Dear friends and colleagues.
Aargh I am not in the groove yet after my break and neglected to send this on time! Apologies!
The Venice Biennale is the great show place – the market place even – where nations can display their art. It is where an artist can launch an international career or confirm one already started. Were, you may ask, any nations and artists from South-East Asian countries there?
Yes, more than ever before, four nations had “pavilions” in fact, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and for the first time in fifty years The Philippines.
Malaysia periodically promises to show but never does. If their national department for art doesn’t have the money, perhaps their prime minister Najid Razak could sponsor it with some of the $700,000,000 recently given him by Middle Eastern donors, supposedly to ‘counter the “Jewish threat” in the last general election’ or as ‘a gift for Malaysia’s efforts in fighting terrorism’.
Indonesia and Singapore showed in the extension of the Arsenale which is where an increasing number of nations have spaces. Thailand showed in a café just outside the Giardini where they have showed before. The Philippines were in a building in the centre of town, a bit North of the Rialto bridge.
Did anyone notice them? And if they noticed what did they make of these four ventures?
It is so very difficult. How do you get noticed? There are seventy-eight other national pavilions plus “unofficial” ones like Wales and Scotland. Not to mention a massive sprawling exhibition at the Arsenale with a hundred or more artists in, plus assorted thematic shows here and there, major shows of Sean Scully, Peter Doig, Martial Raysse, Liu Xiaodong, Dounier Rousseau, Hiroshi Sugimoto, etc. etc. I spent four and a half days in Venice which is longer than most people. I was on my own and I know Venice well so I moved quickly and efficiently but there is so much to see I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to. Moreover, I couldn’t, any more than anyone else could, watch every video. Even something I loved like the film in the Polish pavilion I could only devote 15 minutes to. Likewise, Chantal Akerman’s brilliant video installation in Arsenale. I spent longer with Joan Jonas’ beautiful video installations, but that was exceptional. Generally, for most videos if I am not interested, in two minutes I am off. I am sure most critics/writers are the same. You have to be.
So how can someone, especially someone from the “periphery” get noticed? How can you get taken seriously? You have so much to say, but your audience has so little time to listen.
When I went to the Thai pavilion and saw that Dr. Kamal Tassananchalee was the Thai national artist my expectations instantly dropped to zero. Being a National Artist is a kiss of death just like becoming poet laureate or an official spokesperson for some institution. It was old fashioned work that did nothing for me. It’s a shame as the Thai pavilion has often been an engaging one.
Thai National artist Dr. Kamal Tassananchalee in Thai pavilion
I always like the work of Charles Lim who represented Singapore. Hi-tech videos that blended the everyday with the visionary. A section on how in its manic land reclamation islands disappear in Singapore, swallowed up in larger, rather characterless land masses. But how comprehensible was this to someone who doesn’t know about Singapore’s land reclamation programme? It is a recurrent problem: how much information to give without boring the viewer off or precluding any first-hand aesthetic/critical response?
Charles Lim at Singapore pavilion
Two years ago the Indonesian pavilion contained six very disparate artists. The lighting levels were kept low to help conceal the discrepancies. Showing one artist, Heri Dono, this year, made a whole lot more sense. It was nice that the space was manned by Indonesians – I could practise my disappointingly rudimentary Bahasa.
Heri Dono in Indonesian pavilion
The Filipino pavilion showed a video projection by Manny Montelibano in one room and a big sculpture by Jose Tence Ruiz in another. The opening room was given over to a 1950 movie made in the Philippines about Ghengis Khan. I’m sorry, but there was no way I was going to sit and watch any ninety-minute film, let alone a 65 year old one! I really liked the sculpture by Jose Tence Ruiz though it was far too large for the space and could best seen by going to the floor above and staring down through the rafters. I wish he had been given all three rooms so visitors could have got a sense of who he was as an artist.
Jose Tence Ruiz in Philippines pavilion
Of course, though the pavilions are almost invariably more effective if given to one artist, you aren’t just judging the chosen artist but the country Are they efficient? Are they savvy? If that was a competition between the four, Singapore won by a nautical mile!
Elsewhere South-East Asia was invisible: Enwezor like Gioni like Christov-Bakargiev does not seem to know it exists. Absent again from the curated show. There was Danh Vo, however, who was born in Vietnam, but left when he was aged four. His show in the Danish pavilion was wonderful – elegant, poetic, thoughtful – but he isn’t Asian save in ethnicity and as something he refers back to in his work.
Danh Vo at Danish pavilion
That he is in no way a South-East Asian artist was emphasised by the show he curated at Pinault’s Punta Della Dogana space. It was fascinating, but, tellingly, it included no other artist from South-East Asia.
Danh Vo in Slip of Tongue at Punta Della Dogana.
Rightly or wrongly, he, like Dinh Q. Le and Tiffany Chung, who both fled with their parents to the US and were schooled and grew up there, are, I suspect, often taken to represent Vietnam and its environs. (Dinh Q. and Chung often work in Vietnam but they will always be Việt Kiều – overseas Vietnamese.) Curators may feel that by including them in shows they have ticked the South-East Asian box and need not look further. In fact, they have ticked a different box; the overseas South-East Asian box.
I am flying off to Bandung later today for the opening of Sunaryo’s Wot Batu. I’ll tell you about it next week.
Have a fun weekend
Tony