontage,
Presidential Candidate 2001 (1978),was comprisedof self-portraits superimposed over the head of thelate President Sukarno. Munni Ardi's Free Speaker
Platform (1978),a performance staged in a redboxing ring, featured the text of a speech by
Sukarno read aloud by visitors.
The New Art Movement was galvanized bysocial and political pressures within the local art
scene, and not so much the desire to keep up with
Western "isms:' FX Harsono later recalled thatmembers were vaguely aware of Duchampian
ideas, along with the work of Warhol and Beuys,
through artists like Hardi, who had attended Beuys's
1977 seminar in Dusseldorf . However, terms
such as "conceptual art" and "installation" were
widely used only later in the 1980s. ~ The New Art
Movement disbanded after 1979, but its ideas continued to motivate later artists. Its spirit was revived
in 1987 in the exhibition "Supermarket Fantasy
World;' a melange of consumer objects, posters andadvertisements. Rather than direct political attacks
on state authority, however, many artists shifted1999

their focus to social issues such as consumerism,
environmental degradation and public health .
In Thailand, the student revolutions of 1973 and1976, which toppled the m ilitary dictatorship, provided greater freedom of expression and cleared theway for experimentation by Thai artists . Althoughmany turned to critical realism, surrealism andneo-traditional Buddhist art, some explored conceptualism by going abroad. Prawat Laucharoen,
Kamol Tassananchalee and Thana Lauhakaikul, wholive in the US, play an important role as mediators,
introducing conceptual arts to the Thai art scene .
Prawat collaborated with Dennis Oppenheim on the
installation Launching Station (1981), in which chemical "missiles" were launched onto large printing
plates. Prawat's use of chance and improvisation
here and in other works derived from an interestin John Cage and Merce Cunningham . Kamol
Tassananchalee created conceptual works that
included pouring colored pigments in the Mojave
Desert. Thana created room-size installations andoutdoor site-specific works dealing with waterpollution and environmental destruction . These
artists visited their homeland and brought backwith them innovative concepts that encouraged the
production of idea-based art.
Conceptualism flourished in Thailand during
the mid-1980s as several artists, including Kamol
Phaosavasdi and Chumpon Apisuk, returned fromabroad to settle in Bangkok . In Thai translation,
the term "conceptual art"(sinlapa ruapyod) refers
variously to installation, performance and the useof readymades ( initially , it embraced any "foreign"style that inspired artists to reject conventional practice .)Lively events sponsored by Bhirasri Institute of Art
in Bangkok stimulated broader interest in installa tion, junk, happenings, performance and body art.
Anti-art strategies were deployed by artists to attack
the capitalist art market and its precious commodities. For the opening of the 1985 Thai Sculpture
Exhibition, Kamol Phaosavasdi bound himself in asack as a form of protest. Chumpon drank animal
blood and shouted newspaper headlines aboutsocial conflict, sex and money in his happening
related to pure communication. Vasan Sitthiket, apoet-painter-happening artist, drafted a Neo-Dada
manifesto to accompany installations of newspapers and poems about anarchy as a creative force
and death as rebirth. ~In the Philippines, the Baguio Arts Guild (BAG)
became the nucleus for artists in search of "ethnicized" art forms to counter the abstraction fosteredby art schools in Manila . Filipino artists lookedespecially to the collaborat ive aspects of traditionalart making, so different from Western standardsof individualism and competition for commercial
success. lndigenization, it was felt, could transform
conceptualism, performance and installation .
Some Filipino artists even hailed installation as thequintessential art of the region. Roberto Villanueva,
a leading member of BAG who was inspired by"Con Art MSeen from the Edge: The M eaning of Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia

02
Brita L. Miklouho-Maklai, Exposing
Society's Wounds: Some Aspects ofContemporary Indonesian Art Since 1966
(Adelaide: Flinders University, 1991),

23-77.
03
Interview with FX Harsono, Jakarta, July16, 1998.

04
Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in
Thailand· Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies (Singapore: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 207-217.

Shaping the History of Art
In Southeast Asia

05
On Roberto Villanueva and Tang Da Wu,
see New Art from Southeast Asia (Tokyo :Japan Foundation , 1992).
06

Julie Ewington , " Five Elements : An
Abbreviated Account of Installation Art inSouth -East Asia, " Art and AsiaPacific2,
no.1 (1995): 108-115 . [See also pp .35- 39of this volume .)07
Apman Poshyananda , "Roaring Tigers :Desperate Dragons in Transition," inContemporary Art in Asia : Traditions/Tensions (New York: Asia Society , 1996),

23-53.
08
Montien Boonma : Melting Void, exh . cat.
(Bangkok : Mars, Gallery, 1998).

050

Cordillera highland culture and shamanism, createda series of site-specific works using bamboo toemphasize indigenousness in resistance to Westerncultural domination. Similarly, in Singapore theArtists Village sought alternatives to the dogma of
academic training. Led by Tang Da Wu, who spentsome time in England, the Artists Village produced
numerous artists whose potential in idea-based art
breathed new life into the Singapore art scene. ~Conceptualist practices are now widely
accepted in the art arenas of Southeast Asia andsome parts of South Asia .~ To varying degrees, art ists in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and India have adapted conceptual
strategies as vehicles for critique and reflection
on their rapidly changing societies, and several
international exhibitions in Asia and Australia havelegitimized these forms of conceptualism based on
local idioms. In the process, conceptual artists havegained confidence that their works are not merely
stylistic quotations of Western "originals." In fact,many artists dismiss Western versions of conceptualism as self-reflexive, tedious communiques
between members of intellectual cliques.
Conceptualist works convey as well as conceal
political, social and religious messages . The 1992
military crackdown in Bangkok, which caused thedeaths of civilians and students, spurred Thai artists
such as Vasan Sitthiket and Surapol Panyawatchirato make body art about rape and the military's abuseof power. In The Four Elements (1993),a series ofprint installations, Prawat Laucharoen confronted
issues of national identity, Thai-ness, power anddemocracy, using images of the royal family,
Buddhist symbolism and scenes of riot and mayhem. In 1995, Philippine citizens expressed outrageover Singapore's execution of Filipina domestic
worker Flor Contemplacion in heated protests andburnings of the Singapore national flag . Feminist
artist Imelda Cajipe-Endaya responded with a seriesof conceptualist works on overseas domestic workers, using quotidian objects like a chair, broom andluggage together with a text on the Filipina. l1Z
Religion has inspired many artists to ideas offaith and devotion through a conceptual framework .
Conveying scenes of contemplation, void andemptiness, the site-specific installations ofThai
artist Montien Boonma often demand the viewer 's
participation . In Breathing House (1996-97),House of
Hope (1996-97)and Melting Void (1998),enclosuresand corridors filled with herbs and covered withaluminum and wax arouse the sense of smell andtaste to provoke an acute awareness of the viewer's
relation to interior and exterior space .~ India's
religious turmoil of 1992-93 between Hindus andMuslims, which resulted in burning and bloodshed,became the subject of conceptualist works byVivan Sundaram, Pushpamala and Sheela Gowda .
Sundaram's Memorial (1992),an allegorical reflection
on the frenzy of religious schism, is an installation
with fragments of riot scenes, a fallen mortal andApinan Poahyananda

