FIELD AND STREAM: THE TERRAIN

OF CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART

One of the most important developments in contemporary art since the early 1990s is its acknowledgement
from East, South-East, and South Asia by institutions and markets both within and outside these areas.
Efforts to historicise such art tend to emphasise its visibility in exhibitions organised in western Europe and
the US; witness, for instance, the frequency with which a country's participation in the Venice Biennale is
cited as a major milestone in its history of contemporary art, or the voluminous references to 'Magiciens de La
Terre', the mammoth 1989 exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Pare de La Villette in Paris that
attempted to present non-Western art on par with its Western counterparts. Yet the visibility of contemporary
Asian art owes much more to the formation of a distinct contemporary Asian art discourse. Such discourse
extends beyond oppositional models of West versus non-West, or even to the renewed prominence of certain
nation-states in a world order based on the untrammelled flows of economic cap ital. Rather, it turns on
multiple streams of action and belief, a brief identification of which might hel p us navigate its vast and
rugged terrain.

Consider, as a matter of course, the deployment of culture as a significant political instrument during the
Cold War, particularly in the 1950s and 60s. Following the end of World War II, numerous artists and galleries
were directly supported by US institutions and individuals eager to secure East and South-East Asia from
Communist encroachment, including the Asia Foundation, founded in 1954 in connection with the CIA, as
well as the Rockefeller Foundation. 1 Equally, if not more noteworthy, were Asian states' initiatives as seen
in events Like the Saigon International Festival, whose first and only edition took place in 1962, just before
the onset of the Vietnam War. 2 Patterned after 'the examples of Venice, Sao Paulo, and Paris', 21 countries
were invited to send artists to participate in what was basically a communion of anti-Communist countries
66
'friendly' to the Vietnamese government, then under duress from insurgent Communist forces. 3 Not only did
the full title of the exhibition read, 'First International Exhibition of Fine Arts Saigon 1962: An International
Exposition by Artists of Vietnam and Friendly Countries', the foreword to the exhibition catalogue prominently
mentioned a visit from a Korean delegation that travelled to Vietnam in hopes of establishing a recurring
international exhibition that would move between New Delhi, Bangkok, Manila, Taipei, Saigon, and Seoul. 4
The counterpart to this mode of international exchange was one that revolved around Socialist Realism, the
embrace of which in China, North Vietnam, and North Korea amounted to a de facto pledge of allegiance
to a unified Communist visual imaginary.

The dynamics of the Cold War endorsed a polarised world that struck many as distinctly inadequate and
frankly oppressive. Even states adamantly wedded to one side of the Cold War equation supported other
kinds of cultural production that suggested alternative forms of internationalism; consider, for example,
the Chinese government's promotion of such 'indigenous' forms as guohua and woodblock prints amidst
the context of the Sino- Soviet split in 1960s One of the most important streams catalysed in the wake of
the Cold War was what might be called the rise of a Third World internationalism, evidenced by occasions Like
the Bandung Conference of 1955 or by the founding in 1961 of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM} in a Soviet-
weary Belgrade. Perhaps t he most ambitious manifestation of Th ird World internationalism vis-a-vis the
visual arts was the Triennale-lndia. Established in 1968 and organised by the state-run national academy of
art, the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, the Triennale was intended to address the situation in which 'many
Asian, African, and socialist countries have not been able to establish a platform where the desired images
of the oldest and youngest continents (youngest in the sense of secular achievement in the arts} may be seen
together with the achievement of the dynamic West.' 6 The Triennale benefited from the Indian state's careful
negotiation of a fraught political climate in which it aligned itself with neither the Soviet Union nor the US,
a status acknowledged by the exhibition's participants.

AIWEIWEI
Yet despite managing to preserve a measure of political neutrality that enabled a Level of inclusiveness China b.l957
Boomerang (i nstallation view) 2006
unmatched by any other visual arts event of that time, the Triennale attracted substantial criticism for its
Glass Lustres, plated steel, electric cables,
endorsement of what critic Geeta Kapur described as the 'cult of internationalism'.' It was suggested that incandescent lamps I 700 x 860 x 290cm
(irreg.) I Gift of the arti st through the
the Triennale only repeated the kinds of exhibitions it hoped to challenge, with the sole difference being
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2007 I
that it embraced what the Euro-American art world considered peripheral. Still, the drive to push forward Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
 alternative internationalism persisted both in Asia and in certain parts of western Europe. In the late 1960s
and early 1970s, some influential Japanese art critics looked to certain examples of Korean abstraction
as a means through which to visualise a distinctly 'Asian' approach to contemporary artistic production. 8

