Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

This 'art for arts sake' is at odds with the traditions of the East. Nevertheless, as Redza P iyadasa has observed , with Western education, the role of art i n Malaysian society was transformed . For the artists of our metropolitan communities, producing works of art has become the norm . Even naturalistic and self-expressive tendencies have emerged reflecting the disruption of our traditional construction of reality. Malaysian artists have now been produci ng work in the 'modern ' manner for over fifty years. In fact we have a 'history' of modern art and our own contemporary practitioners of international standing. This modern Malaysian art was painfully wrought and carefu lly nurtured by our pioneers as they diligently articulated modernism with tradition and integ rated a notion of the 'avant­ garde' with the imperatives of a 'national culture'. It is important that in the 'synchrony' of their engagement with the international scene, our contemporary artists take care not to detach themselves from the 'd iachrony' of Malaysian art history. Malaysia is a nation of I ndigenous, more I nd igenous and other peoples. Yet, our culture and pol itics are constituted on racial distinctions that do not map easily on to the structures of 'multicu lturalism' and the theories of the 'other'. When our artists, take on difficult or 'sensitive' domestic subject-matter for their 'representations' , it is at home that their meanings can be properly construed and constructed . The existence of international arenas like this Triennial could benefit our South-East Asia art cultures by stimulating critical representations that wou ld not otherwise be made. The danger is that these representations might be swept up into markets and i nterpreted (misinterpreted even) withi n contexts that are our own . I n this scenario, our art will begin to represent the values a nd agendas of others outside our nations. In the developing countries of Asia, art is potentially an instrument of social and cultural engineering . The contempora ry artist could claim the delicate yet vital role of med iating between official and alternative 'images' of nation. It would be a shame if this potential is d issipated as our artists respond to the international demand for aesthetic commod ities. I shall concl ude by simply aski ng the artists of Asia and those of South-East Asia and Malaysi a in particu lar, 'WHO DO YOU REPRESENT?' and 'FOR WHOM DO YOU MAKE YOUR REPRESENTATIONS?' • David Batchelor, 'Abstraction, Modernism, Representation', Thinking Art: Beyond Traditional Aesthetics, And rew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (eds}, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1 99 1 . • Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, Dover Publications, New York, 1 956. • Tom Hess, Art Comics and Satires, Truman Gallery, New York, 1 976. • Redza Piyadasa, 'Modern Malaysian Art, 1 945-1 991 : A Historical Overview' , Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific, Caroline Turner (ed . ) , University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1 993. 63