Art Studies_03

a monumental gateway . Pushpamala collectedburnt books and boxes as symbols of victims ofcommunal riots in Mumbai . Gowda's decision touse cow dung as a medium was made during theriot of 1992-93. In India, cow dung is shit, but it alsosignifies sacredness and nonviolence, and is used
as a fuel and in domestic chores . Gowda 's flat cakesof manure mixed with sacred powder (kum kum)and gold leaf challenge the audience to define theboundaries of art and life, holiness and profanity,
alternative media and aesthetic execution .
For many art ists, performance offers opportunities for a fresh interaction with audiences, andcapitalizes on the medium's sense of spontaneity
to provide novel perspectives on social and culturalissues. In Singapore , Tang Da Wu's installations
and performances reexamine Chinese traditions
and myths surrounding the eating of animal parts
as an aphrodisiac . Vincent Leow pushed theboundaries of censorship by drinking his own urine,
while Joseph Ng shaved his pubic hair in public . In
Yogyakarta, Heri Dono collaborated with villagers to
perform social rituals and satires through shadow
puppet theater and trance dance, as well as a playusing homeless children as actors. FX Harsono
staged a happening as a critique of deforestationand illegal logging, "slaughtering" rows of wooden
chairs with a chainsaw before burying them . Filipino
artist Santiago Bose made a labyrinthine journey
through the town of Baguio, symbolically spraypainting his footsteps as he crossed many culturalborders . In Chiang Mai, Thailand, a group of young
artists formed the Chiang Mai Social Installation,
placing site-specific works in temples, cremation
grounds, markets, public parks and along riverbanks . For his solo exhibition in Bangkok, "Give Me a
Glass of Water"(1994), Kamol Phaosavasdi urinatedin front of the works to add layers of meaning to the
problem of water pollution in the metropolis. Vasan
Sitthiket and friends produced a short video of performers wearing penis-shaped caps raping a map ofThailand. Kosit Juntaratip focused his performancework on love and infatuation, marrying a sex dolland painting with his own blood ( afterwhich he hired
a nurseto give him a transfusion).Navin Rawanchaikul
displayed a series of found objects intended tointeract with viewers in TheZero Space Which is
Not Empty (1995). He also promoted mobile art
galleries for taxies and motorized tricycles (tuktuk) .
In a performance at the "Live Art"exhibition in 1997,
Surapol Panyawatchira drew analogies between
corrupt politicians and toilets as he urinated in a box
to the accompaniment of the national anthem .
Asian artists recognize that conceptual
art in the West has a distinct genealogy, but
their own interpretations of such art have often
derived from different trajectories. Despite theeconomic meltdown in Asia, artists have developed
conceptualist practices to the extent that various
networks have been formed within the region .
A dynamic conceptualist art scene thrives inChapter1

051

Bangkok, where events such as the Huay Khwang
Mega City, Art Performance Conference Bangkok
and Plastic & Other Waste (which included artists
from Asia and Fluxus members from Cologne) attract
sizeable crowds. However, even today the response
among audiences to conceptual art is mixed . Many

1999

viewers see "con art" as a stunt designed to garnerattention and glorify the artists. Others argue thatit broadens forms of aesthetic expression and waysof looking at art . Both readings are valid . After all,it is a matter of choosing between communicationand confusion.

•con Art• s..n from th• Edge: The MeaningofConceptualArt inSoutheastAsia

052

ArtStudies_03

Shaping the History of Art
In Southeast Asia

Asia: Co-figurative
Identification
SakaiNaoki
Sakai Naoki is Professor of AsianStudies at Cornell University. He
obtained his PhD from the Department
of Far Eastern Languages andCivilizations at the University of
Chicago. He has held his current
position since 1997. His academic
fields of interest are cultural theory
and the history of Japanese thought.
He is author of Voices of the Past (1991),
published in Japanese in 2002,
Shizan sareru Nihongo/Nihonjin (1996),
Translation and Subjectivity: On •Japan#
and Cultural Nationalism (1997),
HSekaishi* no kaitai: Honyaku, shutai,
rekishi (co-author, 1999), and Nihonl
Eizo/Beikoku: Kyokan no kyod6tai toteikoku-teki kokumin shugi (2007).
He is editor/author of Globalization no
naka no Asia (1998) and Soryokusen
taisei kara globalization e (2003).
He is Editor-in-Chief of Traces, amultilingual periodical on cultural
theory and translation.

C:
D

-+-

m
L

(,

m

r
I

U1 w

rtJ•

Reproduced in the publication documenting theproceedings, this essay was first presented as the
keynote speech of the International Symposium 2002 :"Asia in Transition: Representation and Identity,"
organized by the Japan Foundation Asia Center in
2002. Sakai Naoki begins by describing how identity is
an issue of identification, arguing that identity is formedin the contrast between self and other that occurs
through referencing things that are outside the self. Hesays that Asia is not a geographic concept. Until the late
19th century, the people in "Asia" had not consideredthemselves to be "Asians:· Rather, Asia is a conceptthat was produced by the Europeans as a means ofdistinguishing themselves from the others to the east .
Stating that the figure of "us" is constituted within the
projection of the figure of "them;· Sakai refers to thiseffect as "co-figurative identification ." He argues that
Asia's self-awareness is a product of the colonizationof the region by the European Great Powers, and that
postcoloniality is essential to the possibility of Asia .
Sakai goes on to address Japanese identity . WhenJapanese people distinguish themselves in contrast to
Koreans, they engage in colonialist delusions of theirown superiority and the inferiority of the other , informedby feelings of both guilt and pride. The pride is basedon Japan's former colonial rule over Korea, whicheven today exerts a strong influence . Sakai argues
that, consequently, postcoloniality does not refer towhat comes after the end of colonial rule but rather
indicates the irredeemability of the colonial experience,
because that experience continues to affect thepresent situation, and even retroactively contaminates
what came before colonial rule. This is exactly the
postcolonial character of Asia. Sakai also touches upon
the West. He says that the West is a mythical constructof recent currency, and as such is of suspect integrity .
In the first place, since the earth is a globe, there is no
one location that can actually be designated as the"West:' The West is fixed on maps and imagined as an
identifiable referent only in relation to Asia. Sakai saysthat the West is not a geographical index but a racial
index, and as such it is closely linked to racial fantasies
of "whiteness:· Sakai thinks that the phenomenon of
discussions about Asian values and the recovery of
Asian culture that has spread since the 1990s is proofof the continued existence of Asia's postcoloniality,
because here, too, Asia is being invoked through a
co-figurative identification predicated on reconfirming
the unity of the West . It is in this sense that the phrase"we Asians" suggests the continued domination ofEurocentrism. Sakai concludes his essay by questioning
whether it is possible to engage in self-referential
addresses like "we Asians" without getting caught up insuch binary oppositions and postcolonial genealogies .
[KK)

Source : The Japan Foundation 30th
Anniversary International Symposium2002 : ''Asia in Transition: Representation
and Identity • Report,ed . Furuichi Yasuko(Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Center,2003), 222-2 31

Chapter1

053

Regardless of whether it is civilizational, national,
ethnic or racial, all identity is, first of all, a matter ofidentification . Asia is no exception to this insofar
as it is comprehended as the identity of some collectivity. No individual or group can claim itself to
be Asian unless, in its outward reference, it is distinguished from and contrasted to some entity that is
not Asian while at the same time being identified, in
its inward self-restitution, with Asia . In this respect
Asia should be just like any such collective identities
as civilizational and geopolitical identities-theWest, Europe, the Americas, Africa, the East, the
New World; national identities-Chinese, British,
Russian, Indonesian, US American, South African,
Brazilian; and racial identities-White, Black, Yellow,
Semites, Mongolian and so forth . As Etienne Balibar
said with regard to the problem of collective identities in general, .Q1all the geopolitical identities arefundamentally ambiguous. The ambiguity inherent
in the Asian identity is not unique . In talking about
the Asian identity and the transitional predicamentin which this identity is currently perceived to besituated, what is at issue is neither its inherent ambiguity nor its complexity: it is instead the historicallyspecific modes and modalities of its identification .
The globally-accepted general consensus dictatesthat Asia is primarily one of the four major
geographic regions (five when including Oceania,
and six when separatingNorth and South America
or including the Antarctic). It is often mistakenly
regarded as one of the large continents of the world,
but as a cursory glance immediately reveals, it is
not a continent-just as Europe is not . While theconcept of continents is extremely dubious andhas been called into question within the domainof geographic knowledge, ~ Asia is qualified evenless as a name for a geographically identifiable
area of the globe . Nonetheless, the presumptionthat Asia is essentially an expansive but enclosed
geographic landmass persists. This presumption
forms an operational dogma that the identity of Asia
is somewhat anchored in the location of a placethrough cartographic imagination.
It goes without saying that, following thecolonization of many parts of the world by theEuropean powers, such a presumption began to be
accepted by the elite in various communities acrossthe globe . Today the term Asia-or its equivalent in a
local language-is instantly intelligible with respect
to its connotation despite the fact that there is anextremely wide variety of its uses around the world.
It is widely believed that Asia is a certain proper
name that indicates a vast geographic area with ahuge resident population. Accordingly, some people
might assume that those who live in the geographic
area called Asia are naturally designated as the
Asians and that some common history or cultural
attributes must be intrinsic to those who inhabit thisvast area called Asia.
As a consequence of this, of course, it does
not necessarily follow that the people thus called

