The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

209 ESSAYS The material world is also present at levels beyond representation, among them colour, texture, composition, modes of production, allusion and analogy. In the context of prevailing economic and political forces, it may be argued that techniques of making can be expressions of resilience or even acts of outright resistance. In particular, textile-based practices operate on two levels — textile production embodies deep cultural resonances, but its workers are some of the most brutally exploited in industrialised societies. In APT9, formal, material and conceptually based practices could be said to occupy a similarly complicated discursive field as overtly socially engaged works. This material significance holds true even for more content-driven works in the exhibition — Cao Fei’s commercial-grade video production values, and the handmade qualities evoked by Yawnghwe’s work are clear aesthetic decisions appropriate to the works’ subject matter. For Shinro Ohtake, surface variations in the arrangement of detritus of consumer culture takes on the associative quality of memories. The cabinet of curiosities alluded to by Ohtake’s arrangements, a European Renaissance precursor to the museum, also appears in works by Donna Ong and Robert Zhao Renhui, Chen Zhe, Kawayan de Guia and Jeong Geumhyung. Each orders a range of objects, images and texts to encourage cross-readings and unlikely associations. As with Namatjira’s portraits, structure as a means of formal organisation correlates to configurations of power and wealth as they operate within societies or across regions. It is important to affirm the continuity of the realist attitude identified by Ushiroshoji in contemporary Asian and Pacific art in a context of ongoing social change. The practices assembled in APT9 work against reductive readings, and seek — in the interplay of subject, form and material — the potential for the creation of new connections, new communities and new solidarities across this vast and diverse region. Reuben Keehan Endnotes 1 Such work has by no means been absent from previous Triennials; for example, Haegue Yang and David Medalla’s precocious revisions of Minimalism were important additions to APT8, an exhibition with a necessarily figurative character given its attention to uses of the body and performance in recent practice. 2 Masahiro Ushiroshoji, ‘The labyrinthine search for self-identity – The art of Southeast Asia from the 1980s to the 1990s’, in New Art from Southeast Asia 1992 [exhibition catalogue], The Japan Foundation, Tokyo, 1992, p.23. 3 Masahiro Ushiroshoji, ‘Realism as an attitude: Asian art in the nineties’, in 4th Asian Art Show Fukuoka: Realism as an Attitude [exhibition catalogue], Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, 1994, pp.33–8. Installation view of ‘Flown Away is the Gold of Days – Works from Towards Evening: Six Chapters – Chen Zhe’, Bank MAB Society, Shanghai, 2017; from left to right: The only question is how to endure – Immersing 2017; Resisting; Seizing the moment ; and Understanding eternity / Image courtesy: The artist and Bank MAB Society, Shanghai