Shapeshifting: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia

SHAPESHIFTING:

Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia

Aung Myat Htay Aung Myint Bui Cong Khanh Chan Dany Christine Nguyen Dinh Q. LĂŞ Htein Lin Leang Seckon Manit Sriwanichpoom Maung Day Michael Shaowanasai Moe Satt Nguyen Thai Tuan Nov Cheanik San Minn Sutee Kunavichayanont Svay Ken Svay Sareth Tawatchai Puntusawasdi The Propeller Group Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu Vandy Rattana Vann Nath Vu Dan Tan Zun ei Phyu

A VIBRANT LIFE PUBLICATION

Aung Myat Htay “The beast in us transfigures and roams the earth. The beast as eternal twin, as perpetuation of internal bleeding, as continuity of a seismic story,” - Maung Day

Aung Myat Htay’s artwork deals with transparency, identity and spirituality. In his works, “My Heart” Htay

transposes the motifs of ancient traditions onto three life-size fugues: Ogre, God and the Face. The concept for

these works began at the end of 2007 after the “Saffron Revolution” when the artist was inspired by the public’s solidarity, standing together with one heart. The face of the ogre represents ‘evil’ and the celestial being ‘good’, the two sides of the same coin. The controllers of the mind, the slave driver of action. Aung Myat Htay’s work takes us back to the origin of the human being.

Aung Myat Htay (b. 1973, Mandalay, Myanmar) completed his BA in Art and Sculpture at the University of Art and Culture, Yangon and is a practicing artist and writer and was a former teacher at the Department of Sculpture,

University of Art and Culture, Yangon. Htay has presented work in several regions of Asia including Hong Kong,

Japan, Thailand, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. He has participated in various residencies and exhibitions including the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Fukuoka, Japan), Live Art (Banglore, India), and the Koganecho

Bazaar International Art Festival (Yokohama, Japan). Htay was the recipient of the ACC Grant Award in 2014.

From left: My Heart (Ogre), My Heart (Face), My Heart (God) 2016

Bronze

180 x 55 cm

Aung Myint An ardent supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi, “Lady Scissors” is Aung Myint’s tongue-in-cheek ode to the woman he

thinks should govern Burma. Aung Myint selected the painting to be featured in the October 2015 exhibit in Hong Kong, “Burma by Proxy: Painting at the Dawn of Democracy”. The exhibit captured the hopes and doubts of an

emerging democracy in the run-up to Myanmar’s 2015 general election. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won over 80 percent of the contested seats and ended nearly fifty years of military dominance in the parliament. However, the constitution prevents Aung San Suu Kyi from assuming the presidency.

Aung Myint (b. 1946, Myanmar) is considered the pioneer of Burma’s experimental art movement and addresses social commentary through performance, installation, and abstract and semi-abstract paintings. His works are in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, the Singapore Art Museum, and the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.

Lady Scissors

2013

Acrylic on canvas

173 x 105 cm

Artwork courtesy of Melissa Carlson and Pyay Way, “Burma by Proxy: Art at the Dawn of Democracy”

Bui Cong Khanh Prayer on the Wind is a cloth temple-like structure made from cut-out and sewn patchwork squares of Burmese

monks’ saffron robes, interdispersed with military camouflage, the piece boasts a number of pockets on its outer walls into which members of the public insert notes inscribed with their ideas and wishes, sacred or secular. Once

these scraps of paper materializing prayers have been stuffed into the piece’s stitched pockets, viewers lie on a

mat under the cloth temple to rest and meditate. As they do so, they bathe in radiant shafts of color produced as light filters through the installation’s textile ramparts. Co-opting the public sensorially through experiential play, and prompting small gestures of civic empowerment exercised as text-based interaction, Prayer on the Wind triggers thought about the supposed protecting-nurturing role of state institutions such as government, the military

and religion, as well as the rivalry between them. Originally conceptualized in Myanmar and referencing recent

altercations between the Burmese Sangha and the army, Prayer on the Wind translates meaningfully to contexts where citizens question authority’s modes of operation and legitimacy. – Iola Lenzi, Curator, Fortress Temple Bui Cong Khanh (vases) Saigon-based multi-media practitioner Bui Cong Khanh born at the end of the American war and witness to his

country’s metamorphoses of recent decades, surveys Vietnamese life and culture with his eye trained on the nation’s social and political tensions. He has been working on blue and white porcelain since 2009 and was

included in the Asia Pacific Triennial the same year. Using images from street and traditional culture, emblems and texts of the state, and symbols of religion are among the building blocks of Khanh’s visual lexicon. Khanh’s work

explores consumer habits, communist propaganda, rural Vietnam’s transformations, social exclusion, abuse of power, and state surveillance, and more recently Khanh has examined evolving nationalist sentiment as Vietnam rethinks its place in the world today. –Excerpt from Fortress Temple by Iola Lenzi, Curator

Bui Cong Khanh (b. 1972, Danang, Vietnam) is an artist whose work explores historical and contemporary issues in Vietnam. As one of the first local artists to gain international recognition during the 1990s with his performances

questioning restrictions of individual expression in communist Vietnam. His works have exhibited at ARTER, Turkey; The Pacific Asia Museum, USA; The Asia Pacific Triennial, Australia, The Singapore Art Museum, Singapore.

