Negotiating Home, History and Nation, Singapore Art Museum

Abstract

Negotiating Home, History and Nation' presents the work of fifty-five seminal practitioners in contemporary art from six Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, The Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia) created over the last two decades. The exhibition showcases pieces of art spanning the early years of contemporary art-making in the region to the present, drawn mostly from the Singapore Art Museum collection. This extensive survey gives audiences the opportunity to form a cogent picture of the diverse realities and threads linking Southeast Asia and its art through inquiries into topics such as nation building, urbanisation, religious and gender discourse from an Asian perspective. Amongst the artists featured are Dadang Christanto (Indonesia), Kamin Lertchaiprasert (Thailand), Suzann Victor (Singapore), Wong Hoy Cheong (Malaysia), and Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan (The Philippines). Through a broad range of media including photography, video, painting, performance and installation art, the exhibition provides an entry to the specific characteristics of Southeast Asia’s aesthetic language and offers a key to understanding some of the region’s more recent political and social developments. Its exclusively Southeast Asian content is the first such large-scale Asian-made institutional presentation of contemporary Southeast Asian art Show more