Caroline Ha Thuc

For more than two thousand years, Chinese painters and scholars have been searching how they could represent the essence of things, beyond their visible appearance, and how they could grasp the complexities of an ever-changing world through subtle and evasive landscapes. Jaffa Lam’s own quest for the indescribable is part of this tradition. With a contemporary language and a large variety of mediums, her practice challenges our ontological constructions and perceptions, injecting doubt and fluidity in our rigid modes of representation. Her artistic and personal landscape features natural elements such as rocks, water or wooden planks that constantly transform into one another. Like an alchemist, the artist plays with the usual categories of our reality in order to upend them and escape from their exclusive specificities, chasing their inner substance through permanent states of transition.

Abstract:The Name (2008-) is an on-going sound and image installation by Burmese artist couple Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung, featuring 33 portraits of important Burmese figures from the colonial era. Based on a systematic process of work that resembles the methodology of work of historians, the artists aim at correcting the way colonial history has been told and taught in the country. However, rather than being a mere post-colonial discourse and far from a didactic artwork, the installation plunges the viewer into an immersive experience that re-actualizes a myth of resistance and freedom, challenging both past and present productions of historical narratives. This article examines the artists' innovative engagement in research, which seems to be as much a means to gather information and facts about history as a strategy aiming at legitimizing a renewed historical perspective. It sheds light on the artists' potential position in society as initiators of emancipatory modes of know...

With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen questions today’s representations of South East Asia and attempts to embrace the region’s plurality, fluidity, complexity and intangibility from an artistic perspective. Based on academic research, the series embodies the artist’s effort to convert and transform the outcome of his research into multisensorial and empirical art forms. As such, the Critical Dictionary brings forth new creative possibilities and innovative epistemological languages that challenge today’s modes of knowledge production, and in particular a form of rational and scientific knowledge that dominates our society.

Questioning the excessiveness of a materialistic culture based on an ever-expanding mercantile logic and urge for rentability, British artist Tino Sehgal's live works, presented at Hong Kong's Tai Kwun, aim to re-establish art as a dimension of daily life and daily life as an aspect of art. In today's context of increased general vulnerability and sense of loss, his attempt to recreate an organic social space that favours spontaneous encounters, and values the sense of community, seems particularly relevant, in spite of the simplified vision of society it implies.

Friction Current: Magic Mountain Project is a multi-media research-based installation by Thai artists duo Jiandyin created for the 2019 Asian Art Biennial. Inspired by the Biennial’s theme of Zomia, and by the mountainous zones overarching various states of Southeast Asia, the work delves into the illegal jade and drugs trafficking that unveils a border-free network of transnational connections flourishing across the region. It aims to turn visible these fluid trans-disciplinary relations that link the political, social, economic, cultural but also scientific and medical spheres within today’s systems of power. As such, the installation is the artistic embodiment of the artists’ foray into the fields of geology, chemistry, economy, culture and politics. It mainly consists of a sculptural water fountain made from marble and jadeite, and operating with drug-contaminated urine instead of water, a single-channel documentary video depicting the carving of the jadeite piece, and various drawings and artefacts that dialogue with these two main artworks.  This paper analyses the installation and aims to demonstrate how all its elements crystalize and condense in a very original manner the complexity of the regional context and the issues at stake, inviting the audience to physically perceive the hidden violence that sustains jade mining and meth trade.
The text is published in Chinese language: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oIXDFv2OIefI6Sg7pRAhTQ

Vietnamese artist Tiffany Chung defines herself both as an artist and as a researcher. This article examines Chung’s innovative and complex integration of scholarly research with artistic practice in The Vietnam Exodus Project. Begun in 2009, the project involves an on-going assemblage of cartographic works, archival materials, collaborative paintings and texts relating to the massive flux of refugees fleeing Vietnam from the 1970s, known popularly in the West as ‘the boat people’. Chung’s research-based practice is analysed here as a strategy to ground her artistic practice in the real and to give her work both legitimacy and value. The attitude of denial shown by Vietnamese authorities vis-à-vis the boat people’s exodus is the ultimate ground from which this artistic venture has grown.

"Future Herbarium," Laurent Grasso's first solo exhibition at Perrotin Hong Kong, brings viewers into a not-so-distant future where mutant flowers have become scientific objects of study, inspired by recent ecological transformations, disasters and challenges. Working in collaboration with scientists and experts, the French artist explores man's recurrent fascination and fear of the unknown, opening poetical gaps in our beliefs and certitudes.

