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

Martin Stuart-Fox (Session Commentator) My role as commentator is a difficult one in the light of the extraordinary presentations that we have been privileged to listen to and see this morning . I i nterpret my brief as offering comments not simply on this session, but on the broader subject of artists and their social relationships, so that what I have to say wi ll touch upon some of the earlier statements by speakers yesterday. Moreover, in offering these comments I shall speak as a historian of South-East Asia , not as an art critic. The first point I want to make is that what is clear from what Chumpon said this morning and from what other speakers have said is that all artists work within a social context and their art, no matter how abstract their style or apparently innocuous their subject matter, makes statements that reflect, reinforce, deride some aspect of that context. The second point is that all art, once produced , is i nterpreted within social contexts in ways which are beyond the control of the artists - as were i ndeed the social contexts i n which they produced their work. No social context can be divorced from politics, or from economics for that matter, though that is not a dimension that I want to pursue. Also, all art impinges upon contestations of power; or to put it another way, the reception of art feeds into power equations. Th roughout most of recorded history, art, like history itself, has served to legitimise ruling elites and define cu ltu ral identities. The artist formed part of a prevailing power structure. Only with the rise of Western individualism have artists held up mirrors that question, cha llenge, or subvert those dominant power structures. Only relatively recently have artists discovered how the communicative potency of the images and objects they create can be used to advance political, social and now environmental causes. Art has become a powerful weapon wh ich those who are oppressed may use. The earliest challenge to European domination of much of Asia came from cultural nationalism reinforced by a visual imagery that sought to carve out political space. Political movements were empowered through visual symbols. And they were victorious. Now political elites have arisen with their own power centralising , modern ising agendas. The changes in Asian societies have been revolutionary in their scope and rapidity. But the changes in Western society have been equally significant. Modern ity as totalising progressivism moving relentlessly into a future that was bel ieved assured has given way to a questioning of directions, a dissol ution of all those certainties. We are in an age without a name, post-this, post-that. Modernism was a Western trajectory; post-modern ism is the shattering of Western complacencies. As Niranjan pointed out this morning, this is something that we should be questioning in terms of its applicability to non-Western experience. Whi le for many i n the West this process has been disorienting , for others it has been liberating and exhi larating . But perhaps we should ask whether Asian art should be confined withi n this same discourse. Is this a new form of Western hegemony, artistic and intellectual? I am not sure at all that this experience of modernity giving way to post-modernism is one shared by Asian societies, not yet at any rate. That is what makes the challenge facing Asian artists that much more acute. For there is often less ideological and political space in which to move, within the national context that is. Paradoxically I think that there is probably more space i nternationally both ideologically and stylistically now that the West has subverted its own hegemonies. The collapse of ideological hegemony has opened up politi cal spaces in Western societies i nto which non-elites have effectively moved , incl uding I ndigenous peoples who are reclaiming and recreating identities all but obliterated . Aboriginal artists, for example, have been at the forefront of the Aboriginal movement. I n many Asian societies those spaces are not yet there. Maori artists make contacts that are politica l in intent with their counterparts in the first nations of North Ameri ca, with minorities in Europe, but not yet with the Tibetans, nor with the Karen, nor with the Penan. What we have heard and seen today and the works on display i n both this and the last Triennial bear ample witness to the courage of Asian artists in push ing the boundaries of social and political commentary and criticism. They do so within their own cultural languages and it may not always be easy for others working with in other cultural contexts to read their 69