The Story of Blue, White and Red 5 2013

Porcelain, hand-painted underglaze blue and red

125 x 45 cm

Prayer on the Wind (installation view)

2015

Participative installation, monk’s robes, camouflage textile, handwritten notes (H) 260 x 218 x 223 cm

Chan Dany “My work is about the evolution of materials and knowledge. I take a wooden material apart and apply its pieces back together onto a wooden surface.” – Chan Dany

Chan Dany was born in 1984, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and graduated from Reyum Art School in 2005. It

was there he learned traditional Khmer forms and techniques from master teachers. Chan Dany is one of few

emerging artists in Cambodia creating contemporary work that employs a flexible knowledge of kbach rachana, or Khmer decorative forms – an ancient code of organic shapes and patterns applied in different styles. For

example, a circle derives from the fish egg, a stele shape references the buffalo’s tooth, a bulbous triangle is the lotus petal, and so on. The use of kbach rachana defines something as classically Khmer - from architecture to

women’s jewelry. His practice requires a repetition and patience reminiscent of traditional master-artisan methods of production, such as silk weaving. From a distance Chan’s art even resembles tapestry work, but upon closer viewing his technique is revealed.

Pkaa Phni Vois 2 (Kbach Series)

2014

Pencil shavings and glue on wooden board

200 x 100 cm

Christine Nguyen The act of exploring the varied underwater life forms of the natural microscopic world is of key interest to

Christine Nguyen, whose father was a local commercial fisherman who pulled different kinds of sea life for trade.

Through a unique photographic process Nguyen paints on translucent paper and then grows salt crystals on the paper creating a negative that she places on photographic paper. For the young Nguyen, these life forms were

surreal and fascinating in their underwater kingdom and she drew great comparison with these aquatic wonders to her ideas of outer space. Exploring the forms that are beyond visibility to the naked eye has given Nguyen great impetus to flare such detail in her carefully wrought drawings and photographs.

Christine Nguyen (b. 1972) is a young Vietnamese American artist with a prolific exhibition history. Her exhibitions include the UCLA Hammer Museum, LA; ‘Flashpoint between the Fleeting and Eternal’, Andrewshire Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2009; ‘Subaquatic Echoes’, San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 2008; ‘Eleven Nguyens

and the Thirty Year Loss’, PH Gallery, New York, NY, 2006; and ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’, Machine Project, Los

Angeles, CA, 2005. Nguyen has participated in the Wildfjords Artist Residency program in Iceland, the Bureau of Land Management Interior Alaska AIR program, and the Theodore Payne Foundation AIR. She has also been

awarded the 2015-2016 (C.O.L.A) City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship award and the 2015-2016 Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship award.

Rockweeds And The Blue Skates Escape

2009

C-print photograph

50.8 x 60.96 cm Edition of 6

Dinh Q. Lê Dinh Q. Lê (b. 1958, Vietnam), one of the most internationally acclaimed Vietnamese artists, using sculpture,

video and installation to create powerful statements about the impact of historical events on individual lives. Many of Lê’s iconic works bear strong images and themes of the disturbing physical and psychological effects resulting from the Vietnam–US War (1959–1975). Through his works, Lê communicates how the event still permeates the cultural memory and landscape of Vietnam.

South China Sea Pishkun

The four large photographs of helicopters crashing into the waves are from his series entitled South China Sea

Pishkun. These are video stills from a film animation he created to document the moments just following the last day of the Vietnam-American war, when dozens of US helicopters fled Vietnam only to find that their were not

enough room on the aircraft carriers for them to land. Forcing many to crash in the South China Sea. A pishkun is a term used by the American Indians who drove bison over cliffs in a means to cull a herd.

Vietnam Inc.

Dinh Q. Lê first gained recognition through a series of works he created while still in University where he cut photographs into strips and wove them together in a manner likened to traditional grass matt weaving. This series of photo weavings brings attention to the fast changing Vietnam that is layered with altering imagery

of communist propaganda symbols, popular advertising billboards, as well as war imagery combined into a psychedelic tapestry that competes for your attention.

Boat Refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, April 12, 2015

Hanging in the center of the gallery is a 50-meter long photographic scroll. In this work Lê has touched on the

refugee crisis in Europe by sourcing a sinking boat full of refugees in the Mediterranean he diffuses the shocking

image by stretching it beyond recognition. Visually pleasing colors of blue and brown form an abstract photo that is only made relevant upon viewing the original image of dozens of people struggling to stay afloat the sinking boat. Dinh Q. Lê and his family escaped from Vietnam themselves by boat when he was 10.