With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen questions today’s representations of South East Asia and attempts to embrace the region’s plurality, fluidity, complexity and intangibility from an artistic perspective. Based on academic research, the series embodies the artist’s effort to convert and transform the outcome of his research into multisensorial and empirical art forms. As such, the Critical Dictionary brings forth new creative possibilities and innovative epistemological languages that challenge today’s modes of knowledge production, and in particular a form of rational and scientific knowledge that dominates our society.

For her 2016 video 'Letters from Panduranga,' Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trinh Thi (b.1973) spent two years visiting the Cham ethnic minority in central Vietnam, inquiring about its matriarchal Hindu traditions and customs, against the backdrop of a nuclear plant construction project on their territory. Nguyen’s video, indirectly at least, gives this community a voice, and implicitly challenges Vietnam’s policies towards such ethnic minorities, whose rights are often ignored. From a wider perspective, it explores the processes of remembrance and collective memory when a living culture is mythicized or locked down in museums. Simultaneously, it raises the significance of engaging in an artistic practice that uses ethnographic methodologies as means to address the treatment of ethnic minorities. A such, the artwork questions the role of the artists in today’s society and their ability to reflect upon another culture, without exploiting or misreading it.

In Cambodia, the concept of contemporary art remains an “amorphous conception.” Pamela Corey showed how three distinct artists, Leang Seckon, Vann Nath and Sopheap Pich, can all claim to be “the first Cambodian contemporary artist.”  As far as research-based artists are concerned, the question is even more difficult since what is a research-based artwork cannot be neatly defined either. However, and even though the dates and selection of artists can be debatable, Messengers (2000) by Ly Daravuth and the Bomb Pond series (2009) by Vandy Rattana offer two useful benchmarks and points of departure to understand the development of such practices in the country, and the evolution of their form.

Deeply informed by the socio-political and cultural context of her country, Burmese artist Nge Lay explores our conceptions of time, memory, and Myanmar's traditions, with a focus on gender issues. She expresses herself mainly through performances, installation art, and photography, and is deeply involved in community-based art projects.

A co-founder of Sa Sa Art Projects and one of the most promising artists from Cambodia, Lim Sokchanlina explores and documents the current socio-economical changes that radically transform his country and its inhabitants’ modes of living. First exhibited at Phnom Penh Photo Festival in 2018, his series “Wrapped Future II” has been selected for the 2020 Sovereign Asian Art prize. Caroline Ha Thuc delves into the artist’s practice and drive.

Against any kind of predetermined framework and syntax, Hong Kong artist Samson Young develops emancipatory forms of languages that cut across and connect various disciplines, expressing unexpected features of reality. In particular, his practice constantly expands the fields of sound and music by reversing our perceptual habits through innovative sensory and intellectual experiences.

From the outset, "Every Step in the Right Direction," the title of the sixth edition of the Singapore Biennale, impulses a positive energy. Featuring 77 artists and art collectives, it takes place this year in 11 different venues across the city and aims at highlighting the transformative power of art, seen as a potent agent of change. Patrick Flores, its artistic director and chief curator, places it under the umbrella of Salud Algabre (1894-1979), a Filipino woman who fought against American colonialism and defended the rights of the peasants all her life. As a woman coming from a lower-class population, her long, yet unabated, struggle embodies the potency of all emancipatory projects against any normalized yet exclusive established order. The Biennale is far from being straightforward political, though. Rather, "Every Step in the Right Direction" focuses rather on local, almost humble, artistic initiatives that contribute to imperceptible but tangible changes. The general impression is a collection of micro narratives which, when added, bring forth renewed perceptions of the social, cultural and political transformations associated with today's globalization and modernity. This multiplicity expands also our conception of Southeast Asia as a region usually defined from a narrow geopolitical perspective. Instead, Flores aims at reimagining the region from an ethical and geo-poetic dimension, favoring a more relational and open approach. The curatorial team comprising of Flores and six curators hailing from different backgrounds and locales around Southeast Asia and Asia, facilitates this diversity.

Phan’s work revolves mainly around two fundamental yet often neglected events that strongly marked Vietnamese history: the romanization of the written Vietnamese language by French Jesuit Alexander de Rhodes in the 16th century, and the great famine that occurred during the Japanese occupation in 1945.

In Cambodia, the unchecked exploitation of resources, radical changes in the landscape, and Chinese domination of the country form a current state of affairs that feeds artists and anchors their work in the real world. Field investigations, interviews and reappropriation of traditional materials and local symbols: it is a question of taking a fresh grip on the present and reinvest Khmer culture in the voids left by History.

