The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

century. Through evolutionary development, it grew into a different modernity. For example, the self-identification of indigenous people under colonialism grew toward nationalism around the time of World War II. Within this modification process, we could find the Indonesian painter Raden Saleh and Filipino painter Juan Luna, who were involved in the Romantic movement in Europe in the nineteenth century. 11 This shows the relationship between art in Indonesia in the nineteenth century (as practised by an indigenous artist) and modernisation in the eighteenth century. It is clear that Indonesia and The Philippines were not untouched by modernisation and modernity when modernism was codified in the 1950s. Modern art in Indonesia is not only an adaptation of the modernism of the 1950s but also, a continuity of local developments since the eighteenth century. Hence there must be another kind of modernism beside Western modernism within the development of modern art in the two countries. I have identified this predicted condition-the plurality of modernism-as multimodernism. Multimodernism is a platform for discussing multimodernity: a condition which is a convention based on Western concepts of modernisation/ modernity, and, 'manyness', which is related to different realities of modernity. This multimodernity does not follow the boundaries of nations but can also exist as overlapping modernities within one nation. The discussion of multimodernism is a far cry from discussing modernism itself. One of its basic discursive elements is the consideration of critical thinking toward singular modernism.The discussion of multimodernism should be based on an aware– ness of the connection between the developments of contemporary art and modern art and, that differences in contemporary art are related to different artistic developments. Also, among the differences, there are similarities. Multimodernism is related to a difficult and complex condition of contemporary art-its disorder or, as Hou Hanru describes it: entropy (when a stable order of matter enters a period of disintegration, towards a total chaos, it reaches the limit of its own development). There are many confusing conditions which could result in misunderstanding and misinterpretation. There will be problems in evaluating works of the Third World that show modernist tendencies. Although these works show the influence of Western 28 I Es sAvs modernism, it should not be taken for granted that they are based on modernism; since modernist development never really existed in the Third World. Then there will be confusion in the use of terms: modern art, modernist art and contemporary art. 12 Hence, the term contemporary art must be evaluated. The paradoxical change from avant– garde to post avant-garde as a paradigm of contemporary art should be questioned, by way of finding the connection between multimodernism and contemporary art which is different to the contradictory 'linear' connection between modernist development and contemporary art. The aim of multimodernist thinking is clear: to find an understanding where, not only can different realities in contemporary art be properly identified but also, the different ways of representing reality. Jim Supangkat, Independent Curator, Critic andConsultant, Jakarta, Indonesia KlausHoneff, ContemporaryArt, BenediktTaschen Verlag, Kotn,1992, pp.7-8. Honeff,pp.7-8. 3 HouHanru,'Entropy: Chinese Artists, Western Art Institution.ANew Internationalism'.Paper presented to adiscussion heldinAmsterdam,1996, organised by the Gate Foundation.Thediscussionincluded two papers.The other paper,'MulticulturalismlMultimodernism',was my paper. 4 John Clark, 'Jakarta Report,ArtGoes Non-Aligned', ArtandAsiaPacific, vol.2, no.4, 1995, pp.28-31. Charles Jencks, ThePost-Avant-Garde', in The Post-Avant-Garde. Painting in The Eighties, ed.A.C. Papadakis, Academy Group, London, 1982, pp.5-20. 6 JanNederveenPieterse, 'Unpacking The West: How EuropeanisEurope?', in Racism, ModernityAnd Identity, edsA. Rattansi & S. Westwood,Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994,pp.130-149. Pieterse, pp.130-149. Masahiro Ushiroshoji, TheLabyrinthine Search for Self-Identity-The Art of Southeast Asia From the 1980s to the 1990s; in NewArt From SoutheastAsia [exhibitioncatalogue],Fukuoka ArtMuseum, Fukuoka, 1992, pp.21-24. SeeCoco Fusco, 'Sankofa & Black AudioCollective', in Discourses: Conversations in Pas/modern ArtandCulture, ed. R. Fergusonet al,The NewMuseum of ContemporaryArt,New York andtheMIT Press, Cambridge,1990,pp.17-28. 10 Raymond Williams, 'WhenwasModernism', in Art in Modern Culture. An AnthologyofCritical Texts, eds F. Frascina & J. Harris, PhaidonPress, London, 1992, pp.23-27. 11 Raden Saleh's bedside book was deRevolutionde 1848 (the writer is unknown) which he brought fromEuropewhen he returned to Indonesiain 1851. See J. DeLoos-Haaxman, 'Beynonen Raden Saleh: in VerfaatRaport lndi~. Mouton & Co., 'S·Gravenhage,1968,pp.53-79. 12 This reality couldclearlybeseen in the exhibition, 'Contemporary Art ofThe Non– Aligned Countries' in Jakarta,1995, in which forty-three developing countries participated.Worksexhibited here were selectedbycurators ineachparticipating country. Therewas total confusion in theuse of the terms: modern art, modernist art and contemporaryart. ARecentered World: Post-European/ Pro-Indigenous Art from Aotearoa/ New Zealand and Te Moananui-a-Kiwa/ The South Pacific Jonathan Mane-Wheoki At the first Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1993, Robin White, a New Zealand artist of Maori and Pakeha (European) descent, mentioned, during the course of her floortalk, that when she was a student at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, in the 1960s, her tutor Colin McCahon had predicted that the Pacific would become the centre of the art world. At the time the statement must have seemed to her, as it would have seemed to most of her compatriots, bizarre. Pakeha New Zealanders had long been accustomed to think of Europe in general, and Great Britain in particular, as the fountainhead of their identity and culture, and London as the 'hub of empire', and of themselves as inhabiting the 'antipodes', the farthest-flung outpost from that imperial centre. Thus, having arrived in London in 1972 to embark on graduate studies in European art history, while crossing Waterloo Bridge I would pause halfway along and exclaim (with quite unconscious irony, since I, too, am of Maori as well as Pakeha descent), 'This must be the centre of the world'. The following year, however, Britons voted to enter the European Economic Community, and New Zealand found herself, along with other former dominions and colonies of the British Empire, cast adrift. New Zealanders were British subjects no longer. From this enforced independence new trading opportunities were sought, and new political and economic alliances forged, increasingly with countries outside the English-speaking world. These external developments were to have far– reaching cultural consequences for New Zealand. Meanwhile the Treaty of Waitangi Act passed in 1975 acknowledged the compact that had been entered into in 1840 between representatives of various Maori tribes and agents for the British Crown. As New Zealand's founding document, the Act repositioned New Zealand as a bicultural nation; and enabled a Tribunal to be established to consider Maori grievances of longstanding against the Crown. It also politicised Maori and galvanised them into action, sparking a resurgence of indigen– ous nationalism and culture, and emboldening Maori to insist on their right to self-definition as a people and to argue that self-determination was guaranteed by the Treaty. So powerfully engaged with these political and cultural matters are most contemporary Maori artists that to seek mere aesthetic or intellectual gratification from their art is almost unthinkable. Of Auckland's population of over one million, more than eleven per cent are of Maori descent, and a further twelve per cent, in consequence of New Zealand's long history of political, economic and ecclesiastical involvement in the region, are of Pacific Islands, mainly Polynesian, origin. 1 Although Honolulu is geographically well-placed to be the