Dinh Q Lê was featured in the ‘50th Venice Biennale 2003’, Italy, and his works have been exhibited in the

Asia Society, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Smithsonian Institute, Washington; The New

Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; MoMA, New York; The Asia Pacific Triennial Queensland Art Gallery

and The Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Australia; the Mori Museum of Art in Japan and currently at the Hiroshima Museum in Japan

From top to bottom:

South China Sea Pishkun, Still No.1 South China Sea Pishkun, Still No.3 South China Sea Pishkun, Still No.5 South China Sea Pishkun, Still No.7 2009

3-D animation still, digital print on color photographic paper 127 x 220 cm

Untitled 4 - 07 2007

Fuji Professional Color Paper 120 x 180 cm

The scroll of the Mediterranean Sea, April 12th, 2015 (detail) 2016

Color photograph (FujiColor Crystal Archive) 127 x 5000 cm

Origional image

Htein Lin Htein Lin was a political prisoner in Myanmar for 7 years for being an active student leader in the 1988 movement at Rangoon University. He created a series of works while in prison including carving out a block of soap in the

shape of a prisoner crouched within the confines of a small cell. This work was smuggled to an International Red Cross Worker and remains today part of their collection and has been exhibited internationally. Htein Lin moved to the UK after his release and returned in 2013 when the country loosened restrictions. He created this new

series of works of carved soaps ‘Soap Block’ to replicate the one he made in prison and created this installation of the Burmese Map with the lighter pieces of soap representing the prisons in Myanmar. He made more than 300 paintings in prison on any piece of cloth he could find. These rarely seen works exhibited here are just a

few of the samples available for viewing. The entire collection is safely stored at the Archive of Social History in Amsterdam. His hope is to create a museum in Yangon to openly discuss the plight of political prisoners in his country.

Htein Lin (b. 1966 Ingapu, Myanmar) is an active artist working in painting, installation, sculpture and

performance. His carved soap work has exhibited with the ICRC in Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines Italy, Poland and the UK.

Soap Block (installation view)

2015

Soap, installation (500 individual soap blocks)

120 x 360 cm

Edition 1/2 + 1 AP

Leang Seckon Leang Seckon is one of the most well known contemporary artists within Cambodia. He has worked on major

community projects bringing much public attention including the Rubbish Project. Through his art, Leang Seckon shows social and political concern through various collage techniques using various reclaimed materials. His

works are a visual storytelling of references to history and modern day Cambodian philosophy and observation.

The compositions of his collage works are built up, one story after another, to form a developed idea. They are

like a journey from the beginning to the end. “Once upon a time‌â€? his tales begin. His far-sighted observations and traditional reflections make his work at the forefront of Cambodian thinking. With fresh energy he is the

witness to his surroundings and keenly links stories of the past, present and future into visual compositions. His works are sewn, glued and painted into colorful tales that adhere to a certain rawness that is mirrored in his developing country.

Leang Seckon (b. 1974 Prey Veng, Cambodia) graduated with a BA in Design from the Royal University of

Fine Arts in 2002, having first completed a BA in painting. Since then, he has exhibited new bodies of paintings and collage work throughout Cambodia, Singapore, Norway, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States. He has

been twice nominated as a Sovereign Asian Art Prize finalist and was chosen to represent Cambodia in the 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial in 2009.

Site B Refugees in Thailand in the 80s Period

2009

Mixed media on canvas

90 x 50 cm

Manit Sriwanichpoom Manit Sriwanichpoom is one of Thailand’s most well known artists, as well as one of Southeast Asia’s most

internationally exhibited. He is best known for his Pink Man series, begun in the post-Asian Crisis Thailand of the

late 1990s. The Pink Man is a critique on consumerism in Thailand, a symbol of the eternally unsatisfied and selfcentered consumer, and a symbol of capitalism.

Masters

Manit’s Masters series of photographs takes aim at the eerily life-like sculptures of famous monks, placed

in Thai temples to solicit cash offerings from the faithful. For many, this superstitious practice is evidence of

the corruption of Buddhism by Thailand’s wanton consumerism. As the artist puts it: “The more advanced the

marketing and production techniques, the more intricate and fantastical their products, the further we travel from

the Buddha.” Manit is particularly interested in Thai history and his country’s political development of the last few decades. Appropriating others’ images as well as using his own photographs as documents, Manit has created an original body of work that reveals Thailand in all her contemporary socio-political complexity.

Waiting for the King

Manit’s 14-print 2006 sequence, Waiting for the King shows real life scenes of Thai people on the streets of

Bangkok waiting to see the King Bhumibol on his birthday in December 2006. Their expressions are nondescript, the moments before the culmination of waited anticipation conveys not excitement but rather pathos. The main figure is not the King but instead the waiting people. Waiting for the King is set in post-coup Thailand as the nation once again faced abrupt regime change. Manit observes his countrymen who remained attached to

antiquated traditions in the light of uncertain times of the Thaksin regime. Manit acts as a documentarian of the current moment in time where discontent lingers among the neutral faces.

Manit Sriwanichpoom (b. 1961 Thailand) has participated in a number of prominent international exhibitions

including ‘Cities on the Move’ and the 2003 Venice Biennale. He is the 2007 recipient of Japan’s prestigious Higashikawa Overseas Photographer Award. Manit is represented in the Singapore Art Museum, The Queensland Art Gallery, and the KOC Foundation, Istanbul, among others.

