Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok in collaboration with Goethe-Institut, Hanoi, present a traveling project, Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia, Hanoi version. The project aims to create dialogue between Southeast Asians about ideas, culture, and contemporary art discourse in the region and beyond.
With Concept Context Contestation Hanoi Version, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC), in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Hanoi, is expanding its original 2013 CCC exhibition which premiered at BACC Bangkok in December 2013. The original Concept Context Contestation was commissioned by BACC and organized by three invited regional curators of Southeast Asian art. Through the display of some 70-over pieces in BACC’s central Bangkok space, the exhibition articulated, through both new and seminal art historical works, how artists of several generations from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines astutely harness different types of conceptual approaches to make art for, with, and about collective issues.
CCC is now touring selected centres of Southeast Asia as a way of extending the audience for some of its key works and grafting additional meanings onto the original exhibition. The core of the international touring exhibition remains its ideas about the links in Southeast Asian art between social ideologies and expressive languages. In Hanoi, selected CCC artworks from Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar and Cambodia, representing the essence of the exhibition via artists’ critical views of society expressed through sometimes political narrations, are being travelled. However, in addition to ‘Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia’ s stimulating visuals and art historical insights, seen in Hanoi via a smaller selection of works, CCC Hanoi Version incorporates new site-specific cross-regional art initiatives into its evolving framework. This is achieved by travelling exhibition artists from different countries, and the three exhibition curators, to Goethe-Hanoi to work directly with Hanoi’s art community and public. In this way, the exhibition, in its new, site-specific Hanoi form, will demonstrate how conceptual approaches in Southeast Asian art are first and foremost a manifestation of artists’ and the art community’s methodology, even before artworks are produced. Through selected art pieces from the original CCC, but also through entirely new Hanoi-made pieces and Hanoi-based projects, CCC Hanoi Version will present the exciting forum of Southeast Asian artistic language through a Hanoi lens. 13 artists, three curators, and a host of Vietnamese cultural players and artists will together develop a Hanoi Re-Focus CCC through collaborative and activity programs, and entirely new works in a variety of media including installation, video, photography, drawing and participatory projects.
While CCC was well-received at home, it is the intention of BACC to expand the content of the exhibition beyond Thailand to share collective views on its central social and art historical subjects. In collaboration with Goethe-Institut that shares this mission, the project aims to instigate ideas and form connections between artists, intellectuals and audiences in Southeast Asia.
Invited Curators:
Iola Lenzi (Singapore)
Agung Hujatnikajennong (Indonesia)
Vipash Purichanont (Thailand)
Artists represented in Hanoi:
1. Amanda Heng (Singapore)
2. Aung Myint (Burma)
3. Bui Cong Khanh (Vietnam)
4. Chalood Nimsamer (Thailand)
5. Michael Shaowanasai (Thailand)
6. Nge Lay (Burma)
7. Paphonsak La-or (Thailand)
8. Sutee Kunavichayanont (Thailand)
9. Tay Wei Leng (Singapore)
10. Thao Nguyen Phan (Vietnam)
11. Tung Mai (Vietnam)
12. Vandy Rattana (Cambodia)
13. Vu Dan Tan (Vietnam)
Collaborative Artists in Hanoi:
Nha San Collective
For more information, please contact:
BACC Exhibition Department
Tel: 02 214 6630 ต่อ 533
Ms. Đặng Thị Thu Hà
Culture Department
Goethe-Institut Hanoi
56-58 Nguyen Thai Hoc, Ba Đinh, Hanoi
Tel: +84 4 3734 2251/52/53 (Ext. 14)
