ILLUME: Strategies and Issues of Asian Contemporary Asian Art ...

ILLUME: Strategies and Issues of Asian Contemporary Asian Art

Friday 7 ? 830PM ? 31 Aug 2012
Saturday 3 ? 430 PM ? 01 Sept 2012

ART Talk & Dialogue with 5 recent post-graduates in Asian Art Histories

31 August 2012

1.The Singapore Storied: Issues of Politics and Society in Local Contemporary Art from 2000 onwards, Wong Hong Weng

Framed by the current socio-political climate of heightened civil and citizenry participation or intervention in state affairs and everyday life issues, the talk picks on the Singapore Survey exhibition series (2009?2011) as an entry point to investigate local contemporary art engaging with politics and society. Because of their significance as foci of power, the talk presents exemplars of socio-political art which are critical of national history and icons. It shows that artists contend with these markers of national identity as state-constructed and hegemonic meta-narratives which constitute The Singapore Story (or Storied which implies a crafting agent, as the title of the talk suggests). They use a variety of inventive strategies to subvert their ?conferred? power.

2. The Impact of Black Artists in Asia on the Contemporary Art of Negros Occidental and the Visayas Region, Georgina Luisa O. Jocson

The social realist movement in the Philippines reached its height in the period leading up to the 1986 popular uprising which threw autocratic president Ferdinand Marcos into exile and installed as the people?s president, Corazon ?Cory? Aquino. The 1986 EDSA Revolution offered the promise of freedom and a new democracy, which artists in Negros took to heart. From this potent mix of political euphoria, economic devastation and social inequality rose the Negros-based socially committed visual arts organization, Black Artists in Asia (BAA). The talk presents the 25-year history of the Black Artists in Asia and evaluates its successes and failures vis-?-vis its stated goals, as well as locates and weighs its significance in contemporary Philippine art. It draws out the factors that contributed towards its emergence, and ascertains the extent of BAA?s impact on the contemporary art of Negros Occidental and the Visayas region, and on a wider scale, the contemporary art narrative of the Philippines.

01 September 2012

3. Ai Weiwei: Art of Irony, Anette Puesch

Ai Weiwei is a leading figure among Chinese contemporary artists and a creative genius of the 21st century. Ai?s work draws on a rich diversity of aesthetic impulses and modernist concepts and notably on his life, by challenging notions of the modernist style, the hegemony of the Chinese system and Western influence on the East. His practice can be characterized by its integrated inquiry of issues concerning the readymade, as a paradigm and permanent redefinition of meaning and the ?way humans make and unmake culture?. Notably, his art uses irony as a relational strategy. Here, the essential feature of his ironic play is an indirect presentation of contradiction between an artistic expression and the context in which it occurs. The talk raises several questions about the framework of his artistic styles ? What shapes his work? What are characteristics of his art? How is his art to be read?

4. Collectivism in Art as Artistic Strategy, Rohaya Mustapha

There are indeed many ways and reasons which lead artists to choose collectivism in art as strategy. Historically artists have turned to self-organisation for practical reasons and also to seek strength in numbers to counter the dominant systems of art and artistic ontology with critical alternatives. Indeed art collectivism does occur commonly in its varied forms but is seldom acknowledged as a norm. Today there is increasing visibility of artists collaborating in art making since the turn of the millennium. Since the 1990s theoretical frameworks have been offered to explain the phenomenon of artists working collectively. Singapore?s art history is also informative of how and why artists choose to work in groups. The talk surfaces what these frameworks draw attention to. It discusses the collective strategies of three Singapore-based artist collectives to provide particular insights into their motivations and working processes, and to seek connections among these collectives as well as their differences.

5. Contemporary Southeast Asia Self-Portraiture: A Strategy for Socio-Political Investigation, Jessica Lai

The art of self-portraiture is not an indigenous tradition in Southeast Asia. When Southeast Asian artists adopted Western techniques and stylistic elements in their art-making, they also adopted the genre of self-portraiture. Artists became independent individuals with their own ideas and expressions. However, the collective frame did not disappear; and even in the depiction of the self, there exists a collective identity. In contemporary Southeast Asian art, the self-image has been co-opted as a site and strategy to make commentary about society and politics. Self-portraiture in contemporary Southeast East Asia further attempts to constantly stabilize the sense of self in a fast changing and pluralistic environment. This thesis will look into how contemporary Southeast Asian artists, through questioning the self, raise questions about identity within a globalized, pluralistic, continually changing and politically charged world that is contemporary society.
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Free admission and light refreshment will be served
RSVP: artistcaravan@gmail.com(limited to 20 persons/session)
Launch of ArtFlare: a monthly art study circle in collaboration with Artists Caravan

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Source: http://artistscaravan.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/illume-strategies-and-issues-of-asian-contemporary-asian-art/

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