2003

Asians are able to gather themselves together andbuild some solidarity among themselves throughthe act of self-representation or auto-determination
by enunciating "we'.' Clearly, there is a wide gap
between the fact that the population is described
as Asians by some observers standing outside thepopulation-we will inquire into the conceptual
specificity of this "outside" or externality belowand the self-assertion by the people themselves interms of the name attributed to them . Some sort ofleap is required in order to move from the state ofbeing described as Asians by some outside agentsto their identification with Asia, to the self-representation as a subject. And let us not be negligentof a historical verity that such a situation did notexist until the late 19th century, so that, before thattime, the majority of residents in Asia did not know
they were living in Asia and referred to as Asiansby Europeans. Until then, generally speaking, there
were objects designated as Asians but there wereno subjects who represented themselves by callingthemselves Asians. Only in the late 19th century dida few intellectuals begin to seriously consider theplausibility of turning the objects "Asians" into thetransnational and regional subjects of Asia. In thisrespect one can never overlook the particular genealogy of Asia: that the name Asia originated outside
Asia, and that its heteronomous origin is indubitably
inscribed in the notion of Asia, even if it cannot betaken as a geographic or cartographic locality .
It is well known that the word Asia wascoined by the Europeans in the protocol of indexing
themselves as a sort of geopolitical unity in order todistinguish Europe from its eastern others. It later
turned into a term in the service of the constitutionof Europe's self-representation as well as its distinction. Asia is necessary for Europe because, without
positing it, Europe could not be marked as a distinct
and distinguishable body . What one sees here is
the most illuminating instance of the schematismof co-figuration, the working of a schema thanks towhich the figure of "us" is constituted in the projective imagining of the figure of "them:' As the figureof the imaginary entity called "Asia" is consolidated,the figure of "us"- in this case "us" as Europe andmore recently as the West-is posited as a unity .
Yet since the putative unity of Europe is inherently
unstable and constantly changing, Asia has been
defined and redefined according to contingent historical situations in which the relationships between
Europe and its others have undergone vicissitudes.
Since the 19th century there have been an
increasing number of occasions when "the West"has been used almost as a synonym for Europe. The
mytheme West came to assume a global currency
as Euro-American domination was increasingly
perceived to be an ineluctable reality in many partsof the world . Clearly the West neither signifies nor
refers to the same thing as the word Europe . Yet in its
paradigmatic discriminatory function in this schematism of co-figuration, the West began to behave like

Asia :Co-figurative Identification

01
Etienne Bahbar, "Ambiguous ldent1t1es,"
trans.Chris Turner, in Politics and the
Other Scene ( London & New York: Verso,

2002), 57.
02
For a critique of geographic knowledge
and the concept of continents, see:Martin W. Lewis and Karen E.Wigen, The
Myth of Contments ( Berkeley: Universityof California Press.1997). Despite theirthorough examination of the basic
assumptions concerning the geographic categories, however, the authors still
believe that the term "the West" can besomewhat rescued

ShaplngtheHlstoryofArt

054

lnsoutheutAola

Europe. In other words, Asia was placed in a similar
opposition to the West as it had been to Europe.
There are many other names and identities
with similar histories of conquest and colonizationby which people form their habits of collective identification . Hence, one cannot steadfastly assume
that people continue to be subjected to the initial
relationship of domination simply because theycollectively identify themselves in the terms which
originally were coined by that relationship. Today
Asia is not necessarily subjugated to the colonial
domination of the West. Most Asian countries are,at least in theory, independent of their former colonizers. Yet we are still not justified in overlooking
binding historical legacies which stem from the factthat Asia arrived at its self-consciousness thanks to
the West's or Europe's colonization. The historicalcolonization of Asia by Western powers is not something accidental to the essence of Asia; it is essential
to the possibility called Asia insofar as the post of
postcoloniality is not confused with that which
follows in chronological succession. Paradoxical
though it may sound, Asia was a postcolonial entity
from the outset-postcolonial in the sense thatthe identity serves to constitute a subject out of anamorphous crowd of people on the basis of a fantastic colonial structure imbedded in that identity.
Perhaps, as an example to demonstrate what I
mean by postcoloniality, I should mention the recent
reaction of the Japanese mass media to the revelation of North Korean kidnapping maneuvers. As
many people are aware, the North Korean government's official acknowledgement of its abduction
operations from the 1970s understandably gave rise
to a series of incidents provoking strong sentimentamong the Japanese public, and the abductedJapanese who were allowed by the North Korean
government to return to Japan became the pointof so-called condensation around which not only
public sympathy for their victim hood, and patriotic
camaraderie based on the collective disavowal ofcolonial guilt, but also the gush of vengefulness
against the resident Korean population within Japan
were conjured up.
By projectively identifying with the abducted,
many Japanese believed that they managed toshield themselves from a possible denunciation ofJapanese colonial responsibilities, against a fear thatthey would necessarily be exposed to the accusing
gaze of the Koreans whenever they posed themselves as Japanese before them. Please allow me toremind you of the specific historical relevance of theset of terms "abduction;· "abductor"and "abducted"
in this context. Regardless of whether an individualis aware or not of the histories of Japanese colonialism and postwar East Asia, the majority of the adultJapanese population today has an apprehensionthat to fashion oneself as a Japanese in a face-toface relation with the Koreans means accepting therole of colonizer, oppressor, victimizer and, particularly with regard to the cases of the Comfort Women

SakaiNaokl

Art Studies_03

and Forced Labor Transfer, the role of "abductor,"
as opposed to that of colonized, oppressed,
victim and "abducted." It is, however, important
to note that such a self-fashioning also implies theJapanese monopoly of the attributes of being themodernizer, rational, enlightened and militarilyand scientifically superior, as opposed to being
premodern, irrational, traditional and militarily andscientifically inferior. The distribution of qualities inthis neatly binary configuration is undoubtedly typical of the colonial imagination. And I would neverargue that there was in fact any moment in the pastin which the contrast between peoples of Japaneseand Korean ethnic backgrounds could be described
adequately at all in terms of these binary sets of
attributes. This is rather a projective description at
the service of colonial imagination .
Nevertheless, the Japanese identity could not
be imagined without resort to this binarism because
the regime of identification without which one cannot fashion oneself as Japanese necessarily involves
this binary configuration . Of course, here, I am
talking about the putative identity of the Japanesenation in relation to Korean identity. Such a regime isutterly irrelevant when we talk about the Japanese
identity in relation to other ethnic, national, civilizational or racial identities-the putative national
identity of the United States, for example . And letme note that I am not postulating the Japanese
identity in general here, irrespective of its relation tothe other identities. Rather, what I call the Japanese
identity is an assemblage of Japanese identities
which are constituted fantastically in identifications
in differing and varying relations.
First, what is to be underlined is that the
attributes which cause some sense of guilt in one
who fashions him/herself as Japanese in relation
to the Koreans are unavoidably tied to the qualities
which make the same person feel proud of being
Japanese. This is why an admission of colonial guilt
is often accompanied by secret conceit. "We aresorry to have colonized you. But, let us admit, wewere so strong that we could conquer you withease." Given this structure of a binary configuration,
it would be much less tormenting and even comforting for one to fashion him/herself as Japanese if theattributes of embarrassing qualities-being victimizer, "abductor," and so forth-are openly disavowedor if one is allowed to overlook them . It seems tome that the figure of the Japanese abducted offers
the Japanese public a most convenient excuse todisavow not only their colonial guilt but also theattributes which might invoke the sense of thatcolonial guilt. In sympathizing with the abducted,
many Japanese put themselves in the position of thevictim, the abducted and the oppressed, and thisfantastic positionality allows them to enjoy a colonial binary configuration without colonial guilt. This
explains why the outburst of public sympathy forthe abducted Japanese so easily led to such a sentimental affirmation of national solidarity and served--------------