Waiting for the King (Standing) (detail) 2006

gelatine silver print photography 50 x 49.5 cm x 14 photographs

Master 04 2009

Pigment print on archival paper (Epson) (L) 124 x 100 cm (S) 60 x 48 cm

(L) Edition of 3 + 1 AP (S) Edition of 9

Maung Day Maun Day is a poet, editor and visual and performing artist. In his drawings and poems, Day uses iconic

imagery derived from narratives and parables of Buddhist beliefs and Burmese folklore, which he transforms to create a weird but critical effect. He explores and challenges pervasive ideologies and beliefs to provoke new understandings and perceptions.

Maung Day appropriates mythical religious images prominent in Burmese culture. The way he deals with these religious images becomes intertwined with the collective mix of ancient signs and symbols so as to produce a

present-day meaning. In Thug Nation, Day condemns the military regime’s violent crackdowns on protests and

demonstrations by government “stooges”. The thugs presented in the drawings are tattooed with symbols of the eagle and phoenix, which symbolize bravery, as well as trite references such as “Mom”, “love” and “courage”.

The Portrait of the Country as a Snake Queen utilizes the imagery from folk tales and myths, creating a sense of awe and fear while it is also concerned with rituals and sacrifices. Kissers in the Park depicts young lovers

watched by a sinister fox; social and political cataclysms constantly lurk, threatening the happiness and balance of people’s lives in Myanmar.

Maung Day has published four books of poetry: Poems (The Eras 2014); Alluvial Plain of Ogre (The Eras 2012); Surplus Biology (The Eras 2011) and Pleasure Sea (Yaw MH way 2006). He co-founded the celebrated Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Myanmar in 2008 and his performance works have been showcased internationally.

The Portrait of the Country as a Snake Queen

2016

Pencil and colour pen on paper

75 x 55 cm

Michael Shaowanasai Michael Shaowanasai is often labeled a gender artist known for his performative photography in which he poses in drag, in these works does not put cross-dressing at the center of his art. Rather, it is an element he exploits

to construct an argument on a different topic, the fate of Thailand today and how the bigger picture impacts the

individual. He uses the personal -his own body and sexuality- not for the sake of autobiographical spectacle, or formalism with a secondary reading as a critique of popular culture, à la Cindy Sherman, but to look and speak outward about pressing collective issues.

His series of light boxes entitled The Untouchables continues a text-based series of portraits of the King and

Queen set within 3-D restaurant illuminated signs in the colors of the Thai flag. The King and Queen illuminated

placards in Thai red-white-blue, reflect the monarchs’ evolving image and status. Thus, the King and Queen may remain untouchable as a convention, but as a practice they seem increasingly redundant. The Untouchables materializes one of Thailand’s three pillars of state in flux, points to a shift in national power structures, and

challenges a seemingly immutable prescription of history, so hinting at alternative possibilities for Thailand’s people and public life. –Excerpts from Iola Lenzi, Curator, Subjective Truth.

Michael Shaowanasai (b. 1964 Thailand) is one of Thailand’s most socially and culturally engaged artists. With degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), he works across a

broad spectrum of media including performance, photography, video, film, painting, and installation. Known for his iconic cross-dressing monk portrait of a man in habits, Shaowanasai is a versatile artist whose conceptual pieces, often text-based, are effective for their aesthetic brilliance and formal command.

The Untouchables 2013

light box, diptych (unique)

approx 75 X 120 cm each

The Lady of the Low Countries 2008

C-print

101.6 x 101.6 cm

Moe Satt Moe Satt’s Bicycle Tire Rolling performances took place in culturally and politically important heritage sites in

Myanmar, which were treated as insignificant places during the military regime. In each performance the viewer can see Moe Satt playing the traditional Burmese child’s game – gway-hlane “bike tire rolling” whilst dressed

in the traditional costume of Myanmar. The locations take on the role as “empty signifiers”; their meanings and

significance have been lost or warped over time. By dressing in a culturally significant way, whilst playing a child’s game, Moe references the trivialization of these landmark sites and the dilution of his cultural heritage.

Moe Satt (b. 1983 Myanmar) lives and works as a visual and performance artist in Yangon, Myanmar. Moe

started creating art after graduating from East Yangon University in Myanmar with a degree in Zoology in 2005 and is part of a new generation of emerging Burmese artists. In 2008, he founded and organized Beyond

Pressure, an international festival of performance art in Myanmar. As a performance artist, Moe has performed in galleries and also on the streets of Yangon. He has been actively participating in live arts festivals in Southeast

Asia and South Asia, and on the international stage. Moe Satt was selected as a finalist for the Hugo Boss Asia

Art Award 2015 and participated in the 2nd CAFAM Biennale at CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, China, in 2014, and in the group exhibition “A Journal of the Plague Year” at Para Site Art Space in Hong Kong in 2013. The artist also curated the exhibition “General / Tiger / Gun” at Rebel Art Space in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2014.

