The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

in China and has traversed many borders through perpetual migrations throughout Asia. Htein Lin draws attention to the exploitation of perceived religious divisions that pervade the borders of South and South-East Asia, in reference to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, which represents one of the most pressing humanitarian crises in the world today. More than 70 years after the imposition of South Asia’s national boundaries, artists from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh unveil the ongoing repercussions of the largest human migration in history. 8 These nations’ borders remain sites of tension, with travel between countries becoming increasingly difficult. 9 Language has been a means of dividing and unifying peoples across South Asia. Bengali poetry and literature serve as undercurrents in Munem Wasif’s practice, while Mithu Sen challenges language hegemonies inspired by her own experience of the Bengali language. Shilpa Gupta’s practice has long employed text as both a provocative and poetic device, challenging the construction of borders and the nation state in South Asia. Naiza Khan’s works were originally inspired by her reading of the influential Islamic text Bahishti Zewar , through which she investigates representations of the female body from different historical perspectives, while Rasheed Araeen has deployed Urdu text in conversation with Western icons to allude to antagonisms between the Islamic and Western worlds. Where Asia meets the Pacific, relationships have recently come under scrutiny in the global media; the South China Sea is the site of mounting transnational tensions, while the threat of nuclear strikes and rising sea levels also loom. 10 These issues have placed the Pacific — a site of colonial ‘nesian’ divisions and contested histories that ignore shared cultures — unusually at the centre of world affairs. 11 Marshallese artists operate in a context of both environmental catastrophe and a history of foreign militarisation, where jaki-ed weaving creates a space for people to come together from remote islands and atolls. Other artists expose the historic transpacific relationships that continue to influence and complicate national borders. As part of a practice promoting Ryukyu sovereignty, Mao Ishikawa documents the American occupation of Okinawa, while Idas Losin investigates Taiwanese aboriginality in the context of Austronesian migration. Considered on the periphery of both Asia and the Pacific, Australia maintains historical European legacies and alliances to Western powers. Historically, there has been a reluctance to define Australian culture in relation to either its geographical neighbours or its Indigenous history. Many Indigenous nations lie within Australia’s national border, and artists continue to confront a white European writing of history, while representing connection to land, sea, culture and people, and calling into question power systems that ignore these relations. Furthermore, artistic and cultural exchange involving Indigenous Australians and their neighbours precedes colonial history, as several examples of continued collaboration, such as that by artists from Erub and Lifou, assert in APT9. Artists also draw on recent histories of exchange or personal experiences of travel to Australia that uncover the country’s complex relationships with its neighbours. 12 The diversity of artists’ works in APT9 reveals commonalities across regional boundaries, as well as changing contexts of movement and exchange, while the ideas they unveil interrogate how art is received, defined and institutionalised beyond borders. Testing and shifting the perceived centres of artistic and discursive production, these artists also interpret the changing power structures that are redefining regions and transnational relationships. By making work that encourages new dialogues, artists are influencing perceptions, challenging definitions and overcoming divisions in an ever-changing part of the world. Tarun Nagesh