055

Chapter1

as a rather comforting opportunity to feel proudof Japanese nationality without the hindrance ofcolonial guilt. It is an outburst of patriotic sentimentthat is somewhat similar to what we witnessed in
the United States after "9/11."
Second, the Japanese identity thus constituted
is totally dependent upon a colonial imagination
which projects a binary configuration retrospectively back to the relationship between the Japanesefrom Japan proper and the Japanese of the Korean
Peninsula under the Japanese Empire. Let me stressthat I am not focusing on the mode of identification
during the colonial period but rather the Japanese
identity today. The imaginary relationship between
Japanese and Koreans must constantly call on
the colonial imagination for the very reason of
constituting the Japanese and Korean identities interms of the binary configuration after the loss of theJapanese Empire. Precisely because the qualities ofwhich one who fashions oneself as Japanese today
should feel proud are irresolvably implicated in thecolonial imagination, the Japanese simply cannot
rid themselves of the legacies of the past which arepreserved iri the colonial binary configuration andincorporated into the regime of identification
through which they identify themselves as Japanese.
The self-confidence in "nihonjin no jikaku" (the selfawarenessof being Japanese)is sustained in thecolonial configuration, so that one would have to go
through the loss of such self-confidence in order to
get rid of the colonial legacy in the mode of collective identification . We simply cannot subscribe to
the general presumption, endorsed by both progressive and conservative intellectuals in postwar Japan,that there is some substantial Japanese identity
unaffected by historical vicissitudes and that, oncethe external colonial conditions of the colonial reign
are removed, that substance returns to its original
shape . On the contrary, the colonial experience has
irredeemably and decisively affected how one canbe Japanese; being colonizers and seeing thingsfrom the civilizing positionality are not some accidental attributes to Japanese subjecthood. Suchqualities as making the Japanese feel superior toother Asians even after the loss of their empire arepart and parcel of the essence of Japanese subjecthood, and one will remain caught in the colonial
past as long as one refuses to question the modeof identification by which one enjoys the sense ofcollective confidence as Japanese .
Postcoloniality, therefore, has little to do withwhat comes after the demise of the colonial reign .
It indicates how decisively and irredeemably the
fantasy of the colonial relationship is etched in
our identities, regardless of whether that fantasy
adequately summarizes the collective experience ofthe past or not. This is to say that the post of postcoloniality means the irredeemability of the colonial
experience due to which it is impossible to posit
some original identity prior to the colonial reign: acollective essential identity not yet contaminated by

2003

-

the violence of the colonial power relationship .
My concern is with the postcolonial aspectsof that identity, namely , As ia. Even though genealogically Asia retains its co lonial structure, I do
not hesitate to admit that it could well be free ofthe fantasy of the colonial relationship. So let me
examine whether or not the contemporary appraisalof Asian things has dealt with the postcoloniality ofthis identity. And my examination begins not with
Asia but the West, in paradigmatic relation to which
Asia maintains its identity .
The West is a mythical construct of ahistorically rather recent currency, whose unity
is increasingly suspect . Compared with the otherold uses of this word-or its equivalent in otherlanguages-in which the West bespoke theWestern portion of the Roman world after its division into two empires, the so-called New World,or the oceans located furthest west of the Central
Kingdom, the West came into general use after thecapital originating in Western Europe was perceived
to be omnipresent in global colonial domination .
The West is supposed to indicate a certain
group of people called "Westerners" in terms of
their residential geographies, traditions, race andpedigree . It may appear to be a proper name, andits propriety is often marked by the capitalization of
its first letter. Whereas "west" suggests a direction ,"the West"(the Occident) retains the denotation of
a geographic area in the direction of the setting sun,and accordingly, Asia (the Orient) acquires its directional sense of the rising sun. But it derives from thedirectional adverb and, since the earth is a globe,
there is no fixed location that can be designated by"west;' so any point in the world can potentially becalled so. The West as the delimitation of "west"
must then be diacritically distinguished from thatwhich is not the West, that is, the Rest of the world.
Only insofar as it is distinguished and separated
from the Rest can it refer to something other thana mere west. In this respect the West is dependent
upon how the Rest is determined, and the binary
opposition of the West and the Rest prescribes themeaning of this word. Thus the West can be imagined as a fixed and identifiable cartographic referent
only when the Rest-particularly Asia, the East andthe Orient-is thought of as a fixity .
As a cartographic index, however, it sustains
little coherence . What is often overlooked is theundeniable economic, social, cultural, ethnic andreligious heterogeneity that has continued to exist
in the geographic areas imagined to constitute theWest. The majority of those who live in countries
in Western Europe believe themselves to beWesterners, but at the same time some white people in South Africa and Australia, for instance, mightalso insist that they are "Westerners:· Conversely
the colored population in North America are rarely
recognized as "Westerners," even if the majorityof residents in North America have claimed, more
frequently perhaps since the end of the Second

Asia : Co-figurative ldenttflcatfon

-

-

---

Shaping the History of Art
lnSOUtheastA1la

03
Relying upon Tanabe HaJime's "Logic of
the Species"(Shu no ronri) and supporting the T<ij6 H1deki government's efforts
to constructa multiethnictransnationaland regional empire (the Greater East
Asian Co-Prospenty Sphere). K6saka
Masaaki argued that the concept of ethnicity or nationality (minzokusei) was
subJective in the Hegelian sense. Minzoku
no tetsugaku [ Philosophy of the Nation I(Tokyo: lwanami Shoten. 1942).

056

World War, that they too are in the West . So it may
appear that the West is primarily a racial index rather
than a cartographic one; it is closely associated w ith
the racial fantasies of whiteness . But, once again,
this assessment contradicts the historical fact that
Eastern Europe has been generally excluded fromthe West , not only during the period of the Cold
War but throughout the 20th century . Generally
speaking, the racial notion of whiteness is organizedloosely enough to allow those groups who would
be excluded from being wh ite in other regions in
the world, such as certain peoples from the Middle
East, to be recognized as such in East Asia or North
America . As people move from one place to another ,their racial identity may well change . Furthermore,
we now know that not only the concept of race ingeneral but also whiteness as a social category ishistorically so arbitrary that it is hardly an index of astable identity.
Just like the racial not ion of wh iteness, theWest does not cohere as a concept in empiricalknowledge. The unity of the West is far from being
unitarily determinable on empirical grounds. The
West, therefore, is a mythical construct, which
achieves powerful effects on us as it gathers
varying and contradicting properties around itself.
Yet it is important not to forget that what we believe
we apprehend by this mytheme is increasingly
ambiguous and incongruous: its immoderately
overdetermined nature can no longer be shrouded .
This does not mean that the West has ceased to
be a reality whose putative objectivity is globally
accepted; our senses of the world are still directedby this historical construct. This is why the West
must be understood, first of all, as a mytheme
which regulates our imagination about how tohierarchically configure peoples and institutions on
the world map, and which also functions powerfully
as one term of the binary opposition of the West
and Asia .
Until a few decades ago, the West wasunquestionably perceived to be not only a geographical but also a historical index by means ofwhich it was thought possible to measure how
modern a given social formation was in relation toanother. It served and still serves as a powerful trope
whereby geographic location has been mapped
onto the historicist chronology of progress . For
many people in many parts of the world well beyond
so-called "developed countries," modernization was
Westernization , and this formula made it possible
for them to entirely overlook a painfully obv ious
antinomy in the statements that some societies run
ahead of others and that those societies are locatedin the West .
It is safe to say that today the West as ananalytic concept is bankrupt and generally uselessin guiding our observation about certain social