Bicycle Tire Rolling Event from Yangon: Bank of Innya Lake

2013

Photograph

60 x 91 cm

Edition of 5

Nguyen Thai Tuan Nguyen Thai Tuan is an adept oil painter whose life-long passion for the brush has offered constant solace from the dark memories that creep into his everyday life. This consciousness is deeply affected by the ravages of

war he directly witnessed growing up in a poor village in Quang Tri. Black Paintings is a series of oil paintings

where the human form is given meaning by its absence. These carefully fashioned figures appear ethereal and wraithlike, their insubstantial forms mirroring the monochromatic landscape in which it is surrounded that is

equally featureless and indistinguishable. This depiction of the body as an absence, as a shadow, is a signature trait in Nguyen’s works where the materiality of life hides or provides a kind of frustrating camouflage for loss of

identity or control. This omission of human detail, masked in a color suggesting darkness, ignorance or emptiness is a deliberate ploy by the artist. He calls into question how social systems perpetuate cultural stereotype and assumption, whether through the media, fashion, television or political propaganda.

Nguyen Thai Tuan (b. 1965, Quang Tri, Vietnam) graduated from Hue Fine Art College, Hue, Vietnam in 1987 and has been exhibiting internationally.

Black Painting No.30

2008

Oil on canvas

130 x 110 cm

Nov Cheanik Nov Cheanik’s paintings of subsistent rice farmers, both men and women, young and old. Like the farmer’s

precarious, nature-dependent livelihoods, Nov’s process is also mercurial. He considers his black ink paintings on paper an emotional process -the reactive moment when the water and ink meet is a metaphor for our reaction to unpredictable circumstances in life. Removing his subjects from their original context and titling them by number only further extends this metaphor to the audience – as we “meet” these blurred and anonymous faces, we can only meet our own associations and emotions.

Nov Cheanick (b. 1989) was educated in the arts at Phare Ponleu Selpak, Battambang, Cambodia, where he

continues to live and work. His sculptures and paintings are often on themes of nature vs. man as well as man’s struggle with his own nature. He is probably most known for a sculpture of a life-size green cow installed at the

International Airport of Phnom Penh. He has been featured in several group exhibitions including the milestone

show Made in Battambang (Institut Français Cambodge, Phnom Penh, 2014), Memory Workshop (New York City, 2013; Lyon, 2010; Phnom Penh, 2010) and Four Rising Talents From Southeast Asia (10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, 2012). Nov has also had two other solo shows Freedom with Brooms (Romeet Gallery, Phnom Penh, 2012) and Farmer’s Portraits (Sa Sa Art Gallery, Phnom Penh, 2010).

Farmers 01 2010

Ink on paper

76 x 56 cm

San Minn San Minn (b. 1951) was at the helm of the first wave of experimental artists in the 1960s and 1970s who broke

from traditional or realist depictions in painting to launch Burma’s own modern and post-modern art movement.

On canvas his works debated the current events of the day or commented on changes in society as Burma

shifted through new constitutions, governments, economic isolation and later the opening of its markets. San

Minn’s work faced extreme censorship for his frank commentary on corruption, materialism, violence and cultural heritage. Engaged with the politics of his time, San Minn participated in the U Thant strike at Rangoon University in 1974 over the perceived mistreatment of U Thant’s burial by the Socialist government. He was arrested and

imprisoned in Insein jail for three years and one month. Following his release from Insein in 1977, he joined his

father’s engineering company to help support his parents and painted at night. The strict application of Burma’s censorship regime resulted in limited opportunities for San Minn to sell his work at home or abroad, and he

only began to work full-time as artist in 2010. His work is in the permanent collection of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, and the National Gallery Singapore.

In Ego (2001), San Minn portrayed a one-eyed government official. The censors detected his message of the

government’s despotic pursuits instead of working for the greater good of the nation and removed the painting.

The painting was exhibited for the first time in the October 2015 exhibit in Hong Kong, “Burma by Proxy: Art at the Dawn of Democracy”.

Ego

2001

Acrylic on canvas

69 x 54 cm

Artwork courtesy of Melissa Carlson and Pyay Way, “Burma by Proxy: Art at the Dawn of Democracy”

Sutee Kunavichayanont Sutee’s practice is noted for its layered conceptual approach as much as for its ability to engage a wide audience through participatory strategies, his desk installation History Class of 2000, and his inflated latex series, two of

the Southeast Asian contemporary canon’s most famous and well-loved pieces. Thematically, his work reflects the rapid social, economic and political changes that have affected Thailand since the 1990s, the artist using his art to critically probe nationalism, power, identity, history and cultural convention in Thailand and beyond.

Producing pieces in a wide variety of media, the artist mines familiar formal languages to engage the viewer in a playful examination of complex questions. In his series “Crazily Good!” , he explores the ultimate truth,

goodness and fairness, while combining ideas of history, politics, and culture. Grounding in the belief of the unity in diversity and dissimilarity, each part seems not to be harmonized but together there might be the aesthetic

and the meaning of the whole. The artwork consists of a strange combination of Thai cultural heritages including Thai traditional massage and Thai boxing. As well as ideas and values presented in films (through the names of

film genres like action, erotic and romantic). The Speech and rhetoric language reflect Thai society’s cultural and political consciousness.

