Clouds: The Position of Contemporary Asian Art

Victoria Lu

Can Asia be reasonably considered a culturally significant concept? Or is it nothing more than the designation of a geographical area?

Can Asia be viewed as a collective the members of which share certain things in common or is it nothing more than a simple signifier or topographical marker? Unfortunately, this is one of those debates that could go on ad infinitum without ever reaching a conclusion.

Looked at through the language of modernity Asia has always encompassed a great diversity of cultures both modern and traditional, whereas the countries of Europe and the US underwent modernization at or around the same time. This clearly constitutes an important difference in terms of eastern and western culture today.

Even the simple task of defining Asia is problematic. If we begin in western and central Asia and travel across the vastness of China we reach East Asia and South East Asia. It is then possible to continue all the way to South Asia and perhaps even the Pacific islands - a land mass that is home to almost three quarters of the population of the planet. Despite the fact that there are many different races and languages in the western world, the belief systems of most developed from original Christianity. In addition, the process of modernization brought about by over two hundred years of industrial production has served to reduce if not entirely eliminate differences in national habits and customs. It also created a modern western culture that contains mainly commonly held elements and values. By comparison, not only do the origins of the many religions in Asia differ markedly, the mixture of languages and written scripts make the area an often ridiculously complex cultural mosaic. On top of that, traditional cultures with completely different customs continue to exist throughout the area and in many cases, modernization facilitated by industrial production is something that only happened very recently and is still ongoing. Moreover, there are also great differences in the level of development in different places, so that all over Asia the differences in secular life between countries and even regions can be enormous. Even today, at a time when editorials and commentaries are often filled with globalization-related angst, the cultural fissures that run through Asia remain an undeniable fact.

If we approach this problem from the point of view of contemporary art in Asia then there has in the past been a tendency to look at Asia through western eyes. Unfortunately, this results in a situation where certain are cherry-picked because they share something in common with the development of western modernism and in such a context the term “Orientalism” becomes derogatory. This is an attitude that entirely overlooks the unbroken reality of traditional culture all over Asia, the fact that in large swathes of Asia the past remains very much an integral part of the present. Strictly speaking anything that happens today should be considered part and parcel of modern Asia. Art created from the diversity of modern Asian culture is by definition contemporary art, not just that part that shares something in common with the west or western experience. In the language of contemporary culture, tradition and modernity in Asia are not juxtaposed or mutually replaceable. Even though it is not strictly possible to speak of them flourishing in unison, they have at the very least symbiotically coexisted for several millennia.

When looking at the countries of Asia Japan immediately stands out in as much as the Meiji Restoration (1868) ensured that temporal life in Japanese culture drew closer to forms more familiar in the west. However, traditional painting, calligraphy and handicrafts remain to this day a resolutely strong part of contemporary Japanese culture. Indeed, western modern art critic Clement Greenberg has commented on this apparent contradiction, wherein although secular life in Japan is thoroughly modernized, pre-modern and even traditional culture that stand in complete juxtaposition to modernity continue to exist In Greenberg’s writings modern art possesses a clearly defined mainstream, but this is something that never occurred in Asia. This underscores why in the past the western art world viewed Asia and contemporary Asian art as peripheral, something that had never been part of the mainstream or more accurately the “western mainstream.” By the same token it is also true to say that the western modern art mainstream never really replaced or defeated the mainstream of diversity and coexistence that exists in Asia.

I would like to relate a strange encounter I experienced in New York once because I think it sheds light on this issue and it had a profound impact on me personally. A local curator had heard that I was a curator from Shanghai and was keen to engage me in conversation. Cutting to the chase she came straight out and asked me if there was any contemporary art in China that didn’t simply copy that produced in the west? I think that for that particular curator and many other likeminded people this is a question that applies not just to China but all Asia. While the origins of this way of thinking have a long and often unpleasant history they can be traced back to a struggle over who has the right to speak for a culture as to what constitutes contemporary art, who has the authority to make such a declaration and whether are all voices equal?

Superficially, the recent rise of contemporary Asian art appears to have attracted the attention of collectors from Europe and the US, but despite an increase in the level and frequency of transactions and high prices at auctions, the truth is that this is a small and tentative first step away from western trading platforms for contemporary art. Moreover, it is also just the tip of the iceberg with the real energy hidden beneath has yet to be released. Faced with the exotic customs of Asia the earliest western buyers behaved almost as if they were uncovering buried secrets or searching for strange wonders rather than collecting modern art. Based on their obviously western-centric tastes, they generally did little more than select a few fresh Eastern baubles with which to decorate their lives. However, over the last decade Asian artists have started to make a name for themselves at international biennials, triennials and some of the major museums in Europe and the US. Examples include from Ai Weiwei, Cai Guoqiang, Chen Zhen, Xu Bing, Zhang Xiaogang and Fang Lijun from China; Yayoi Kusama, Murakami Takashi, Yoshitomo Nara, Mariko Mori and Yasumasa Morimura from Japan; Nam June-paik, Do Ho-suh, Choi Jeong-hwa, Lee and Bul, Kim Sooja from South Korea; Anish Kapoor, Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Ravinder G. Reddy and the art duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra from India; Heri Dono, Agus Suwage, Budi Kustarto, Handiwirman Saputra and Nyoman Mariadi from Indonesia; Vasan Sitthiket, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Chatchai Puipia from Thailand. These artists have nearly all become stars in the contemporary Asian art firmament.