Sakal Naokl

Art Studies_03

formations and people 's behavior in many loci in theworld . It obscures our observation and misdirects
our comparison , particularly in the cases of social
formations and cultural phenomena encounteredin not only cosmopolises such as Hong Kong, Los
Angeles, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro ,Beijing, London, Cairo, Bangkok and Jakarta,
but also hinterlands in the North American Plain,increasingly depopulated villages in NortheasternJapan, the Midlands in the United Kingdom, andsuburban Bangalore . With Japan being customarily
located outside the West , can such a sweeping
comparison with the West tell you anything unique
about Tokyo culture? Does Japanese film demonstrate some distinctively non-Western property or
propriety more significant than the fact that what
the individual researcher perceives to be non-Western indicates only that the person happens to be
unfamiliar with it? Yet the uses of the West and Asia
cannot be discarded at wh im overn ight . For boththe West and Asia are subjective in the sense thatan ethnic identity is not an objective but a subject ive reality .~ Certain people will persist in relying
upon these mythemes because they have to fashion
themselves in these categories and also by meansof their distinction from each other. By positing theWest as "over there ," away from Asia as "this side,"
they invent an optic that is Orientalist in reverse. Just
like the Orientalist one which posits the Occident as
this side and the Orient as over there , this voyeuristic
optic re-invigorates a fleeting sense of a distinction
between Asia and the West, an ephemeral extenuation for not submitting things Asian to the same
analytical fields of investigation as things modern
and Western; as if the appreciation of things Asianwhich for some miraculous reason are all supposed
to be immediately "traditional "- could in due course
redeem us from the evils of modernity .
It goes without saying that the discussion of
Asian values popular in the 1990s and the recurrent Asian culturalism in a variety of forms are thebest testimonies to the persistent existence of
postcoloniality in the modes of identification bywhich people fashion themselves as Asians . These
instances tell us that, in these modes of identification , Asia continues to be invoked against thebackground of the culturalist binary co-figurative
schema of the Occident and the Orient . In order toaffirm the solidarity of "us Asians, " then , we would
have to re-confirm the putative unity of the Westand remain subordinated to Eurocentrism .
Given the aforementioned schematism of
the West and Asia, how can "we" possibly identify
ourselves as Asians? The final provocative question
I would like to ask, then, is: how can we possibly
prevent our self-referential address , "we Asians,"from being caught in this binarism or postcolonial
genealogy?

Chapter1

057

Shaping the History of Art
In Southeast Asia,.

Moments of Regionality:

NegotiatingSoutheastAsia
Ahmad Mashadi
Ahmad Ma shad is Head of the National
University of Singapore Museum (NUS
Museum). Prior to assuming his current
position in 2007, he was Senior Curator
at the Singapore Art Museum. He
curated and co-curated exhibitionsat
the Singapore Art Museum including"Modernity and Beyond: Themesin
Southeast Asian Art" (1996),"Telah
Terbit (Out Now)" (2006), and "Cubism
in Asia"(2006). At the NUS Museum,he has co-curated "Picturing Relations:
Simryn Gill and Tino Djumini"(2007),"We"(2007), "Jendela: APlayof
the Ordinary" (2008), "Camping&
Tramping Through the ColonialArchive:
The Museum in Malaya"(2011), and"Archiving Apin: Works and Documentsfrom the Mochtar Apin Collection"(2013). He also curated Singapore
participations in the 10th Triennale-lndia(2000), the 49th Venice Biennale (2001),
and the 26th Bienal de Sao Paulo (2004).

"To regard Southeast Asia as a geocultural category
is to negotiate its regionality." This is how Ahmad
Mashadi frames the context in which Southeast
Asia is placed under conditions of visibility andconsideration. This is an important strategy for
Mashadi, because it casts Southeast Asia as a subjectof study that warrants a reflexive technique of seeing
and considering. Furthermore, this Southeast Asia isunderstood as a potential geocultural category,a subject that makes sense or becomes sensible
only in relation to place and social life. In order to put
these notions together within a relationship, Mashadi
introduces a process of negotiation of its coming
together as a region. His choice of "regionality"
over "region" is significant; it calls out a process of
becoming, perceiving the region not as fully formed
but as forming or formative. This is why he stresses
that this regionality is "contingent on mechanisms"
and requires a "currency of exchange:· In this
discussion, he acknowledges the forces at work in
the formation of a region: colonialism, revolution,nationalism, modernity, authoritarian rule, democratic
resistance. It is in this climate that a possible
historiography is written, one that dares to speak
about a region in a comparative register. Mashadi
teases out two moments that weave this regionality: in1957 when the First Southeast Asian Art Conference
and Competition was organized in Manila, and in 1993
when the Second ASEAN Workshop, Exhibition andSymposium on Aesthetics was held in Manila andthe First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
opened in Brisbane in Australia. He trains his focus
on two historical periods: the post-Pacific War andthe post-Cold War. These seminal instances stage a"plurality of internationality" through the making of
exhibitions, discourses and institutions so that theregion could finally gather.
[PF)

Source: Crossings: Philippine Works fromthe Singapore Art Museum (Makati City:
Ayala Foundation & Singapore: National
Heritage Board, 2004). 25-37.

In--

058

llhllplngthelllotoryof Art

01
Alice G. Guillermo, "Social Concerns
in Southeast Asian Art," in Visions andEnchantment: Southeast Asian Paintings,
exh. cat (Singapore: Singapore Art
Museum, 2000), 44.

02
Maximo M. Kalaw, Introduction toPhilippine Social Science ( Manila, 1937),
185, quoted by David Joel Steinberg etal., ed., In Search of Southeast Asia. A
Modern History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin,1987), 280. See also note 13 illustrating the Philippines's ambivalent outlook
towards Asia dunng the 1950s.