The Name (2008- ) is an on-going sound and image installation by Burmese artists couple Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung, featuring 33 portraits of important Burmese figures from the colonial era. Based on a systematic process of work that resembles the methodology of work of historians, the artists aim at correcting the way colonial history has been told and taught so far in the country. However, more than a mere post-colonial discourse and far from a didactic artwork, the installation rather plunges the viewer into an immersive experience that re-actualizes a myth of resistance and freedom, challenging both past and present productions of historical narratives. This article examines the artists’ innovative engagement in research, which seems to be as much a means to gather information and facts about history as a strategy aiming at legitimizing a renewed historical perspective. It sheds light on the artists’ potential position in society as initiators of emancipatory modes of knowledge production and as creators of alternative historical narratives.

Most of Moe Satt’s works are inspired by recent Burmese historical facts or anecdotes. In particular, the artist has been exploring a period of time running between 1983 and 2005, a scope defined by his own biography: born in 1983 in Yangon, he started to create performances in 2005 after his graduation in zoology. Last year, as Myanmar celebrated for the first time the 30th anniversary of the student-led uprising of 1988, known as the 8888 Uprising, Satt decided to focus on the event, opening up questions about today’s assessment of the protests.

Through his art practice, Hong Kong-based Chinese artist Zheng Bo (b.1974) proposes a new form of ecological engagement based on a fusional relationship with nature and a redistribution of the norms and values of our society. This engagement calls for an expanded experience of daily life, a deeper interaction with our environment and a renewed mode of learning.  His dialogical practice also broaches political and social issues and raises the question of its inclusion within the institutional framework of the art space.

Lao artist Bounpaul Phothyzan (b.1979) draws most of his inspiration from his environment and addresses issues relative to land through a multi-media socially-engaged practice that encompasses ecological, social and historical perspectives.

A multimedia artist known for his performances within the public space, Isaac Chong Wai (b.1990) explores the relativity and ambiguities of our collective norms and values, inviting us to rethink our experiences of daily life and our physical presence within society. As he exhibits a soft wall unable to stand by itself, a boat made with fences which takes on water or inefficient ‘arty’ policemen, Chong’s practice questions the construction of our modes of representation. Time, history and the imprint of the past or even the imprint of a future-to-be seem also to haunt the artist who constantly breaks the linear perception of temporality thanks to re-enactment, dreams or slow-motion gestures.

Curator and Art Critic " Only bugs can be bugs because only bugs can abide by Heaven. " Only animals know how to act like animals because they know what Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi calls Dao, or the Way: contrary to human beings, they do not struggle against their nature and do not attempt to control or instrumentalize it: they just spontaneously follow their purposeless mode of existence. In that respect, they are superior to human beings. Embracing their energy, listening to their voices or recording their quivers and flights while withdrawing one's personal breath and agency might have been perceived by the philosopher as acts of wisdom, at least as a step toward freedom. This is precisely what Fernando Prats attempts to do. Prats is not a Chinese monk nor a philosopher, but his conception and practice of art are somehow very close to Zhuangzi's philosophy. The Chilean artist, born in 1967 in Santiago de Chile, draws his inspiration from the nature that has always surrounded him and from a deep feeling that nature makes one with human beings. According to him, this feeling is inherent to Chilean people who are constantly interacting with a telluric and picturesque geography, caught between the Andes mountains, volcanoes, an immense coastline, vast deserts, multiple forests and the polar Antarctica. Prats aptly quotes the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra (1914-2018): " we believe to be a country, but the truth is that we are just but the landscape. " Visiting the Department of Geology at the University of Chile, Prats noticed on the desk of a geologist a blackened paper featuring thin lines zigzagging and oscillating: it was a seismogram made from smoked paper that had recorded the 1960 earthquake in the Chilean city of Valdivia, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. From that decisive moment, the artist started to use smoke in a ceaseless quest to capture the multiple forms of living energy as they manifest themselves spontaneously. Smoke, for him, refers to his childhood in Santiago, constantly covered by pollution. Metaphorically, it is also what connects the earth with the sky, an ephemeral and formless sign that would reach the celestial spheres and elevates the human mind. In his early works, Prats engaged himself in many mystical artworks embedded in the Christian tradition, but his sculptural columns have been transformed into smoke as he probably found his own emancipatory path toward spirituality. Working like an alchemist over a fireplace, Prats blackens papers and canvases with a dark smoke that will later be erased by the chosen elements involved in his paintings. The artist used smoke before, usually combined with graphite, in more formal compositions. This time, from the 2001 series called Affatus, he abandoned the traditional artist's gesture and experimented with new ways of painting, throwing stones on the smoked paper, painting with a lamb's heart, human hair or with his own tongue. Progressively, he let go his own agency to open up the act of creation, inviting living creatures to interplay: grasshoppers, worms and birds but also sea water or vapor entered the territory of Prats' painting and left their own traces on the paper. By opening himself to the world, the artist thus absorbs the manifestations of the superior order of nature and simply reveals them without passing judgement. In this way, Prats hung his smoked paper above fumaroles in the Tatio geothermal fields in Chile in order to seize sulfuric vapor (2006), along steep cliffs to capture the breaking of the waves in Grand Canary Island (2009) or let them absorb the salt crush from the Atacama Desert (2012). When it comes to recording the traces of a natural catastrophe, the artist reaches out to the elements but remains distant, humbly rubbing remains from an earthquake, applying his paper on the faults, broken windows, rubble, photographing the disasters and keeping marks of the human presence before it disappears.