Sutee Kunavichayanont (b. 1965) graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Silpakorn University in 1989, and later obtained a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney. Since 1986, the artist

has exhibited widely in Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and

the United States. Sutee’s art is in major institutional collections including the Mori Art Museum, The Queensland Art Gallery, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Singapore Art Museum, and Koc Foundation, Istanbul. As well as

making art, Sutee is a curator and a lecturer at Silpakorn University. Most recently, Sutee’s History Class Part II

was exhibited in “Artist Making Movement: 2015 Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

Crazily Good (Series 2, Set 2)

2013

14 signs, painting on plywood; and 2 paintings, acrylic on canvas

Various sizes

Svay Ken

For the fifteen years that Svay Ken (1933-2008) was an artist, his everyday title of respect in the Khmer

language was Lok Ta, or grandfather. At the age of retirement in 1993, he began to paint in a way that opposed all standards of beauty or purpose as far as painting was concerned in Cambodia. Rather than glorify ancient monuments or rural landscapes in linear perspective, Svay Ken portrayed ordinary life in a candid self-taught

style. By their very proliferation, his paintings expanded the practice and definition of art in his culture, and made him widely respected as the grandfather of Cambodian contemporary art.

Born seventy years into French colonial rule in 1933 to a family of farmers in rural Takeo province, Svay

Ken studied Buddhist precepts as a novice monk before joining the peasant militia Chivapol, commanded

by King Norodom Sihanouk to fight against French occupation. It was during the promising but brief period

of Independence when Svay moved to the capitol and secured a position as porter and waiter at the lavish

Raffles Hotel Le Royal, a career that supported his wife, Tith Yun and their five children both before and after

the dislocation of civil war and forced labor under the Khmer Rouge. He opened a small studio and gallery near the Phnom Penh’s busiest public monument Wat Phnom, where he famously painted at his outdoor easel from

morning to evening with breaks only for meals and a nap. His gallery became a history book open to all, though it was mostly foreign visitors who came to page through his collection of memories for a souvenir.

Throughout his career, Svay exhibited annually throughout Cambodia and abroad. He was chosen for the

first Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial in 1994. He is collected by the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Singapore Art

Museum, and the Queensland Art Gallery. He represented Cambodia in the 6th Asia-Pacific Art Triennial in 2009 and his works are showing in the National Gallery of Singapore.

Top:

Lunch During Khmer Rouge Times 1994

Oil on canvas

49 x 63 cm

Bottom:

Flood At The Wedding

1994

Oil on canvas

49 x 64 cm

Svay Sareth Svay Sareth was born in 1972 in Battambang, Cambodia during a period of political turmoil and violence

that would last until he was 18 years old. Svay began making art as a young teenager in the Site 2 refugee

camp, near the Thai-Cambodian border. Drawing and painting became a daily activity for Svay – a process of

bearing witness to the psychological and physical violence that was an everyday experience, as well as a way to symbolically escape and dream of change. After the wars ended, Svay went on to co-found Phare Ponlue

Selepak, a non-governmental organization and art school in Battambang that continues to thrive today. In 2002,

the artist continued his studies in France, earning the Diplôme National Supérieur d’Études des Arts Plastiques / MFA in 2009, after which he returned to Siem Reap to live and work.

Svay Sareth’s works in sculpture, installation and durational performance are made using materials and processes intentionally associated with war – metals, uniforms, camouflage and actions requiring great

endurance. While his critical and cathartic practice is rooted in an autobiography of war and resistance, he

refuses both historical particularity and voyeurism on violence. Rather, his works traverse both present and historical moments, drawing on processes of survival and adventure, and ideas of power and futility.

Sareth’s solo exhibitions include I, Svay Sareth, eat rubber sandals (2015) and Traffic Circle (2012) both SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Select group exhibitions in 2015 include After Utopia, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Gods, Heroes and Clowns: Performance and Narrative in South and Southeast Asian

Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Secret Archipelago, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. In 2014: 4th

Singapore Biennale, Trader and Tradition, ARNDT, Berlin; Phnom Penh, Rescue Archaeology: The Body and the Lens in the City, Goldsmiths, University of London, SEA Arts Fest, UK; The Mirror and Monitor of Democracy in

Asia, Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, South Korea; Our City Festival 2014, FCC, Siem Reap, Cambodia. His work is collected by the Singapore Art Museum and National Gallery of Victoria.

Ruin (I vote 2008)

2016

Camouflage fabric, cotton from Kapok tree, metal chain

150 x 20 x 20 cm

Tawatchai Puntusawasdi Tawatachai Puntusawasdi was born in Bangkok in 1971 and was trained by the pioneer Thai contemporary

sculptor and installation artist Montien Boonma (1955-2000). He creates architectural three-dimensional sculpture in hardwood, slate, organic fibers, and metal. In his Tilted series, ongoing since 2002, the artist plays with

perception to challenge audiences’ understanding of volume and space, so prodding us to consider philosophical and spiritual questions. Tawatchai marshals formal elegance and grandiose scale to produce works that if

cerebral, are always underpinned by pure visual seduction. Tawatchai has shown at the Venice and Sydney Biennales and has twice been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

“His work is both a metaphoric and literal representation of the psychological instability suffered by Thais as they tussle with the surreal everyday in a polarized country where traditional certainty is attacked from both within and outside the system. But the hand-tooled piece’s reading expands beyond Thai borders and like much of

Tawatchai’s art, crosses back and forth unerringly from the tangible to metaphysical, formal virtuosity a means of vehiculing multiple meanings relevant to all, Thai and non-Thai alike,” states Subjective Truth curator Iola Lenzi.