To regard Southeast Asia as a geocultural category
is to negotiate its regionality. It is not simply aregionality sustained by fluid artistic interactions,exchanges, dependencies and sharing ofexperiences and ideals, but one that is contingent
on mechanisms and instruments that host suchencounters-institutions and their practicesencumbered by the contexts and conditions
within which they operate. Whether initiated bygovernments and public institutions or independent
entities, concepts of cultural mapping are framedby specific aesthetic and political references.
These initiatives are expedient in their response to
the nature of international relations-the patterns
and shifts in political interactions and prospects.
Regionality also requires a currency of exchange .
Culture offers itself as a currency that is often seen
to be particularly neutral, pliant to the needs ofbilateral or multilateral interests . For this, histories
and claimed destinies are offered as comparative
markers to solicit positions of collectivity. However,regionality need not be seen simply as a desire for an
imagined fraternity. Enmeshing practices, histories
and ideals into a crucible of dialogue dismantles
the frames and assumptions, unpacking national
categories and allowing for cycles of formation anddeconstruction . Efforts in regionality can be seenas acts that simultaneously shape and reshapeconfigurations of culture and geography, rendering
categories dynamic and unstable.
Over the past years, particularly in the decadeof the 1990s, we have seen the proliferation of
exhibitions on modern and contemporary art ofSoutheast Asia organized by regional institutions aswell as those from places outside the region such as
Japan. The concept of Southeast Asia as a coherent
cultural entity is largely accepted, but often underpinned by diverse or differing motivations, given
the uneven economic and political basis relevant tosuch undertakings . Earlier mappings-"Nanyang,""East Indies," and "Far East"-project Southeast Asia
as a sphere of colonial interests often referenced
to nodal centers of power or domination . War andideological battles further impose other temporaryconfigurations useful in activating strategies andpolicies. But imposed mappings transact withemerging conceptions of self and attempts to clarify
the self within an alliance of selves seen to be sharing similar predicaments and positions. In the 1950s
and 1960s, nationalism provided a driving force as
newly independent countries sought to share theircommon colonial histories and aspirations working towards mutual aims. Early political regionalframeworks, however, need not be translated into
forms of regional artistic actions or collectivization.
In the 1950s, given the relative isolation of national
practices, Vicente Manansala's transparent-cubism
could not have been vigorously compared against
the cubo-figuristic styles of the Malaysians Tay Hooi
Keat and Syed Ahmad Jamal. Under these circumstances, development of art historiography takes

Ahmad Mashadl

ArtStudies_03

place within the processes of regional formations
over time, which by the 1990s allowed for a moreconsidered reading and appreciation of history. As
aptly illustrated by Alice Guillermo, writing for theexhibition "Visions and Enchantment: Southeast
Asian Paintings"(2000), "peoples [of SoutheastAsia]
have shared common historical experiences: colonization, anti-colonial revolution, the Second World
War, martial rule and dictatorships . Through thepervasive influence of colonialism, they confronted
the issue of national identity and re-examined theircultures, arts and values in the new light of independence." Q! Here, we are able to invest in the works
by Manansala, Tay Hooi Keat, and Syed Ahmad acogency of significance specific to the conditionsof modernity, layering them against a declaredinternationality of universal aestheticism founded in
abstraction . Investigations into Southeast Asian art
history currently place significant interest on suchfeatures identified by Guillermo, for their cogency inframing the diverse artistic developments that took
place and the ensuing responses.
Regionality can also be counterpointed byother forms of regionalities . This is not new giventhat aspects of regional art are explained in relation
to other cultures considered seminal in Southeast
Asian development-Southeast
Asia in parts waslslamized, Christianized, Americanized, lndianized,
etc. This creates a sense of ambivalence that keeps
opposing and complementary concepts in tension .
A Filipino social scientist wrote in the 1930s that
the Filipinos were "an Oriental people standingat the portals of Asia, in deep sympathy with its
kindred neighbors yet with hands outstretchedto the cultures of Spain and America:· ~ Evolving
economic and political landscapes nurture the shifts
from the old and the emergence of new configurations . The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
may have been ill-conceived as a vehicle of politicaldomination during the Pacific War, but by the 1990s
we witnessed the rise of Asia-Pacific as a term that
resituates Southeast Asia within a new global orderof economic prominence and power. Patterns ofpractice in Southeast Asia are compared across alarger geographical space, profiled in correlation
to countries such as Australia, Korea and China.
As such, this new task of regionality brings withit differentiated means of reading and examination. For countries such as Australia, configuring
the Asia-Pacific through mega-events such as
the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art(established1993) brings with it an added advantage
of determining the terms of fraternity . Entry can
now be qualified in relation to degrees of negotiatedcivil liberty and exoticness. Southeast Asian art
dynamically configures and reconfigures itself as
it alternates between the different platforms of
ASEAN and Asia-Pacific.
This essay offers a modest look at moments ofregionality in Southeast Asian art, indexed throughspecific events that took place in Manila. TheseChapter1

059

events are by no means monumental in scale, but
significant as they propose and affirm directionsof regional discourse during specific periods ofSoutheast Asian art history .
Part One: 1957

In keeping with the desire to make Manila theartistic center of Southeast Asia, a Southeast
Asian exhibition and competition was launchedin the city .. . Malaya emerged the winner inthe competition, followed by the Philippines.
The plan was to make the competition anannual, round -robin affair, but somehow a new
Southeast Asian exhibition never materialized .
Nonetheless, two important ideas emerged
from the competition. The first was that all men
are brothers and art transcends all barriers
because it is universal. The second-and thismay not be as diametrically opposite as it may
seem-was a belief in national identity .~The year was 1957. Writing a chronicle of the Art
Association of the Philippines ( AAP, established1948),
Purita Kalaw-Ledesma described what perhaps was
the first attempt to organize a regional exhibitionof modern art. This exhibition, according to KalawLedesma, is to be seen as part of a larger movetowards internationalism, within an environment
dominated by the Cold War and American efforts
in sustaining political influence over the region and,in particular, the Philippines . Artists represented in
the exhibition were emerging modernists, including
Manansala, who took one of the prizes. A Pan-Asian
Art Conference was held in conjunction with theexhibition . Syed Ahmad, who together with Tay Hooi
Keat represented Malaysia, gave his impression of
the event :Malaysia's participation in the Southeast
Asian Art Exhibition in Manila in April 1957
was an important step for the state of art inthis country, both in terms of recognition fromthe government and exposure of Malaysianart outside the country .. .. This was the firstimportant international art exhibition inwhich Malaysia participated, where works by
Malaysian artists were exhibited side by sidewith those of other countries. ~Although based on these statements it would
be difficult to suggest artistic and institutional
commitment to forms of regionality, we may draw
several implications that are useful to estimate
attitudes and thinking towards Southeast Asia asa collective entity. Kalaw-Ledesma's reference touniversality is not simply confined to the brotherly
spirit of artistic encounters, but also to the emergent
force of modernism-expressed at the time bymodes of abstraction-that swept fervently across2004

the region, aided by access to Western aesthetic
education and the domination of American Abstract
Expressionism. While she postulates that there is nocontradiction between the pursuit of modernistic
aims grounded on an internationalist form of expression and the need to develop national identity andthe needs of nationalism , Syed Ahmad was moreforceful in making such claims . For him, abstraction
was an expression of newly found national independence which itself accommodated the search fornational and cultural ident ities :3

Punta Kalaw-Ledesma and Amadis Ma.
Guerrero, The Struggle for Ph1hppineArt(Manila: Punta Kalaw-Ledesma. 1974),

68-69
04
Syed Ahmad Jamal, "25 Years of
Malaysian Art," in Seni Lukis Melays,e·25 Tahun (Kuala Lumpur· Bala, Seni Luk1s
Negara, 1982), n.p.

