Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

SESSION 7 : PARALLELS 7.1 : ASIA-PACI FIC ART: BEYOND THE FUTURE CAUGHT BETWEEN APPRECIATI NG 'ASIAN ' ART AND UNDERSTANDING THE ASIAN REGION Yasuko Furuichi First, I would like to thank Dr. Caroline Turner and the Queensland Art Gallery for giving me the opportun ity to say a few words at this important Conference as we th ink about contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific region . I would like to speak about my experiences in managing the art programs of The Japan Foundation Asia Center over the last ten years and add some recent thoughts. I would like to state at the outset that everything I am about to say is my personal opinion . During the last ten years, the final decade of the twentieth century, we have seen tremendous growth in exhibitions and d iscussion of art from the Asian or Asia-Pacific region , and this art is now much better understood in a regional , rather than a national, context. Many exhibitions both large and small, as well as symposia have been organised and sponsored by government and private institutions. Much more information is available. Museums specialising in the art of Asia have been built and a network of people and institutions involved with art has been establ ished in the region . Exh ibitions of Asian art were 'news' to the Japanese art world at the beginn ing of the nineties, but now it is seen as just one more kind of 'ordinary' contemporary art. In retrospect, it seems that the Japan Foundation As ia Center has played a role in creating th is trend. The Japan Foundation is a government organisation that promotes cultural exchanges between Japan and other countries to increase mutual understanding. The ASEAN Culture Center was established in 1 990 as part of the Japan Foundation and the forerunner of the Asia Center. It had an overtly political purpose since it was designed to support Japanese foreign policy toward Asia. As the name impl ied , the ASEAN Center worked with the six Southeast Asia nations belonging to ASEAN . After it was reorgan ised as the Asia Center in 1 995, our programs were expanded to take in the 22 countries included in the Foreign Ministry's definition of Asia, from Pakistan in the west to China and Mongolia in the east. The Asia Center's function is to introduce the art and culture of other Asian nations in Japan so that the Japanese public can get a better understanding of the region . Political considerations enter into the decision of wh ich regions are targeted , but this is not something that is limited to our organisation and political pressures have never restricted our programs. In fact, because of our public character we have been more free to deal with art forms that are not marketable . We have been able to take a more experimental approach to presenting the art of Asia in Japan, because economic efficiency has not been our priority. The Asia Center's art programs during the past decade have been adapted to the Japanese public's level of knowledge about Asian art and planned to reflect recent trends in Asian countries and the current state of the world. Since our main purpose is raising the awareness of contemporary Asian art in Japan , we have turned to Japanese curators and asked them to design the exh ibitions with the Japanese audience in m ind. This practice has led to accusations of cultural hegemony. These criticisms have mainly targeted methods and choice of Japanese curators, rather than the content of the exhibitions. Furthermore, we cannot deny that such reproach has made us Japanese, who have achieved economic success but have retained a guilty conscience towards Asian countries from the memories of war, feel uneasy. But, given the constraints of a limited budget, we placed priority on our mission to spread information on Asian art as effectively as possible. Also, we felt that it was necessa ry to increase the level of expertise of Japanese art professionals in the field of Asian contemporary art. However, we have tried to be sensitive to the concerns of our Asian 1 1 0