Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

y boat from Bangkok. In this cultural space Thai
artists take on the roles of artisans, master
builders, shamans, and performers. They entertain
by offering national identities and exotic differences to
cultural consumers who experience cultural goods
at the First Thai pavilion in Venice…Despite their
exotic displays of painting, video, carpentry, cookery,
therapy, massage, and dance they become
messengers and victims of the global trap that causes
detriment and destruction… (a) comment on the
hierarchy of art internationalism and system of New
Art World Order. (Apinan: 2005, 63)
Younger curators like Gridthiya Gaweewong and
Rifky Effendy pursue similar paths as can be seen in
the former’s selection of works and artists in Under
Construction and the latter’s exhibition of Indonesian
contemporary art in New Zealand Transindonesia.
Gaweewong, founder of the defunct Project 304, extends
beyond a certain national aesthetic to tap into a
transnational dynamic, while Effendy facets an emerging
Indonesian subjectivity by collecting a wide range of
historical agents.
In their respective curatorial introductions for
international exhibitions they had participated in, we
sense this strain:
The whole idea of globalization doesn’t mean that
it has to be treated as an enemy. We don’t want
to attack it, but the question must be how to deal
with it in a local context in each day, each country,
particularly in the context of contemporary culture.
(Gaweewong: 2002, 80)
The works exhibited for New Zealand viewers do
not only show certain imagined aspects of Indonesia,
constructed through the media or the tourism
industry, they also attempt to delve into the plurality
and dynamism that the context of region offers in
this era in all its complex socio-cultural aspects.
(Effendy: 2005, 27)
2. Renewal of tradition
Curators seek to reanimate living traditions within
contemporary expression and insinuate a continuity of
a inveterate though transformed practice. For instance,
mural painting in Thailand has inspired contemporary
artists to cite its vocabulary as part of the language of
their works.
Somporn’s consistent work supplements her effort to
infuse contemporary art with a certain interpretation
HERITAGE, IDENTITY, CHANGE AND CONFLICT
of Buddhist tradition that inculcates values opposed
to materialism and is wary of internationalism. Dwi
Marianto for his part refers to the strong Indonesian
preoccupation with political struggle as a means to
refunction the tradition of protest in Indonesian art as
can be borne out by his curation of the Indonesian section
of 36 Ideas from Asia, the first major exhibition of
contemporary Southeast Asian to be held in four venues
in Europe, as well as his selection for the Indonesian
Pavilion of the 2005 Venice Biennale; he describes the
latter as “insightful” and foils the wearying consumerism
of the moment. Somporn for her part in 2002 organized
an exhibition in Chiang Mai titled Thai Spiritual Ties,
which represents her long-time belief in the “revival of
Thai traditional art styles and themes” premised on
Buddhist philosophy and “Thai way of life”. She
distinguishes this from another strand in the fabric of
Thai contemporary art, which consists of “experimenting
with international art styles”. Somporn elaborates:
This valuing of tradition and the past…is not about a
return to the past, it is not about turning back the clock.
Rather it is about how the past lives in the present, and
the forms of the linkages between the past, the present,
and the future. This is not an easy connection, for these
works are as much about the tensions: the permanent
and the impermanent, the light and the dark, the
traditional and the modern…the ways these tensions are
negotiated, and in a sense healed, are both productive
and creative. (Somporn: 2002, unpaginated)
3. Advocacy
Curators conceptualize projects within a wider realm
of social involvements. Chumpon Apisuk of the Concrete
House in Bangkok has initiated events in relation to
AIDS awareness campaigns among sex workers. Advocacy
here likewise pertains to the gap created by contemporary
curation and art practices that fall through the cracks of
more recent fascinations. For instance, Aming Rachman
of Galerikita and Isa Parkasa of Galeri Taman Budaya,
both from Bandung, deliberately curate exhibitions of
autodidact artists as well as artisans and students of the
pesantren or Islamic school. The Womanifesto project by
women artists in Bangkok is cut from the same orientation,
which redresses a certain imbalance in representation
of art world agents and critiques the taste of dominant
curators who tend to work with a specific set of artists
at the expense of those who are not represented and feel
being shut out of the system.
The concern of these initiatives to nurture a vibrant and
responsive public and its participation in art is paramount.
Klaomard Ypintsoi, director of About Art and Related
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
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