TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 195
10th October 2024
Dear friends and colleagues
Firstly, many apologies for such a long silence. For some time words did not flow. Then I went the UK (and Venice). Then came the inevitable jet lag. (It gets worse as you get older, alas.)
Secondly, I have just put two new interviews on the website. As always go to the front page and press the word “interviews” on the top left. One with Nice Buenaventura and one with Buen Calubayan. Both are substantial and, I believe, informative and interesting interviews.
“But how was the Venice Biennale?” you may ask. “Were there many artists showing from South-east Asia? How did they look?”
I went with my oldest daughter, herself an artist, so that was wonderful. But with the pressures of teaching she could only allocate three full days. That is the shortest time I have spent in the Biennale since the first time I went (1986 I think) when I thought in my youthful naivete that I could see it all in one day. Ideally, I like a week in Venice so I have time to see everything plus some old stuff too. So this year it was a frenetic three days: a day for the Giardini, a day for the Arsenale and a day for everything else.
There were no less than 13 artists from SEA (South-east Asia) in the curated section, Foreigners Everywhere. Surely a record! But then there were a mind boggling 353 artists exhibited in this year’s version! So still only a 3.7% of the total. Also, most of them (Pacita Abad, Affandi, Georgette Chen, Dullah, Hendra Gunawan, Lim Mu Hue, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Nena Saguil, Fadjar Sidik) were dead and represented by one work only. But all those artists come from complicated contexts. One painting can’t possibly encapsulate their journey. And Oh, Argh, when so many artists are crowded together like this that stand rather like commuters waiting to board the Northern Line. It is, in another simile, indigestible. Hardly even a tasting menu, maybe just a sniffing menu! Getting any sense of that many artists in two days (one day at the Giardini, one at the Arsenale) was impossible – especially as there were also 53 national pavilions to see too!
I was touched by Charmaine Poh’s video of life as a gay woman bringing up a child in Singapore but my daughter, lacking the interest I have in all things Singaporean and the strangeness of life in Singapore, thought it was a banal piece, the sort of docu you could easily find on You Tube.
Throughout Foreigners Everywhere there was an awful lot of portraiture and self-portraiture and lots of what one could call expressionist or emotionally wrought work. Visually this was a very noisy and disparate exhibition. So many voices! Therefore one felt relief and joy when one came into a room with some silent, minimal work. I have never been so pleased to see a Maria Taniguchi painting. It was like being given a glass of cold water on a swelteringly hot day.
There were two national pavilions from SEA close by the Arsenale chunk of Foreigners Everywhere: Mark Salvatus for the Philippines, and Zhao Renhui for Singapore. Alas, there was no Indonesian or Thai pavilion this year. What a shame when there are so many good artists in those countries.
I am reluctant to say anything about the Mark Salvatus show because my daughter thought was a mess and badgered me out quickly. All I will note is that quite a few people were watching the videos of Mount Banahaw, secondly, the space was overcrowded, and thirdly the wall texts did not give a simple, coherent explanation on why the mountain was interesting or important to the average viewer. But these are common failures: over-crowded pavilions and awful wall texts – pompously constipated.
Robert (aka Zhao Renhui)’s exhibition could also have done with a simple wall text explaining why looking at wild life, and especially in secondary forestation in Singapore, is interesting. Lots of footage of forest that have been cleared, allowed to regrow and now cut down again. Of course, many people sat down and watched Robert’s films of wild pigs etc.
Who doesn’t like wild pigs – and yes! There really are wild pigs in the city state! Having spoken at length with Robert earlier in the year I was already tuned into what he was doing. Hopefully we will conclude that interview for you soon. Installing a sculpture as here in a room that is darkened to allow video projections is always problematic.
On our third day I very much enjoyed the Julie Mehretu exhibition at Palazzo Grassi though regretfully I much preferred her early paintings (they are giant drawings really) to her more polychromed recent work. I liked that she also showed works by her friends including Filipino born Paul Pfeiffer.
These works about Justin Bieber were made on his instructions by traditionalist wood carvers in the Philippines. I had already seen them at the space initiated by Jam Acuzar: Bellas Artes Project Space – which is, alas, no longer open! But it was great to see them again. If anything, they resonated more in Venice. Their strangeness was more apparent.
Off the Grand Canal was a third SEA national pavilion. One for the least known country in the region, Timor-Leste. Between 1975 and 1999 it was occupied and terrorised by the Indonesian army and militias. Returning from exile after 1999 and the reclamation of independence Maria Madeira stayed in a room with lots of red marks on the wall. These it transpired had been made by Timorese women forced to kneel and kiss the wall by the occupiers leaving lipstick marks. (Sexual abuse including gang rape was one aspect of the occupation.) Madiera’s painting installation and performance, involving traditional costume and music, was an attempt to honour and mourn these women. 
I was moved. My daughter was not. She thought the performance cheesy.
At Palazzo Smith Mangilli Valmarana there was The Spirits of Maritime Crossing curated by Apinan Poshynanda and supported by Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation. There were fourteen artists from nine of the 11 South-east Asian countries (no-one from Brunei or Timor Leste) – and a foreigner. It was a crowded exhibition
I had especially wanted to see it because Alvin Reamillo was included. We had several good conversations, but sadly we never taped any conversation nor brought any of the projects we discussed to fruition. And last year he died. The piece shown here was not the most successful work by him, but had some familiar characteristics: a devotion to wood and making, a wary eye on religious or state propagated imagery, a fascination with history. I hope someone is planning some sort of retrospective exhibition.
I really like the mats that Yee I-Lann currently makes or has made. Or perhaps we should say “enables”. In such a specific setting as a Venetian palazzo it seemed wonderfully out of place, as did the videos accompanying it!
However, who, you may ask, “Who was the foreigner?” It was the ubiquitous Marina Abramovich of course. In a video projection you see her sitting with Thai dancers, and being Marina Abramovich in Thai temples, being Marina Abramovich in Venice. On the one hand one thought “how charismatic she is” and on the other, “what a monstrous bloody ego she has!” Her advertised presence way have brought in a few more visitors but having her as the key figure was jarring.
A name that was new to me was the Thai artist Jakkai Siributr. In his work There’s no Place weavings and embroideries made by Shan people displaced by the war in Myanmar and in a refugee camp, are spread out. The effect here was joyful, rather than mournful longing. But it does (provided you read the catalogue or wall texts) connect you to that disastrous situation. Like Madeira his response to trauma was lyrical.
In writing this what returns to my mind was my daughter’s negative response to some works from SEA. Have I become uncritical? Or am I able to see things she cannot because I know the context? (We both agreed, by the way, that the De Kooning and Pierre Huyghe shows were wonderful. That the Canadian pavilion was maybe the best pavilion in a disappointing year.) Or is art from our region in some ways different and so requiring – at least to some extent – different ways of assessing?
Anyway, we can talk about that another day.
Hoping you can check out the two new interviews!
Tony