Chair (installation view)

2015

Wood

1.5 x 1.6 x 2.5 m

The Propeller Group Phunam Thuc Ha: Born in 1974, Saigon, Viet Nam. Matt Lucero: Born in1976, Upland, CA, U.S.A. Tuan Andrew Nguyen: Born in 1976, Saigon, Viet Nam.

THE PROPELLER GROUP (TPG) is an art collective formed in 2006 and currently based in Saigon (Ho Chi

Minh City), Vietnam and Los Angeles, USA. It is comprised of Phunam Thuc Ha, Matt Lucero and Tuan Andrew

Nguyen. TPG works with international artists focused on developing original, creative content, from quirky online

viral video campaigns, to art installations, to large-scale film production and everything in between. The collective helps to realize collaborative statements that re-define the social and political understanding of contemporary

sub-cultures and popular cultures. Their work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennial, the New Museum, New

York, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Singapore Biennial, Singapore, Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, and Shanghai among others.

The History of the Future is a 3-part project consists of a unique science-fiction phaser rifle intricately carved in a tradition that dates back to the 16th century in Southeast Asia. It is then hidden from human civilization

somewhere in the world only to be revealed 100 years later. This project begins with a wooden sculpture of a

phaser rifle appropriated from the Star Trek television/film series. It is carved by hand with intricate floral patterns used in old Vietnamese carving traditions that date back several hundred years giving the imagined science fiction weapon a more “alien” feel; something not of this world in both the historical sense and the science

fiction sense. In a sense, it combines both the past and the future into one object. The carving, based on found diagrams of the phaser rifle, is made slightly bigger than the human-sized prop giving the object a slightly

skewed, larger-than-life scale. This one-of-a-kind hand-carved sculpture is then used to create an intricate

two-part mold, the exact fit contours the negative space of the wood carving. This two-part mold is shown in the gallery space along with an accompanying short film.

This short film is a series of pack shots or product shots of the sculptural object, inter-cut with a short

documentary narrative of the artists’ journey to an unknown location to bury the sculpture, to be hidden from

society like a time-capsule. This unknown location may be a construction area, forest, swamp, or the bottom of

the large body of water like a river, lake, or ocean. The GPS coordinates will be recorded and kept secret for 100 years.

The GPS coordinates are kept in a steel safe rigged with a time-release mechanism, attached to a digital counter, counting down from 100 years, only to be unlocked when the counter reaches zero.

THE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE (installation views)

2012

Mold: Silicon inside composite case [2 halves put together to form 1 box]

Dimensions: 141 x 52 x 24 cm Cast of Phaser rifle: Composite material

Dimensions: 124 x 34 x 11cm Safe with electronic time-release mechanism & digital counter

Dimensions: 30 x 30 x 38 cm Framed works [15 unique] Mixed media collage

Dimensions: 30 x 30 cm The Burial

Single channel video

07:35 min. 1920 x 1080. 25p. Color. Stereo.

The Phaser

Single channel video on HD monitor

01:47 min. 1920 x 1080. 25p. Color. Stereo.

Wah Nu, b. 1977, Yangon, Myanmar Tun Win Aung, b. 1975, Ywalut, Myanmar Wah Nu was born in 1977 in Yangon, Myanmar, and Tun Win Aung was born in 1975 in Ywalut, Myanmar. Both artists graduated from the University of Culture, Yangon, in 1998, Wah Nu with a BA in music, Tun Win Aung

with a BA in sculpture. After completing her studies, Wah Nu turned to painting and video, while Tun Win Aung extended his practice to performance, multimedia work, and painting.

In 2009, Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung initiated the project 1000 Pieces (of White), gathering and producing

objects and images to assemble a portrait of their shared life as partners and collaborators. Interweaving public and private, personal anecdote and pop cultural appropriation, this unique archive attests to the poetry of

the everyday. The four works in this exhibition “White Piece #0177: The Vanguard”, “White Piece #0179: The

Cooperative”, “White Piece #0180: The New Light of Myanmar” and “White Piece #0181: The Working People” are part of this ongoing project, focusing on the role of newspaper stories in social, political and historical

memory. These are works of erasure; the artists have reconstructed the stories printed in the era of military

dictatorship, scrutinizing the knowledge imposed on the public and superimposing their own commentary on top of the officially recognized discourse.

From left to right: White Piece #0177: The Vanguard

2015

Acrylic and newspaper on canvas

60.6 x 46.1 cm

White Piece #0179: The Cooperative

2015

Acrylic and journal on canvas

47.1 x 34.2 cm

White Piece #0178: The Mirror 2015

Acrylic and newspaper on canvas

51.3 x 39 cm

White Piece #0181: The Working People 2015-2016

Acrylic and journal on canvas

68.3 x 50.5 cm

White Piece #0180: The New Light of Myanmar 2015-2016

Acrylic and journal on canvas

51.3 x 39 cm

White Piece #0153: Forward 2012-2013

Acrylic and journal on canvas

41.6 x 59.2 cm

Vandy Rattana “You can hear something a thousand times and not know it; yet if you see it with your eyes just once, you know.”