By the 1980s, this interest developed into a systematic approach to thinking about contemporary art in Asia
68
as a stand-alone discursive field. Established by the Ministry of Foreign Relations in 1972, partly in the wake
of Japan's rise to economic superpower status, the Fukuoka Art Museum's attempts to promote a discrete
body of contemporary Asian art through its series of Asian Art Exhibitions coincided with the efforts of the
J apan Foundation, an agency for cultural exchangeB Such efforts to cultivate a distinct pan-Asian regionalism
seemed to imitate the centre-versus-periphery dynamics that, until the 1990s, excluded non-Euro-American
art from the so-called international art world. One might trace this, as critic CJ Wan-ling Wee does, to
J apanese imperial ambitions as encapsulated in Okakura Tenshin's famous declaration of 1903, 'Asia is one'.
Wee has claimed that t he resurrection of this statement upon the occasion of the first part of the 'Asian
Art Exhibition' at the Fukuoka Art Museum in 1979 suggests 'an inability to transcend or obviat e the older
moment of the modern'. 10

In the mid 1990s, the Japan Foundation took an especially act ive lead in sponsoring some of the exhibitions
and conferences that helped cement the formation of a distinct contemporary Asian art field. 11 Taking its
cues from postcolonial theory, which had begun to command a significant following in the Asian academy,
many discussions turned on constructs of hybridity and nomadism, ideas that might overcome what Fukuoka
Art Museum curator Ku roda Raiji observed was the 'serious problem' of 'cultural, geographical and political
classifications' obviating the physical and psychological mobility of artists and art works 12 Along these lines,
institutions in other countries- namely in South Korea, Austra l ia, and Singapore- established their own large-
scale arts events which emphasised the formation of intra-Asian networks. Of the Queensland Art Gallery's
first Asia Pacific Triennial in 1993, curator Julie Ewington observed that it tried to be 'determinedly inclusive'
by delegating some curatorial duties to various country special istsB Such inclusion also supported the efforts
of the Trienn ial and other similar events to secure a central position in a newly recalibrated geography of
artistic circulat ion. Some of the most vigorous proponents of an alt ernat ive internationalism on which the
idea of a distinct contemporary Asian art gained further traction were based in Great Britain . These included
the journal Third Text, established in 1987 by the Pakistani-British artist and critic Rasheed Araeen, and the DO HOSUH
Institute of International Visual Artists (In IVA) established in 1991 by the Arts Council of Great Britain, the latter South Korea b.l962
Fallen Star 2012
a promotion of what was described as New Internationalism in the face of state-mandated multicultu ralism.
Stuart Collection, University of California,
San Diego I© Do Ho Suh I Image courtesy:
The artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery,
But these endeavours, conducted mostly in prosperous countries with neoliberal market systems, tended
New York I Photograph: Philipp Scholz
not to acknowledge the emerging paradox of what was being heralded in both Asia and the West as Rittermann
the global turn: the larger and more inclusive exhibitions became, the more likely it was that art works
from countries perceived as both non-conducive to the open expression of an individual subjectivity and
economically disadvantaged would be routinely excluded. The Indonesian critic and curator Jim Supangkat
pointed out as much in his essay for the catalogue accompanying the Asia Society, New York, exhibition
'Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions', one of the first major exhibitions of contemporary art
from Asia, that toured to various venues in 1996 and which featured art works from Thailand, Indonesia,
South Korea, the Philippines and India. He wrote that the international art world appeared divided between
art works from 'developed' and democratic states, and those that were not 14 This created a quarantine
effect, not unlike the predicament described by art historian Hans Belting in 1991, of similar exclusions
of eastern European artists in western European exhibitions: 'There was little opportunity for comparison ..
[Western art connoisseurs, in order] to protect their own superiority, would retreat into a smile in order
to keep their own standards and expertise.' 15 Especially prominent from the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s
for his role in bringing contemporary art from Asia, and particularly China, to Western audiences through
loosely configured exhibitions designed to encourage viewers to consider the relationships, as opposed to
differences, between art works, the Chinese curator Hou Hanru put matters more withering ly by insinuating
that the interest in what was sometimes called 'unofficial' Chinese art coincided with renewed Western
interest in China after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 16 He implied that it was only after such an
exemplary demonstration of a will to democracy and against authoritarianism that Western institutions
could finally accept certain forms of contemporary Chinese art.