In a 1946 interview for the New York Times, Ho Chi Minh compared the French colonials to mighty elephants while the people from the Viet Minh – the communist Vietnamese resistant organization-were described as tigers. If tigers don't move, the elephants easily crush them. But the future president of independent Vietnam warned that if tigers move by night, they can jump on the back of the elephants and make them bleed to death.

American artist Taryn Simon is working on the edge of art, in an area between academic sciences and photojournalism, field investigations and post-documentary. A collection of unsettling realities displayed in very methodical yet arbitrary way, her multidisciplinary work can easily be disorienting for the viewer. However, her sense of beauty and harmony always dominates her installations, adding to the complexity and fascination of her work process. Simon herself acknowledges that she belongs to nowhere and everywhere, as her practice cannot be categorized.

For more than twenty years, Valérie Portefaix and Laurent Gutierrez, known as the duo Map Office, have been working in the field of art and architecture with a rhizomatic approach, exploring both the reality and the mythology of territories.
They talked to me in their studio in Hong Kong (2017)

Hong Kong contemporary art is gaining more and more recognition but is still not very well known to the European and American public. Hong Kong is a very singular place, and so are its artists. Living in the temple of liberalism and surrounded by materialism, many develop a kind of resistance toward the system and its capitalistic values. Giving an overview of the today's local art scene, this article analyses how art and resistance are entwined in the teritorry.

The issue of Westernization has a long history in China since the defenders of democracy in 1919 used Europe as their model. This article focuses on contemporary practices and questions the westernization of Chinese contemporary art. It demonstrates how new art forms and definitions as well as new relationships with a rapidly evolving audience may lead to a real emancipation of Chinese contemporary art, shaking up our own perception of art, and opening up the path for new models worldwide.

This article gives an overview of the current Vietnamese art scene, focusing on the feeling of urgency that dominates Vietnamese contemporary art: the urgency of the need to excavate the past and offer counter-narratives, to bear witness of today's society, to construct an art scene, to educate, disseminate and produce an alternative knowledge.

In many ancient traditions, poets, and thus artists, were the guardians of memory, the only ones who had access to the invisible yet parallel worlds of time. They had the power to be present to the past, not to their own and intimate past but to the collective primordial times that have been building up our societies. It was, thus, not historians who were reviving History but those poets who expressed it through their artistic compositions. Isaac Chong Wai works within this tradition. Blurring the temporal and geographical frontiers, his multi-media artworks subtly question our too often disembodied and narrow acts of remembrance, challenging our usual modes of representation and symbolic references.

The last decade has seen Hong Kong blossom into one of Asia's true artistic hotspots, with its galleries, art projects and fairs now flourishing along with local and international audiences. At the center of this cultural renaissance are the artists themselves - working as both products and interpreters of Hong Kong's complex historical legacy. Though often at odds with society's current values, they have developed a wholly unique genre of art that acts as a vital bridge between a place and its people.

Chinese artists consider themselves as privileged witnesses to a society in deep flux. The sheer variety of their work reflects this increasingly complex and ceaselessly changing world. To them, art is a work-in-progress, kept vital and relevant with exciting new visual languages and their own energy and freedom of mind. Simultaneously, a new generation of artists has emerged who embrace the idea of belonging to a borderless, international art community.

Featuring more than 100 artists (many interviewed first-hand), this book analyses how art has evolved against a backdrop of radical social, political and economic change since the turn of the century. It is the fascinating story of contemporary art in 21st century China.