05
Ibid
06

The Merdeka [Independence)artists of thefifties and sixties subscribed mainly tothe aesthetics of abstract expressionism .
The immediacy and mystical quality ofthe mainstream art of the '60s appealed
particularly to the Malaysian temperament,sensitivity and cultu re heritage, and with thetradition of calligraphy found the idiom theideal means of pictor ial individuation .~Syed Ahmad , who himself is an abstract artist
educated in London in the late 1950s, could nothave made these claims as a neutral observer . Yet
the statement is marked by a measured degree ofambivalence. Like Kalaw-Ledesma, Syed Ahmad
was also championing the modernist cause throughinstitutional mechanisms of exhibition-making andwriting . As in the case of the Philippines, the strife
between the modernists and conservatives-thoseboycotts and walk-outs-had often been highlighted to establish opposing conceptual positions
and hence, by implication , declare the virility of themodernists in their articulation of the modern . Syed
Ahmad however , was reserved in his claims . Writing
in 1982, and having witnessed and participated in
the vexing debates on the role and position of art inthe construction of nation or community, and theensuing rise of indigenous interests in artmaking
grounded on traditional Malay culture and Islam, he
confers on Abstract Expressionism or mainstream
art the role of catalyst for departures, enabling new
trajectories in art practices, conditioned by social,political needs and interests. For Patrick Flores,
writing in 2000, this necessitates that we "recast[abstract art's) ... role from an 'influence' of the socalled 'West' to a negotiated aesthetic of 'translocal'
cultures." Flores regards abstraction "not only as astyle or a look or a market integer, but also a specterof struggle of artists and audiences, institutions
and imaginations in making art a condition of possibility in the image of the new and its retroactive
inheritance ." 2§.
In expressing international fraternity, abstraction provides a currency of exchange, and while
Southeast Asia forms the intermediate, the principal
stage was the biennales .2ZArtists of the Philippines
set their sights quickly , although not without
trepidation. A cursory survey of artists participating
in international events included Manansala andMomenta:of Reglonallty: Negotiating SoutheastAsia

Patrick D. Flores, "Rewor1dmg Modernity:
Abstract Art ,n Southeast Asia ,nthe 1950s and 1960s," in Visions andEnchantment. 34. 42.

07
Kalaw-Ledesma remarks that "internationalism
took the form of a desire tocompete with the rest of the world. Th,s
was a very subtle trend: to crash the international scene, It was believed that one
had to paint ,n the ,ntematlonal style. The
feeling grew that the Filipino artist was
as good as anyone, and the only way todemonstrate this was to compete in inter-national competitions. Consequently it
became the amb1t1onof many Filipino
artists to be represented In the b,ennales'.' Flores. "Reworldmg Modernity," 67
Flores's remarks add to this assertion:"At the time, it was customary for Joya, astudent of Zoltan Sepeshy, to invoke thenames of his exemplarsin an interview·
Pollock, de Koornng, Kime, Rothko andMotherwell from the US: Soulages andMathieu from France; Tapies and Saurafrom Spam." Ibid .. 36.

Shaping the History of Art
In Southeast Alla08
Kalaw-Ledesma, The Struggle forPhilippine Alt, 68.

09
Ibid., 71.
10

Emmanuel Torres, "How to Create an
ASEAN Mainstream;· in The Aestheticsof ASEAN Expressions: A Documentationof the Second ASEAN Workshop,
Exhibition and Symposium on Aesthetics(Manila: ASEAN Committee on Culture
and Information, 1994), 171
11

Flores's reading of abstraction In
Southeast Asian art best indicates contemporary attempts at reframing thecontribution of Asian art to modernity atlarge, referenced to colonial and postcolonial aesthetic education, its currency
in expressingnation and nation building,its intimacy with art patronage, and its
ability to contain and accommodate thematic and figurative interests. See Flores,"Reworldmg Modernity."

12
Torres, "ASEAN Mainstream," 172.
13

Turnbull assesses the Philippines's
position as a postwar regional leader:"While the Philippines boasted a nation- .
alist movement dating back to the 1870s
and was the first Asian colonial territory
to gain independence-predating even
India in this respect- its ongoing links
with the United States made 11spokesman and docile ally of that country rather
than an acknowledged pace-setter ofregional nationalism.This was accentuated by the strong social and cultural
influence of the Spanish and Americancolonial period, which left a Christianmajority and the largest Westerneducated community in Southeast Asia.
Filipino statements praising the UnitedStates at an Asian Relations Conference
held in New Delhi In March 1947, only
months after the Philippines became
independent, shocked other delegates,
as did a statement at the Marnia Treaty
conference in 1954 that Filipinos did notregard themselves as Asians." See C.M.
Turnbull, "Regionalism and Nationalism,"in The Cambridge History of Southeast
Asia, ed. Nicholas Tarling, vol. 2, The
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 593.

060

Nena Saguil (Spanish-AmericanBiennale,Cuba,1958),
Napoleon Abueva and JoseJoya (VeniceBiennale,1962), and Arturo Luz and Lee Aguinaldo (Bienalde
SaoPaulo,1971). This partial list included many artists
who were associated with the Philippine Art Gallery(1950-60)- a commercial gallery that functioned as avanguard for progressive modernists of the country,
providing an indication of the range of artists being
selected to represent the Philippines. These participations were undertaken with considerable cost andeffort . Expectations were high. Venice was a difficult
proposition. Kalaw-Ledesma recalled, "the general
impression was that our entries were lost in the seaof similar works, each working in the same school ofabstract thought . Our entries did not have originality... Joya, for example, may have been an outstanding
painter in this country, but in [the)Venice Biennale hewas just one out of many." 2!! Sao Paulo for one wasseen as an expensive exercise . Disappointed by theoutcome, Arturo Luz reported:
In my opinion the Bienal de Sao Paulo is a
showplace for the big nations determined togain prestige, and [was a] rather expensive
exercise for the small participating nations ....
At this stage it might be sensible to ask precisely what we are after in participating at the
Sao Paulo Bienal. My own guess is that international recognition will come if we win an award
or send an exhibition which is truly original andoutstanding by international standards ... and I
seriously doubt the benefits of such an effort in
relation to the artists and the Philippines. Q!!
Striking in these remarks are the prerequisites
of internationality assumed. Many of the Filipino
modernists had studied abroad in centers such as
New York and Paris, choosing to connect with the"Western avant-garde," according to Eric Torres, inthe "same spirit of Luna and Hidalgo [who) fired theirattempts at making it abroad" over half a century
earlier in Spain and France. Torres continues that itis "all too typical of countries colonized for as longas the Philippines has been, that the artist's rightful
ambition is winning international recognition.
This, nationalists would say, is like looking throughthe wrong end of the telescope." 1Q Abstraction,
regarded in the 1950s and 1960s as a universal
idiom, was strategically preferred in order todemonstrate artistic and national progressiveness.
Forms of artistic conceptualisms and art historicalcontextualization were at their nascent stages ofdevelopment . Conditions of colonial legacy, nationbuilding and social contexts, carefully activatedtoday in art historical readings to articulate thedynamism of Southeast Asian abstraction, 11
certainly could have featured only as mitigating
circumstances to their perceived lack of originality.
Modern art from Asia would have not been received
in light of colonial discourses and post-colonial
struggles. Torres's view is indicative: "the notion of

Ahmad Mashadl

Art Studies_03'international or mainstream art' is the hegemonyof the West, the myth of Euro-Anglo-American
supremacy, underlying which is a capitalist ideology based on domination and power." i;i Under
these circumstances, modern Asian art was often
dismissed as derivative . Framing Luz's observations,
Venice and Sao Paulo presented challenges forwhich achievements could be measured and wherethe "original and outstanding" is found wanting.
As a regionalist statement, the 1957 Southeast
Asian Art Exhibition was at best tentative. The seriesof exhibitions planned for other cities within theregion did not materialize . This may be explained by
the lack of formal structures of institutions-nationaland regional-required to organize and host such
events . Abstract Expressionism as an aesthetic
reference was adopted widely in the Philippines as
elsewhere around the time, but had largely beenread narrowly in relation to the economic and political dependency between former colony and former
colonizers . Southeast Asia as geo-political space
was fragmented, as each country in its relative
isolation struggled to articulate concepts of nationhood, which did not necessarily preclude a rejectionof the heavy role and influence played by former
colonizers .Jl The nature of postindependence
patronage between newly independent nations andtheir former, colonial masters meant that for countries like the Philippines, the United States remained
exemplary as both a political and cultural reference.
Part Two: 1993