What might thus be deduced from remarks such as those of Supangkat and Hou is the fomenting of a stream
of inquiry less concerned with celebrating the expansiveness of globalism than with the urgency of asking
whose norms would govern the rate and terms of this expansion. Throughout the late 1980s and 90s was a
marked emphasis on what many critics regarded as a profoundly t roubling insistence on the part of Western
curators and institutions fo r authenticity. 'Magiciens de La Terre', for example, was vilified by Rasheed Araeen
for pursuing the 'authentic', which the exhibition seemed to define as imagery recogn isably non-Euro-
American in origin. 17 Similarly, the main goal of 'Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions' according
to its curator, Ap inan Poshyananda, was 'to challenge preconceived notions that only traditional, and not
contemporary, art flourishes in Asia' 18 If contemporary Asian art was partly meant to be a sociopolitical
intervention, one of its main concerns was to construct a platform on which to consider cultural difference
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without reiterating modernist distinctions pitting the authentic against the derivative.

In the early 2000s, this stream of inquiry took shape around the idea of what it meant to be 'contemporary'.
In his essay for the catalogue accompanying the fourth Asia Pacific Triennial in 2002, US-based Chinese
art historian Wu Hung implicitly proposed recasting contempora ry Asian art t hrough the notion of
contemporaneity, a concept which he understood primarily through his work on Chinese, and specifically,
mainland Chinese, art of the 1990s, just after art journals and symposia featured several writings centred on
the problems and characteristics of what was newly identified as 'contemporary art' (dangdai yishu). For Wu,
contemporaneity was a theory with a distinctly reactive dimension, defined as the art work's self-conscious
reflection on what he termed the 'conditions and limitations of the present'. 19 He singled out the concepts
of the monument and the ruin, which he implied were responses to abstract forces of epic scope, like the
tyranny of power, the passage of time, or what Wu euphemistically referred to as 'social changes'. In bringing
the concepts of the monument and the ruin into his discussion, Wu attempted to bypass the inordinate stress
put upon regionality in other discussions of contemporary Asian art taking place around that time 2 0

Others were less sceptical about the heuristic value of the 'contemporary'. Discussing the role of the
museum in Asia in a broadly circulated article first published in 2000, the Kolkata-based writer and
dramaturge Rustom Bharucha asserted that 'the addition of a new body of work from Asian countries that
can compete with 'the best in the West'- is this 'new Asia' not another exoticisation of the contemporary?' 21
In similar fashion, Filipino art historian Patrick Flores wondered whether the rubric of the 'contemporary'
should be entertained at all, lest it permanently subordinate the art work to synchronous forces with
a much larger reach and impact; the example he gives is globalisation 22 From his own experience curating
and writing about contemporary Asian art in Asia, the risk may have felt especially real for Flores, even
more so as 'virtually all Philippine media platforms' heralded the record-breaking 1999 auction sale of Anita
Magsaysay-Ho's portentously titled 1955 painting In the Marketplace 2 3 Li kewise, an increasing number
of Asian artists in the 2000s no longer made wo rk only for domestic collectors, but also found themselves
in the position of having to consider international demand. Defining contemporary Asian art as a dilemma
borne out of its own eagerness to respond to the conditions of the present, Flores suggested that art's
ultimate purpose is related to our capacity to think whether 'radicality or a radical engagement [is] still
possible within the structure and among the agencies of the art world' 24
 The admonitions of critics Like Bharucha and Flores notwithstanding, much comme ntary on contemporary
art in Asia remained focused on probing the meaning of the 'contemporary' 25 The focus has only intensified
as a growing number of cities have embarked either on building or rethinking museums ostensibly devoted
to contemporary art.2 6 The discursive turn reads as both a strategic alignment with discourses popular in
some sectors of the Anglo-American academy and as an equally tactical disavowal of cultural difference
as the prime index by which to justify contemporary Asian art's inclusion in an expanded history of art A
vivid instance of the Latter was the provocatively titled 2008 Guangzhou Triennial, which took as its theme
'Farewell to Postcolonialism' in hopes of drawing 'attention to the "political correctness at Large" that
is the result of the power play of multi-culturalism, identity politics and post-colonial discourse' 27

In the past few years, contemporary Asian art discourse has taken a decidedly entropic turn as numerous
institutions and organisations have radically expanded the kinds of work included under the contemporary
Asian art rubric. As demonstrated in the themes and content of recent biennials and triennials, the mission of
archives Like the Asia Art Archive (established in 2000), and the coverage attempted by specialist magazines
Like ArtAsiaPacific's annual Almanac (first published in 2005), 'contemporary Asian art' now includes
artists and art works made not only in East, South-East, and South Asia, but Central Asia, the South Pacific,
Australia, and even the Middle East It also includes works by artists of Asian national or ethnic origin Living
in Europe and the US. On its face, redrawing the parameters of contemporary Asian art suggests an intention
to facilitate a beneficial kind of globalism based on a more democratic view of the international art world.
Yet its expansion verges on the point where the idea ceases to have any real meaning. One wonders whether
this expansion is in fact an indirect expression of doubt regarding the utility of contemporary Asian art as an
idea. Is it still necessary, or has it run its course? The question resounds more Loudly when one considers
the exceptionalism of contemporary Chinese art, from which both Taiwanese and Hong Kong art works are
pointedly excluded; the remarkable growth in both the number of artists and in the prices at which their
works have sold in the past decade have all but demanded that it be treated as its own category.

