The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

8 Within current national relations, art and culture and their institutions have a role in soft power. According to Douglas Gautier, CEO and Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival Centre, China’s Deputy Minister of Culture has stated: ‘special relationships are based on politics, trade and culture’, and China will not trade with anyone who does not combine the three; see Grant Hall, ‘How South Australia is using corporate cultural diplomacy to increase trade with China’, Where Words Fail , 2 June 2015, <https://wherewordsfailblog.com/2015/06/02/south-australia-and- corporate-cultural-diplomacy-a-good-model-for-increasing-trade-with- sa-china/>, viewed July 2018. See also ‘Chapter eight: Partnerships and soft power’, 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper , Australian Government, <https://www.fpwhitepaper.gov.au/ >, viewed July 2018. 9 Veronica Arbon, quoted in Manulani Aluli Meyer, ‘Holographic epistemology: Native common sense’, China Media Research , vol.9, no.2, 2013, p.98. 10 Amongst other discussants of World art, Terry Smith has defined art’s contemporaneity as a type of world picturing that permits many different currents based in explorations of temporality, place, affiliation and affect across the local and global, or transregional; see Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents , Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2011. Regionality bypasses nationality to address relations in and through the territory in which they are situated. Mondiality, coined by Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, affirms the idea of a self-understanding that is global, while based in the immediate environment. The Souths are sites of symbolic cultures and futures, whereas, historically, development theory relegated ‘the South’ to backward or underdeveloped geographic locations; see Jean Comaroff and John L Comaroff, ‘Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa’, Anthropological Forum , vol.22, no.2, 2012, pp.113–31. Walter Mignolo, known as a key exponent of the Global South, describes it as decolonising the apparel of knowledge-making from the web of imperial/modern thinking; for a discussion of ‘epistemic de-linking’, see Walter D Mignolo, ‘Delinking’, Cultural Studies , vol.21, no.2, 2007, pp.449–514; and for a discussion of ‘epistemic disobedience’, see Walter D Mignolo, ‘Epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option: A manifesto’, Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luco-Hispanic World , vol.1, no.2, 2011, pp.44–6. Other Global Souths include that defined by Boaventura de Sousa Santos; see Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South, Justice against Epistemicide , Paradigm Publishers, London, 2014. 11 See David Teh, ‘What is an animate image?’, Conscious Realities , Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City, p.193. 12 Geeta Kapur’s proposition is pitched from the geopolitical south as a space for art discourse, and particularly references the context for art in India; see Geeta Kapur, ‘Proposition Avant-Garde: A view from the south’, Art Journal , vol.77, no.1, pp.87–9. 13 See, for example, Isabel Ching’s research into conceptual art across Singapore, the Philippines and Myanmar; Isabel Ching, ‘Tracing (un)certain legacies: Conceptualism in Singapore and the Philippines’, Asia Art Archives , 1 July 2011, <https://aaa.org.hk/en/ideas/ideas/tracing- uncertain-legacies-conceptualism-in-singapore-and-the-philippines/type/ essays>, viewed February 2018. 14 Exhibitions include ‘The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989’ (2011), organised by the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, which re-examined universalising notions of art history to consider context, market and politics; and ‘Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now’ (2017), a collaboration involving The National Art Center, Mori Art Museum, and The Japan Foundation Asia Center, Tokyo. 15 Recent research has shifted the misinterpretation of Dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome-style painting) away from terms of influence or appropriation from Western models; see Joan Kee, Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method , University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013; and ‘What is Dansaekhwa?’, Art Radar Journal , 2 January 2015, <http://artradarjournal.com/2015/01/02/what-is- dansaekhwa-art-radar-explains/>, viewed July 2018. For one impression of the effect of the research and exhibitions of Dansaekhwa-related artists, see Ambika Rajgopal, ‘Dansaekhwa: Less is more’, Asian Art Newspaper , September 2016, pp.12–13. On the influence of art markets on criticality, see Carol Yinghua Lu, ‘The missing front line’, e-flux Journal , no.80, March 2017, <https://www.e-flux.com/journal/80/102559/the- missing-front-line/>, viewed February 2018. 16 See, for example, TK Sabapathy, Writing the Modern, Selected Texts on Art & Art History in Singapore, Malaysia & Southeast Asia 1973–2015 , Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 2018, or Patrick D Flores and Low Sze Wee, Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia , National Gallery Singapore, Singapore, 2017. 17 Sun Ge argues that in discussions of Asian art that there is no ‘primariness’, but a goal is to establish the particulars through principles and relations other than European models; see Aimee Lin, ‘Sun Ge’ [interview], Art Review Asia , autumn 2015, <https://artreview.com/ features/aw_2015_ara_feature_sun_ge/>, viewed July 2018. 18 The selection of artists for APT9 was made by QAGOMA curators, and, for some projects with independent co-curators, in contact with artists and professional colleagues in the region, who we sincerely thank for sharing their knowledge. 19 Commissions include works by Monira Al Qadiri, Aisha Khalid, Bona Park, Qui Zhijie, Iman Raad, Margaret Rarru and Helen Ganalmirriwuy, Mithu Sen and Pannaphan Yodmanee. Project commissions include the Women’s Wealth Project, including a work from Taloi Havini; the Marshall Islands Jaki-ed Project, including a performance by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner; and Tungaru: The Kiribati Project, led by Chris Charteris. 20 Taloi Havini previously featured in APT8 (2015), Anne Noble and Shinro Ohtake were included in APT1 (1993), Lisa Reihana appeared in both APT2 (1996) and APT4 (2002), while Peter Robinson also featured in APT2 (1996). 21 Ching. 22 Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Art in the Time of Colony , Ashgate, New York, 2014, p.8. 23 Prasenjit Duara, ‘Asia redux: Conceptualizing a region for our times’, in Conscious Realities , p.85.