Mining the Museum: Contemporary Art and Decolonial Practice in Southeast Asia
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 18/10/2021

This event is part of the Decolonising Curating and the Museum in Southeast Asia lecture series.

Speakers: Pamela N. Corey (Fulbright University Vietnam) and Vera Mey (SOAS)
Discussant: Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (National Gallery Singapore, Singapore Art Museum)
Chair: Stephen Murphy (SOAS)

In his groundbreaking 1992 exhibition/intervention Mining the Museum, artist Fred Wilson extracted materials from the Maryland Historical Society’s collection and curated them as disconcerting displays of historical violence, for example, placing slave shackles among other ornate objects of silverware in a display titled Metalworks, 1793-1880. Wilson’s profound artistic gesture of juxtaposing seemingly incongruous objects unearthed a latent power dynamic in the task of exhibiting history, exemplifying what Walter Mignolo described as an act of aesthetic and epistemological disobedience. Taking a cue from Wilson’s intervention, Pamela N. Corey and Vera Mey discussed specific case studies from Southeast Asia in which contemporary artists use the museum as a site and medium for decolonial critiques.