Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

Mapping the Mekong
The source
In 2005, I received the Martell Contemporary Asian Art Research
Grant through the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. My project involved
studying the relationship between economic development and
civil society, and their combined influence on the development of
contemporary art production in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS),
which includes the nations of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma),
Thailand and Vietnam. Using the Mekong River as a metaphor for the
flow and re-flow of arts knowledge, the project — entitled Mediating
the Mekong — was intended to be a starting point not only for my
personal investigation into emerging contemporary arts communities
in South-East Asia, but also to provide a guide, if incomplete, for future
curators, artists and scholars. 1
At the time of my initial research, the Japan Foundation had published
two editions of the guidebook Alternatives: Contemporary Art Spaces
in Asia, and Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were unrepresented in
both. 2 Much has changed in the few years since the publication of
the last Alternatives guide in 2004, and Mediating the Mekong in
2006. The apparent art vacuum, then, has now been replaced with
vibrant art communities, their programming and spaces increasingly
well-organised. In August 2009, the Japan Foundation published
an updated guide focusing exclusively on the Mekong region, with
contributions from each of the GMS nations. GMS artists are more
frequently represented now in international art exhibitions, fairs and
galleries. Recently established spaces, such as the New Zero Art Space
in Yangon (Rangoon), the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, and San
Art in Ho Chi Minh City, continue to encourage and support local
emerging arts communities.
Downstream
The Mekong River, one of Asia’s longest rivers at over 4000 kilometres,
begins in the Tibetan plateau in China and ends in the southern
deltas of Vietnam. Among the richest regions in the world in terms
of biodiversity, the zone south of China has historically been a site
of the complex interweaving of cultures, particularly in terms of its
assimilation of, and resistance to, religious, political and cultural
influences from India and China, spanning many centuries.
As a distinct region, the Mekong is a construct in which definitions
have largely been created for convenience or specific utility:
The Mekong region is often referred to through a variety of organisational
frameworks including historic–cultural areas, sociolinguistic zones, and
by the borders of the nations themselves. It has always been a shifting
territory — an ebb and flow of conflict and cooperation, modernisation
and preservation, exploitation and conservation. Each struggle can be
found documented in the arts, whether in historical artefact or in the
contemporary work featured in APT6.
In APT6, The Mekong project features work by eight artists in the GMS,
including internationally established, locally significant and emerging
practitioners. It is also the first time that the APT will present works by
artists from Cambodia and Myanmar. Looking back in order to move
forward seems to be one element common to each of the works in
The Mekong: from the use of traditional materials and references to
historical figures and events, these artists have used their cultural and
intellectual inheritance to apply individual interpretations to works that
clearly and powerfully speak to a contemporary audience.
The Mekong as a concept is one that we have looked at broadly. Akin
to the Mekong River itself, life in this region is complex and changes
quickly. Even since the last APT, in 2006, a world of change has
occurred, fundamentally shifting the Mekong’s social, economic and
cultural dynamics. Thailand seems to be at an internal political stalemate,
while externally at loggerheads with Cambodia over contested land
at Preah Vihear; 4 Myanmar has announced its first elections in over 20
years, despite the continued incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi and
2007’s violent crackdown on public demonstrations; and while Vietnam
continues toward its goal of integration into the global community,
it remains firm in its domestic policy of cultural and political control.
The artists in this project have confronted regional and global change
— sometimes turbulent, often subtle — in terms of their individual
connection to place by creating works that can be read, understood and
appreciated by local communities and international audiences alike.
Through the documentation of the everyday in the photography of
Manit Sriwanichpoom and Vandy Rattana, we begin to appreciate the
tensions beneath the image that are frequently obscured by stylised
media representations — clichéd scenes of teeming global cities and
grinding poverty on the one hand and, on the other, of charming rural
life promoted by the nations themselves. In a way, the artists challenge
representation itself.
Although the concept of ‘the Mekong’ as a region . . . appears
everywhere in documents on development cooperation, the term
requires critical analysis because many fundamental questions
remain about what it connotes . . . More fundamentally, do the
societies in the geographical area we refer to as the Mekong region
possess any distinct cultural identity? 3
Artists and married couple Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu of Myanmar
have chosen a unique strategy in their photographic series ‘Blurring
the boundaries’; they speak about the process of creating work in an
environment often hostile to the creative process. They have created
a series of photographs of models for exhibitions that have yet to,
and may never, be realised. The simulacrum reaches full maturity in
that the models replace the need for physical space and become
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
Japan/United States/Vietnam b.1968
The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the
Bodhi Tree (still) 2004–07
High-definition digital video, single channel, colour, sound,
14:30 minutes / Image courtesy: The artist; The Quiet in the
Land, Laos; Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo; Lehmann Maupin
Gallery, New York / Photograph: Yukari Imai
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