In June 2014, QAGOMA Director Chris Saines and I embarked on a three-country tour of mainland South-East Asia, landing first in a hot and wet Phnom Penh. We received a very warm welcome from the small but tight-knit art community, the members of which accompanied us to openings, talks, performances, dinners, tours of iconic local architect Vann Molyvann’s buildings, and to view private collections. We were able to meet some of the country’s most highly respected practitioners, including APT6 artist Sopheap Pich at his studio, perched on the Mekong River. Cambodia’s recent violent past permeates so much of everyday life and has a strong presence in the practice of many of the country’s artists, while the absence of a senior generation is a painful reminder of the genocide of the late 1970s. Younger Cambodian artists are beginning to gain significant international reputations, driven to create by complex political, social and environmental issues, such as the forced removal of Phnom Penh citizens from their homes for controversial development projects. Touring the lush gardens and collections of the national museum with its director was a special treat, which included taking in some of the grand masterpieces of the Angkor period. Bypassing Bangkok due to the recent military coup, we headed instead to Thailand’s cultural capital of Chiang Mai. The APT’s strong legacy in Thailand meant that we were greeted like old friends — we were toured through the 31st Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit by founder Kamin Lertchaiprasert, visited the market and comic stands where Navin Rawanchaikul grew up, and drove out to the country property of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. Although a brief visit, these internationally respected artists, who each exhibited in APTs in the 1990s, offered us invaluable insights and introductions to exciting young artists, ensuring that our time in Thailand was very productive. A new frontier for APT research travel took us to Yangon, Myanmar. Much has changed in a very short time in Myanmar, and artists are experiencing a new-found freedom of expression. Very poor infrastructure and an unfamiliar audience, however, mean that artists have to be highly resourceful. Performance is one of the few art forms that endured the long period of military dictatorship, providing an inexpensive and untraceable platform for artists and it continues as a key component of most artists’ practice. Under the shadow of the monumental Shwedagon Pagoda, we crawled along in Yangon’s traffic (a fairly new characteristic of the city) to visit artists who were often working in very modest surroundings and using innovative modes of production — from land art and performance to found object sculpture, photography and documentary filmmaking. We were also lucky enough to meet some of the country’s pioneering artists, who forged careers during the most restrictive times and who are now mentoring the new wave. Some of the established artists, such as APT6 exhibitors Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, are taking contemporary art out of the city and sharing it with people across the countryside. Among some of Yangon’s longer‑standing galleries, housed mainly in dilapidated colonial buildings, custom-designed gallery spaces are beginning to emerge. On our last evening at one of these new spaces on the Yangon River, a performance event by ten female artists seemed a fitting way to end what was an inspiring journey through some of the most exciting art centres in South-East Asia. Tarun Nagesh is Associate Curator, Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.

Though hampered by ambiguous diplomatic status with regard to mainland China, and somewhat overshadowed by the meteoric rise of Chinese art in international estimations, Taiwan possesses a rich and complex contemporary art scene. The country’s position as one of the Four Asian Tiger economies, and the flourishing of civil society after martial law was wound back in the late 1980s, have seen a proliferation of museums in which contemporary art plays a prominent role. In addition to a vibrant commercial sector and a network of community focused exhibition and residency centres, Taiwan also boasts a dynamic range of artist- and curator-led initiatives and a number of international biennials, of which the Taipei Biennial and Asian Art Biennial are best known. Within this robust infrastructure, Taiwanese art operates with its own internal complexities, informed by ethnic diversity and related social and cultural issues that derive from successive waves of Han migration and a resilient indigenous heritage. These frame artistic responses to the effects of increasing economic integration with mainland China on the one hand and persistent debates around Taiwanese political autonomy on the other. Changes in the urban landscape, in living and working conditions, and in the preservation of the culture and way of life of the island’s aboriginal people, are preoccupations that figure strongly in Taiwanese contemporary art. Many young artists, writers and curators participated in the Sunflower Movement of March–April 2014 — during which the state legislature was occupied by student and civic groups protesting against a cross-strait trade agreement — and produced a number of exciting works in response to the event. Japanese art has taken a similar turn towards social engagement, most notably in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which has in turn provoked widespread questioning among cultural practitioners about the direction in which the country might be heading. In 2014, this general mood pervaded both the Yokohama Triennale and the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale. With the dramatic title ‘Fahrenheit 451: Sailing into a sea of oblivion’, Yokohama was directed by Morimura Yasumasa, one of the most important Japanese artists of recent times. The exhibition was idiosyncratically presented in a series of chapters, and sought to define the power of art against ‘the power to control society’ in an uncertain world. Meanwhile, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum continued its excellent triennale’s engagement with the margins of contemporary art, both in emerging contexts such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Mongolia and Nepal, and in work from the more established centres of China, Japan and India, intersecting with scientific experiment, popular culture and community engagement. Also notable within Japanese art has been the visibility of Okinawan perspectives for the first time the since the emergence of artist Yuken Teruya a decade ago. Artists such as those associated with the Las Barcas collective in Naha affirm the distinctive culture and identity of the Okinawan people in relation to both Japan and the US, whose military bases occupy 20 per cent of Okinawa’s main island. Of particular note is the tendency of such artists to call hierarchies and social divisions into question, proposing more fluid conceptions of national, sexual and gender identity as a way of working through current political quandaries. Reuben Keehan is Curator, Contemporary Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.