John Clark, one of the first scholars to trace a history of modern Asian art, has recently argued that modern
and contemporary Asian art relativises all other modernities, so that the idea of world art is no Longer
about the mere accumulation of works or the reification of political and economic boundaries as the basis
upon which 'world art' should be structured 28 He nevertheless adds that 'world art will only be definable
70
as "world" by its ability to incorporate and re-topologise itself via the national and other unit projections' 29
One thus asks whether the embrace of the 'contemporary' is, in fact, a symptom of having to deal with
rapidly conflating scales of operation. This was particularly felt in countries Like Hong Kong, China, Taiwan,
and South Korea where rapid rates of economic development, combined with significant changes in political
governance, blurred the divisions between such formerly sacrosanct spatial markers as region, nation, city,
neighbourhood, and street Witness, for instance, the number of artists who Looked to materiality as a means
of recreating a sense of places forgotten, vanished, or otherwise Left behind- one thinks of the unexpected
soft-toy cuddliness of Yin Xiuzhen's portable cityscapes (20 01-present), the futility of Sara Wong's attempts
to walk a straight Line in the dense Hong Kong metropolis as recorded in Local Orientation (20 02), or the
awkward scale of Suh Do-Ho's Fallen Star 1/5 (2008-2011) which evokes in viewers the sensation of being
perpetually out of place, not unlike that experienced by Suh Living and working between Korea , the US, and
now Europe.

