The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Representation and deployment of the human body in contemporary art throughout the region are a major focus of this year’s Asia Pacific Triennial. Across its various discourses, performance often emerges or exists outside of the museum context, or is developed as a critique of it, yet it is becoming increasingly institutionalised and historicised. Performance artworks and documentation have recently become more actively collected by museums, and survey exhibitions and restagings of works by performance artists are taking place with increasing regularity. It seems timely to consider a form that has always had a central position in Asian and Pacific art (and been an enduring element of the APT), but whose presence has expanded so considerably within the international contemporary art sphere over the past decade. To discuss the current state of performance, as well as issues of regional frameworks and constructions of identity—which have also long been significant issues for the APT— I posed some questions via email to leading practitioners from across the region who have been invited as interlocutors for APT8: artists Lisa Reihana and Yee I-Lann, and curators Biljana Ciric and Sunjung Kim. Russell Storer