The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

217 ESSAYS Like Chabet, Sharif has become known as the forerunner of Conceptual art in the UAE, acknowledged for his commitment to teaching and in establishing and maintaining a local audience and arts community. His method of working with quotidian objects, self-imposed rules, and chance and repetition is identifiably conceptual. Some works were intentionally, but subtly, erotic, others referred to West Asian methods of carpet weaving, or to the sensory qualities of saturated colour and texture. Sharif’s practice was revolutionary in the UAE at the time, and he faced criticism from his contemporaries for being ‘too Western’ and for not responding to Emirati or Arabic forms of visual art: ‘From the beginning I felt that this was not the way to think and to make a contemporary painting’. 9 He further acknowledged: ‘Even though the materials I’m using may be traditional, I’m not using them in traditional ways’. 10 Rasheed Araeen, Roberto Chabet and Hassan Sharif critiqued the paradigms of Modernism and the conditions of contemporary life, proposing new relationships between art and reality in a local context. Contextualising these artists’ works within the broader art historical canon reveals some of the contradictions inherent in the interpretation of global modernisms, including the tensions between local and global forms. To return to the questions raised by Enwezor — ‘Who made art? Where and why, and with what and how?’ — it is also important to highlight the work of two senior female artists featured in APT9 — Lao artist Tcheu Siong and Palawa artist Lola Greeno from Lutruwita (Tasmania). Both have developed unique practices that also reference relational seriality, while drawing on customary knowledge or shamanistic teachings. Less easily incorporated into the art historical canon, these artists’ practices suggest that late modernist and Western art histories require even further revision. Abigail Bernal Endnotes 1 Okwui Enwezor, ‘Director’s foreword’, in Okwui Enwezor, Katy Siegel, Ulrich Wilmes (eds), Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic 1945–1965 [exhibition catalogue], Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2016, p.13. 2 Some important texts include: Patrick D Flores, ‘Missing link, burned bridges: The art of the 70s’, Pananaw 2: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts , National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Manila, 1998, p.53; Isabel Ching, ‘Tracing (un)certain legacies: Conceptualism in Singapore and the Philippines’, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong , 1 July 2011, <https://aaa.org.hk/ en/ideas/ideas/tracing-uncertain-legacies-conceptualism-in-singapore- and-the-philippines>, viewed July 2018; Ahmad Mashadi, ‘Framing the 1970s’, Third Text , vol.25, no.4, 2011, pp.409–17. 3 Ching. 4 Iftikhar Dadi, Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia , The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2010, p.197. 5 Mashadi, p.412. 6 Important criticism of Chabet’s hegemony on contemporary art in the Philippines has come from Patrick D Flores and Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez; see Patrick D Flores, ‘The Philippine modern: Conceiving a collective category’, Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art , September 2009, pp.33–45; Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, ‘Shortlist: The Philippines’, Asia Art Archive , Hong Kong, <https://aaa.org.hk/en/resources/bibliographies/ shortlist-the-philippines>, viewed July 2018. 7 Marlyne Sahakian and Ringo Bunoan, ‘Anxious objects waiting to collide: Roberto Chabet’, ArtAsiaPacific , issue 66, November– December 2009, <http://artasiapacific.com/magazine/66/ anxiousobjectswaitingtocolliderobertochabet>, viewed July 2018. 8 Rahel Aima, ‘Hassan Sharif at Sharjah Art Foundation’ [review], Art in America , 1 February 2018, <https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/ reviews/hassan-sharif/>, viewed July 2018. 9 Hassan Sharif, quoted in Paulina Kolczynska, ‘Hassan Sharif: A rare bloom in the desert’, in Catherine David (ed.), Hassan Sharif: Works 1973–2011 , Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2011, p.38. 10 Hassan Sharif, quoted in David Ebony, ‘Process and provocation: An interview with Hassan Sharif’, Art In America , 22 January 2014, <https:// www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/interviews/process-and- provocation-an-interview-with-hassan-sharif/>, viewed July 2018.