The rate at which art biennials and triennials have appeared across Asia has really been quite breathtaking. This particular prairie fire can be traced back to the 1st Asia-Pacific Triennial held in Australia in 1993. In the years since then, organizing biennial art exhibitions seems to have become something akin to a badge of honor, an urban movement embraced by cities across Asia: Guangju and Busan in South Korea; Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen in China; Chinese Taipei; Yokahama and Fukuoka in Japan; Jakarta in Indonesia and Singapore. Strongly influenced by this upsurge in eye-catching art biennials, many young Asian artists have started copying the conceptual video, performance and installation art showcased at these biennials. At a time when there has also been a dramatic increase in the number of independent curators, being a professional curator has become something of a double-edge sword. On the one hand they introduce contemporary Asian art to a global audience, but on the other that is not to say such curators are able to provide enough academic research work. When it comes to the outside world better understanding contemporary Asian art, it may well be the case that some curatorial work can lead to misunderstandings based on discrepancies and misdirection deliberate or otherwise.

Interestingly, the rapid development of Asian economies has created a natural counterpoint through the rise of the market for Asian art. A decade of explosive growth in biennials and triennials has led to an equally heady expansion of art galleries, art fairs and auction houses across Asia. The prosperity this new and rising art market has created comes with its own rules of supply and demand that make it difficult for a small number of people to manipulate the market, whereas large exhibitions still tend to be controlled by a small handful of individuals. This period of market-oriented development signifies that contemporary Asian art is gradually becoming a currency of international exchange, which both facilitates the creation of a lasting art community and implies that the relationship with the international art community really is becoming one of equals. Over the last two years the number of operators from Germany, Italy, United States, France, Japan and South Korea opening galleries in China has dramatically increased, especially in Beijing’s 798 Art Zone. As to whether Beijing will become the most important art trading/business platform in Asia, only time will tell. 

Compared to the increasing maturity of the Asian art market, there remains a clear paucity of academic research into art history. Even today, Asian countries have so far found it impossible to put together a comprehensive commentary on contemporary art. In the past, the right to talk authoritatively on Asian culture was basically subsumed by western culture, so very few history books were ever written from an Asian perspective. Indeed, for the first half of the twentieth century many Asian countries were still colonized by the west with self-image of local art ruptured, wherein conservative tradition always stood in juxtaposition to westernized modernists. By the second half of the century many artists educated in the west returned home and learning from the west encouraged local avant-garde movements; from abstract to performance art, from conceptual to new media art etc. In terms of appearance and type, these movements were highly diverse and gradually became much more important as vehicles for cultural self identity and awareness. For political reasons, China first came into contact with western avant-garde ideas only in the mid-1980’s. 

As we enter the digital age, it is now far easier and more convenient for people to access information from an ever growing list of sources. A new generation of Asian artists combines the experiences of “conceptualism” and “processing materials” with a willingness to engage in a more open form of dialogue, whether uncovering or constructing new interpretations of history. Moreover, this generation also chooses to make diverse use of the cultural differences between peoples around the world to delineate the life experiences of the artist, constantly bringing together, blending, reconstructing and reinvigorating ideas, some even chose to reflect on gender issues. In the new era, contemporary Asian art is inexorably moving towards a form of Neo-Eclecticism, a heterogeneous visual form that is a product of mixed mating. Although this includes a rich heritage of traditional art, that is viewed as just one choice in a multiplicity of possibilities. In other words, Asian contemporary art in the New Millennium is no longer heading in one of two antithetical directions; anti-western or complete westernization. Only when Asian artist’s feelings of being violated, confused, angry and bewildered, by the overwhelming force of western formalism throughout the twentieth century gradually recede can they be expected to adopt their own approaches and structure developments to better suit their own emotional needs. As such, Asian contemporary art today faces a universal change in creative attitude, to the extent that style and form are no longer of paramount importance. 

Soka Art Center from Taiwan has operated in the field of contemporary art for 18 years and was the first Taiwanese operator to open a gallery in Mainland China. In April 2010, Soka Art Center Beijing moved to the “798 Art Zone” and its official opening exhibition will focus on contemporary Asia art. This showcases the impressive vision of Soka founder Hsiao Fu-yuan, but given that his son, Hsiao Po-chung, was also joint curator for this exhibition it is also a declaration of intent for the future, an indication of the direction in which Soka plans to develop – namely Asia. 

The opening exhibition includes works by 31 internationally renowned artists. These come not only from the Soka Art Collection but also from artists invited to participate in the exhibition by the curators. The exhibition theme “High in the Clouds” comes from the recently popular technological idea of “Cloud Computing,” signifying the hopes and expectations that still very much motivate Soka Art as it fast approaches its twentieth birthday.