Although it is too early to imagine what this conflation of scales might eventually produce, one senses its
presence in such phenomena as the renewed interest in artistic collaboration as a response to the breakdown
of social hierarchies on which the ideas of nation, city, or state once depended 30 One m ight also predict
the eventual obsolescence of contemporary Asian art discourse as a necessary step towards realising
a Less divisive and more critically inclusive history of art than is produced at present But the conflation
of scales that allows an artist to speak about the nation from the vantage point of cosmopolitanism might
also help explain the defensive recuperation of national frameworks in some quarters; one recalls the Chinese
state's continuous and recent harassment of Ai Wei wei as an apparent reflection of the state's reactionary
efforts to reclaim its authority in the face of mounting challenges to its pre-eminence. How the discourse
of contemporary Asian art will fare amidst this conflation of scales will critically depend on how its creators
navigate its ever-shifting currents.
 1 17
The Asia Foundation helped finance the Banda Gallery, the first Rasheed Araeen, 'Our Bauhaus, others' mudhouse', Third Text, no.6,
commercial gallery in South Korea, as well as defray the shipping spring 1989, pp.3-14.
expenses of South Korean artists selected to participate in the 1965 18
Apinan Poshyananda, 'Position ing Contemporary Asian Art', Art
Paris Biennale (Asia Foundation, letter to Park Sea Bo, 9 August Journal, vol.59, no.1, spring 2000, p.12.
1965, collection of Park Sea Bo), while JDR 3rd Fund (the John D
19
Wu Hung, 'Mapping contemporaneity', in APT 2002: The Asia Pacific
Rockefeller Fund) permitted several Japanese artists to study and live
abroad, including Yayoi Kusama in 1965 and Shinohara Ushio in 1969.
Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art
Gallery, Brisbane, 2002.
The JDR 3rd Fund established the Asian Cultural Council in 1963,
20
which also became an important source of support for Asian artists. See, for example, Yasuko Furuichi, Asia in Transition: Representation
2 Boitran Huynh-Beattie suggests that US influence had far less of an
and Identity [report], The Japan Foundation Asian Centre, Tokyo,
2002 and Edges of the Earth: Migration of Contemporary Asian Art
impact on visual art in South Vietnam in the 1960s than it did on other
and Regional Politics: An Investigative Journey in Art by the China
forms of cultural production. See 'Modernity versus Ideology', Cultures
at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, eds Academy of Art, Jiang Xu (ed.), China Academy of Art, Hangzhou,
2003.
Tony Day and Maya HT Liem, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2010,
21
pp.87-98. Rustom Bharucha, 'The "New Asian Museum" in t he Age of
3 Globalization', Third Text, no.14, summer 2000, p.18. Originally
First International Exhibition of Fine Arts of Saigon [exhibition
presented as a paper for a symposium hosted by the Vancouver
catalogue] , Tao-Elan Garden, Saigon, 1962, p.20.
Centre for Contemporary Asian Art the article has been republished
4
Dao Si Chu, 'Foreword', in First International Exhibition of Fine Arts of in numerous venues, including the Singapore journal FOCAS: Forum
Saigon [exhibition catalogue], Tao-Elan Garden, Saigon, 1962, p.75. on Contemporary Art and Society, July 2001, The Third Text Reader: 71
5 Julia F Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of Chino On Art, Culture, and Theory, Bloomsbury, New York and London,
1949-1979, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994, p.203. 2002, and Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture,
6 Mulk Raj Anand, 'Chairman's welcome address', Lalit Kala eds. Gerardo Mosquera, Jean Fisher, and Francis Alys, MIT Press,
Contemporary, no.36, September 1990, p.12. Cambridge, 2004.
22 Patrick Flores, 'Presence and passage: Conditions of possibilities in
7
Geeta Kapur, quoted in Link, 7 February 1971, p.38.
8
contemporary Asian art', International Yearbook of Aesthetics, no. B.
For a discussion of this interest see Joan Kee, Contemporary
2004, pp.50-1.
Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method [forthcoming
23
publication], University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013. Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, 'Investigating circulations: The folly of [art]
9
bottom-lines and number-crunching ', Pananaw, no.6, 2007, p.l15.
For an outline of cultural exchange practices in Japan during the
24 Flores, p.54.
1970s and 80s, see Kishi Seik6,Bijutsukanga 'ajia' to deautoki', [When
the museum encountered 'Asia'] , in Sengo nihon no kokusai bunko 25
As art historian David Clarke asserts, the notion of the contemporary,
kiiryO [International cultural exchange in postwar Japan], ed. Hirano unlike that of the modern, 'doesn't really help us much when we
Kenichir6, Keiso Shabo, Tokyo, 2005, pp.246-7. want to take the more external perspective on time which historical
10 Kenichir6, p.ll5. explanation requires', in 'Art now, Beyond the contemporary', Field
11
Notes, no.l, 2012, <www.aaa.org.hk/FieldNotes/Details/1167>, viewed
Important conference proceedings published by the Japan
20 July 2012.
Society include Asian Contemporary Art Reconsidered (1997) and
26 Prominent examples of recent contemporary art museums in Asia
International Symposium: Asian Art: Prospects for the Future (1999).
12
include the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the
Kuroda Raiji, 'Practice of exhibitions in global society by Asians, for
upcoming China Contemporary Art Museum on the site of the Urban
Asians and some associated problems', in Global Visions: Towards a
Futures Pavilion of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, UUL National Art
New Internationalism in the Visual Arts, ed. Jean Fisher, Kala Press
Museum, the Seoul annex of the National Museum of Contemporary
in association with the Institute of International Visual Arts, London,
Art located in Kwach'i'in, Korea (scheduled for completion in 2013),
1994, p.144.
and M+ for the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong
13
Julie Ewington, 'A Moment in a journey: The First Queensland Art (scheduled for completion in 2017).
Gallery Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art', Art and Asia 27 'The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Farewell to Postcolonialism'
Pacific, vol.l, no.2, April1994, p.12.
(unattributed), <www.gztriennial.org/zhanlan/threeyear/4/24/3/>,
1
' Jim Supangkat, 'Multimodernisms', in Contemporary Art in Asia: viewed 30 July 2012. The exhibition curators were Gao Shiming, Sa rat
Traditions/ Tensions, Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1996, p.BO. Maharaj, and Chang Tsong-zung.
15
Hans Belting, Art History After Modernism, University of Chicago 28
John Clark, 'Doing world art history with modern and contemporary
Press, Chicago, 2003, p.59. Asian art', World Art, vol.l, no.1, 2011. p.93.
16
Hou Hanru, 'Entropy, Chinese artists, Western art institutions: A new 29 Clark, p.94.
internationalism', Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in
the Visual Arts, no.BO. Some of Hou's best-known exhibitions include
3
°For examples of such collaborations in Myanmar and India see Grant
Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a
'Cities on the Move' 1997-2000, co-curated with Hans-Ulrich Obrist;
Global Context, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2011.
the Gwangju Biennale 2002, and 'Z.O.U. (Zone of Urgency)' at the
2003 Venice Biennale.