Asia Times: Asian art, global-style


	March 2, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Asian art, global-style
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - Five years ago, Wang Gong Xin felt it was time to move from being a painter for 15 years to exploring a form of art that was gradually seeping into contemporary art galleries - video installations. And Wang has not turned back since he made that switch to this new visual genre. The fruits of his creativity are winning approving nods from curators in Australia, the Netherlands, the United States, and Thailand.

Since last Saturday, Bangkok's gallery-goers have been getting a taste of this 41-year-old Chinese artist's work, where he often uses video footage and computer programs to manipulate visual fragments and portraits into a computer-generated video image projected onto a wall. For example, the ubiquitous presence of karaoke bars in Chinese cities has given rise to one such video installation, simply titled "Kara Oke". This five-minute video has a close-up image of a mouth in motion that fills the entire screen, and the mouth reveals teeth that have digitally implanted images of smaller but full-length people, mike in hand, singing a monotonous note.

An Australian curator described this work by Wang as having "bizarre humor mixed with an underlying sense of sadness and melancholy". But for the artist, this video installation offers him a way of expressing himself using "more dimensions" than the rigid two-dimensional format of a painting on canvas. "I can capture dimensions such as sound and time, which are not possible in a typical painting," says Wang. "The advances in computer technology and new digital programs offer more possibilities for video installations. It is a medium that works well for me to express what is happening in my society today, in my city, Beijing."

Wang's video installation is but one of 10 contemporary art works by Asian artists from China, India, and Thailand on display at an exhibition called "Sorry for the Inconvenience", which opened on February 23 at three different venues - Bangkok University, Project 304, and Si-Am Art Space - and will run until March 30. Their works range from video installations, photo installations and performance art to sculpture and computer graphic prints.

According to co-sponsor Project 304's website, "Sorry for the Inconvenience" is a title meant to suggest the "interruption of [Asians'] journey" through the transformative processes of globalization. Through the inclusion of artists from three different nations, Bangkok curator Gridthiya Gaweewong hopes to draw connections between the changes wrought on three cultures through urbanization. For Gaweewong, who is also the director of Project 304, the state of contemporary art in Asia varies from country to country, a feature evident in the "new kind of artistic language" that the region's artists are choosing to "express their individual thoughts". The exhibition deals with "the similarities and differences among Asian situations", Gaweewong wrote on the non-profit art group's website. "It surveys the idea of how individuals respond to the transition from a traditional lifestyle to a more modern one, from rural to an urban culture, and the influx of mass media."

The exhibition, however, is part of an even broader cultural endeavor to provide a window into the world of contemporary art by young and emerging Asian artists titled "Under Construction". A collaborative effort meant to construct bridges into other country's cultures and bind artists together through a common goal - thus its title - the larger exhibit is a mosaic of eight curators' exhibitions spanning seven countries: China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. The product of three years of research, the exhibit comprises two parts: the local exhibits that have been showing across Asia since last year, and the final collective effort in Tokyo on December 7 of this year. The collective exhibition will "reconstruct these local exhibitions and highlight the various Asian perspectives on contemporary art within the region", co-sponsor and promoter the Japan Foundation adds. "The goal is to show an actual Asia in the age of globalization", challenging the audience's perceptions and state-constructed images of Asia.

Diversity is also reflected in the works of artists from one country, such as those of Bharti Kher, Subohd Gupta, and Sharmila Samant from India. Gupta, for instance, is featured in a video installation of him taking a shower to wash off the cow dung covering his body - a process described as the artist's effort to focus on the "anxious terrain inhabited by Indians within their own country and their nation's place within a globalizing culture".

Kher for her part has incorporated the bindi, which is the colorful circular pigment that women and men in India traditionally wear on their foreheads, into her visual vocabulary. Her exhibit at the Bangkok show was a fiberglass sculpture of fornicating dogs with a pattern of bindis covering their bodies and set against a vinyl sheet that had an intricate weave of colorful bindis.

For Samant, who is exhibiting computer-generated prints of traditional textile patterns created in Indian villages, the exhibition reinforces the idea that the work of Asian artists cannot be classified into simple categories as "Asian art or Indian art". "That is the beauty here. We cannot say this is Asian art. It is true for the region, since there is no one Asian identity," says Samant, 34. "I have been working with local and global influences, but have always lived in the city, like Bombay."

Wang, the Chinese artist, feels likewise, stressing that the current exhibition amplifies the variety of the contemporary art scene in Asia, where each country has incorporated urban influences at a different pace. "The artists are responding to their individual realities and drawing from many influences than being limited to only local elements."

However, Thanom Chapakdee, a Thai art critic, is troubled by the exhibits on display for "only responding to the culture of Asian cities". Asia needs contemporary artists to address the realities of the rural people, where the majority of the continent's people live, he says. He also faults some of the exhibits for placing greater emphasis on the "hybrid cultures" emerging in the region and consequently ignoring essential Asian elements. "The hybrid culture comes out, but where is the identity that it is art coming out of Asia?" he asks.

Gridthiya, the curator, thinks otherwise, asserting that her choice of artistic works for the exhibition was intended to bring out this "hybridization" that is happening rapidly across Asia - a cultural evolution in the form of a search for a contemporary Asian identity, which lies at the heart of the exhibit. "This hybridization of everyday life is interesting. And it is this kind of hybridization that could create a new paradigm, which we would like to portray in this exhibition."

(Inter Press Service)