Fast forward away from the internationalism of 1957
and the heady days of participations in Venice and
Sao Paulo. It is October of 1993 in Manila, the occasion of the Second ASEAN Workshop, Exhibition
and Symposium on Aesthetics, organized by the
ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information. By
this time, the political grouping ASEAN (Associationof SoutheastAsian Nations)-which was formed in1967 with its chief aim being the encouragement ofcooperation within the region-had put in place a
range of regional initiatives on culture and the arts.
The symposium was indicative of increased regional
interest in establishing, if not estimating, the level ofcultural congruency between member states, andin doing so, transcending the political expediencies
that had largely governed regional relations to thatpoint. The period of the late 1980s and early 1990s
was also significant as it witnessed a proliferation ofartistic and exhibition practices within and outside
the region. The geo-economic map of Asia had beentransformed by post-Cold War optimism and themeteoric rise of China and East Asia. The collective
emergence of East and Southeast Asia as an economic entity also prompted Australia to articulate its
interests both in diplomatic and cultural terms, leading to the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Triennial(APT) in 1993. ~ In Southeast Asia, the APT has
been received with excitement. For one, it provides

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Chapter1

a new modality in presenting and representing
Asian and Southeast Asian art. Creating a networkof dialogues between Australian, international andlocal experts and art historians, the APT provides acollaborative curatorial framework that promotes
inclusivity of cultural viewpoints, albeit structured
to advance Australia's position in a post-hegemonicworld with a "newly de-centered center." ~ Thefocus on Australia and the APT, from the perspectives of Southeast Asians, can be contextualized in
the floundering state of ASEAN-sponsored exhibition practices. This includes the Traveling Exhibitionof Painting, Photography and Children's Art. Apinan
Poshyananda provides a layered observation about
ASEAN and its cultural programs :ASEAN is designed to encourage a feeling ofenhancing multilateral economic and security
cooperation. For the sake of international
cultural relations, public diplomacy, and [the)search for homogeneity, common threads
within hundreds of different cultures areinterwoven to envisage the "Asian family."[The) visual arts have become the vehicle tobind ASEAN linkages into an overlappingand interlocking network. Overzealous andsometimes forceful official art exhibitions
among ASEAN [members) are perceived as theoutcome of communities with long-lasting
comradeship. Therefore, at times sociopolitical problems among these countries arede-emphasized or sidestepped for the sake ofcultural diplomacy. !.!!
Away from the "flabby, directionless ... lethargic
and tired" TI: ASEAN exhibitions, the APT offers
fresh ground for conceptual isms around andabout Southeast Asia, despite and in responseto the APT's broad geo-cultural frame. Writing
in 1996, T.K. Sabapathy used the occasion of
the APT to tease out perspectives on Southeast
Asian regionality. He asked: "Or is it the case thatthe mapping of the Asia-Pacific can usefully leadto constituting a mosaic of sub-regions, eachhaving distinct historical demographies [ which)yet overlap, abut, with neighboring and evenfar-flung sub-regions?" !.!!To illustrate the potentialof this question, he reactivated the question of
encounters between Southeast Asian cultures andthose from the Indian sub-continent, referencing
Ananda Coomaraswamy's studies of Farther
India ( representedin Coomaraswamy'sworks by theterm "Indonesia").Sabapathy's motivation surely
should not be read as an attempt to reinvigoratea Southeast Asian historiography that privileged
India as its originating center. Underlying thishistoriographical approach is a critique that sharesthe concerns raised by Apinan Poshyananda quoted
earlier. Whereas conceptualisms of regionality
are often defined in complicity to the needs ofcontemporary diplomacy, they can perhaps be only2004

self-referential in relation to the prevailing concernsof the hosting institutions or organizations, foregoing the discursive possibilities that historical, socialand political dynamics may offer.
We return to the 1993 ASEAN symposium .
The subject at hand was traditional aesthetics-a
search for regional aesthetics and cultural integrity.
The choice of theme relates to developments thatwere taking place in the Philippines and elsewherein the region, as seen in the practices of Roberto
Villanueva, Santiago Bose, Paz Abad Santos andJunyee, and the formation of the Baguio Arts
Guild (1987).Yet, as we overlay it against the historical baggage brought about by the disappointmentsof the 1950s and 1960s, this symposium can beread as continuing efforts to strategize regionality
in tandem with the vexing question of internationalism, this time seeking ways in which the hegemonyof the West could be circumvented rather thanjust simply confronted. Quoting Alice Guillermo,
Fajardo describes the symposium as "an assertionof the integrity of [the) culture, art and aestheticsof ASEAN countries, [as) part of [the) decolonizing
process that puts forward an alternative aesthetic
discourse. This independent aesthetics is theprimary reason for the symposium."This "ASEAN aesthetics" seems to be invoked
as a call for cultural solidarity among its
member nations, a part of a process of decolonization that hopes to move ASEAN art frombeing marginal or a footnote to being the main
subject. There seems to be an upsurge of art
from the region as its artists and art scholars
veer away from Euro-American paradigms inan effort to respond to the immediate environment, using indigenous forms, materials andtechnology. ~If the task in the 1950s was to attain internationalrecognition through a demonstration of Asian ability
to emulate and connect with an international mainstream as part of an attempt to express the nationand modernity, the 1990s had brought a newly
found confidence in locating artistic practices within
the regional-local milieu . While it is recognized thatthe problems of authenticity and origination arecomplex given issues of hegemony and culturalimperialism, and definitions of high/low art, they
can be partly addressed by developing a language
and vocabulary based on indigenous aesthetic
systems that may be found in traditional forms ofexpressions. The symposium was structured along
three interrelated topics : a survey of traditional
aesthetics, emerging contemporary practices, andarticulation of strategies in the visual arts. Imelda
Cajipe-Endaya, one of the participants invited to
speak about strategies in artistic practices, outlined
several considerations-including the need tosituate the message in relation to the inscribedideas already constituted within the medium itself,

Moments of Reglonallty : Negotiating Southeast Asia

14
Doug Hall explains APT's place in evolving
Australia-Asia relations: "In government,
diplomatic and trade terms, Australia has
always placed emphasis on Asia, but it
has never been more openly articulated
than now. In the context of this extraordinary public discussion about Australia's
place in the Asia-Pacific region, including
spurious claims that it might aspire to be
Asian, lay the challenge in developing
the philosophy of the Triennial." Doug
Hall, "Preface," in Tradition and Change:
Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific,
ed. Caroline Turner(Brisbane: Universityof Queensland Press, 1993). xi. Writing
in 1997, Emmanuel Torres wrote, "Asfor Australia, its 'Asian initiative' is seen
as a pragmatic breakaway from its
Eurocentric image by identifying with
Asian interests (as Australian PM Paul
Keating has announced, 'Our futurelies with Asia'), quite a turnabout for anation that had a racist 'White Australia'
immigration policy two decades ago:·
See Emmanuel Torres,"The Piney Visual
Artist;' in Pananaw: Philippine Journal of
Visual Arts 1 (1997): 14.

15
Apinan Poshyananda celebrates, "thetime is ripe for contemporary art to takeon a major role in cultural exchange ... so,out of all the places in the newly designated de-centered centers. the Asia-Pacific
Triennial has been invented for the firsttime in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia."
See Apinan Poshyananda, "The Future:
Post-Cold War; Postmodernism;
Postmarginalia IPlaying with Slippery
Lubricants);' in Turner, Tradition andChange, 5.

16
Apinan Poshyananda, "Traditional
Aesthetics in the Visual Arts of Thailand,"in The Aesthetics of ASEAN Expressions,
120.

17
T.K.Sabapathy, quoted by Brenda V.
Fajardo,"Rethinking ASEAN Aesthetics:
An Overview of the Symposium Topics
and Discussion of Emerging Issues," in
The Aesthetics of ASEAN Expressions, 61.

18
T.K. Sabapathy,"Developing Regionalist
Perspectives in Southeast Asian Art
Historiography," in The Second AsiaPacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, exh.
cat. ( Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery,
1996),13.

19
Fajardo,"Rethinking ASEAN Aesthetics;·

64.

(