11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

relevance, its role and for whom it is created. For the curatorial team, broad concepts of community have become crucial frameworks. The early model of collective curatorship of the Triennial has evolved over three decades, from working with a large and geographically dispersed network of curators and advisors to being primarily developed by QAGOMA’s specialised curatorial team. Each successive exhibition builds on new and long-term networks, experiences and relationships. There has been increasing emphasis on engaging diverse communities in producing, interpreting and sharing art, and ensuring their voices are not only heard, but that they shape institutional and pedagogical structures. Recent editions have established a dedicated interlocutor program to ensure ongoing dialogue and exchange, bringing the issues and aspirations of specific communities into conversation with projects being developed for the Triennial. For this 11th edition, the interlocutor concept has been expanded to include engagement with an additional group of Brisbane-based community partners. The opening of the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial marks 31 years since the first edition of the series. At its inception, the Triennial was envisaged as a somewhat speculative project without a predetermined outcome. During the realisation of the first exhibition in Brisbane in 1993, several principles emerged that remain at the root of the project today. These include that, in surveying the art of this region, the Triennial would fundamentally need to untether itself from the conventions of working to a singular thematic vision, and of privileging certain generations of makers, artistic media, or homogenous national or regional identities. The first Asia Pacific Triennial also acknowledged the importance of the coexistence of ‘traditional’ and contemporary art forms in the region, sought to recognise institutionally neglected contexts and art histories, and developed an overarching awareness of the insufficiency of Euro-American perspectives in evaluating and interpreting art of the region. 1 These principles remain relevant to positioning the series in the present. Foregrounding care and advocacy in the work of artists and in its curatorial methodology, ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ evokes a multiplicity of perspectives and concepts of knowledge to interpret life and the world around us. Drawing on and re-imagining the histories and relationships that have fashioned our connections to place and the shifting paradigms of the current moment, it also allows a space for reflection on deep questions that are yet to be answered. ABIGAIL BERNAL, ASSOCIATECURATOR, ASIANART RUHA FIFITA, CURATORIAL ASSISTANT, PACIFICART REUBENKEEHAN, CURATOR, CONTEMPORARYASIANART RUTHMcDOUGALL, CURATOR, PACIFICART TARUNNAGESH, CURATORIALMANAGER, ASIANANDPACIFICART (above) Ishu Han on location, Kawana Beach, Sunshine Coast, August 2024 / Photograph: Reuben Keehan; (below) Muun ceremony performed by Alyen Leeachum Foning, Relli River, Kalimpong, West Bengal, India NOTE 1 See Caroline Turner, ‘Introduction — from extraregionalism to intraregionalism?’, in The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993, pp.8–9. ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 38 — 39 CURATORIAL INTRODUCTION