— Khmer proverb

For his acclaimed Bomb Ponds photographic series, Vandy Rattana confronted the physical and psychological

scars left by the American carpet-bombing of Cambodia, a campaign that lasted from 1965 to 1973 but is largely unknown even within Cambodia today. Visiting the nine most affected Cambodian provinces bordering Vietnam, Vandy photographed the craters left by bombs, most of which are now filled with water. His medium- format

frames reveal the bomb ponds from the vantage point of villager’s everyday encounter with them. Recognizing the contradictions between the violent history and the current serenity of the landscapes, he questioned

the photographs’ ability to speak beyond the silence. While “Bomb Ponds” brings attention to the lack of

documentation of these unwarranted acts of violence undertaken by the United States, it also pays respect to the resilience of the land and its survivors. The intense distance between experiential, written and oral history

provoked a shift in the artist’s beliefs about the relationship between historiography and image making. Following Bomb Ponds for Vandy, photography and history itself became fiction. — Erin Gleeson, Sasa Bassac

Vandy Rattana was born in 1980 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He studied law at the Pannasastra University

of Cambodia and is a self-taught photographer. He cofounded the artist collective Stiev Selapak (art rebels) in 2007, and with them opened the alternative space Sa Sa Art Gallery in 2009, followed by Sa Sa Art

Projects in 2010, both in Phnom Penh. The latter hosts artist residencies, workshops, and community-based collaborations. In 2011, Sa Sa Art Gallery merged with BASSAC Art Projects to become SA SA BASSAC.

Inspired by photojournalism’s roots in bearing witness and its activist vein, Rattana has trained his lens on

challenging conditions in his home country, documenting natural and manmade disasters. He also experiments with photographic abstraction and makes use of video. The project of recording and preserving is especially

poignant in Cambodia, which lost significant historical archives during the violent cultural cleansing campaign

implemented by the communist Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79). Rattana operates in a context in which the act of remembrance is a form of subversion.

Rattana has had solo exhibitions at Popil PhotoGallery (2006–07), Sa Sa Art Gallery (2009), and SA SA BASSAC (2011 and 2012–13) in Phnom Penh, and Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2010).

He has participated in notable group exhibitions including Underlying: Contemporary Art Exhibition from the

Mekong Sub-Region, a traveling exhibition organized by the Mekong Art and Culture Project in Bangkok (2008);

Strategies from Within: Vietnamese and Cambodian Contemporary Art at Ke Center in Shanghai (2008); the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial at Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia (2009); Forever Until Now: Contemporary Art from Cambodia at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in Hong Kong (2009);Institution for the Future, part of the Asia

Triennial Manchester at Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester (2011); Documenta 13 (2012); Poetic Politic at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2012); and No Country: Contemporary Art for Southeast Asia at the Solomon R.

Guggenheim Museum (2013). He was shortlisted for Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2015. Rattana lives and works in Phnom Penh and Paris.

Bomb Ponds series, Prey Veng 2009

Photograph

91 x 111cm Edition of 5

Vann Nath 1946-2011 Vann Nath was one of seven survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s secret prison known as S-21, where 14,000 men, women and children were interrogated, tortured and executed during the 1975-1979 Pol Pot Regime.

Vann was one of Cambodia’s most honored figures. It was his training as a sign painter in Battambang before imprisonment that kept him alive during captivity. His jailors spared his life so that he could be put to work

painting and sculpting portraits of Pol Pot. Paintings depicting scenes he witnessed in S-21 hang in Toul Sleng

Genocide Museum today, serving as one of the few public reminders of the regime’s brutality. Vann relentlessly advocated for justice for the victims of Khmer Rouge atrocities through his writings, paintings, and interviews.

From 2001 to 2002 he worked intensively with Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh in the making of his awardwinning documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.

Whereas Vann Nath typically painted specific moments of violence and despair, Pray for Peace is unique in that

it conveys collective hope. A mass of traditionally dressed Cambodian people kneel at the edge of stormy waters, raising their hands into the lightening streaked, moody sky. His treatment of paint blurs the crowd in the distance, evoking a dizzying infinity of people praying for peace.

His life and work have been recognized through many awards and media coverage around the world. His memoir A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 was published in 1998. Group exhibitions

include The Legacy of Absence, Reyum, Phnom Penh (2000), The Spirit of Cambodia, Providence College USA (2003) and his solo exhibition Transfer at Bophana Audiovisual Center, Phnom Penh (2007).

Pray For Peace 2008

oil on canvas

102 x 144 cm

Vu Dan Tan 1946 - 2009, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Vu Dan Tan was considered as one of the most important contemporary Vietnamese artists from the 1980s

until his untimely death in 2009. The self-taught artist, together with his wife Natalia Kraevskaia, founded Salon Natasha in the 1990s, the first private experimental creative art space in Hanoi. He forged a new vocabulary and vocation for visual artists in Vietnam, and broke from the traditional Vietnamese beaux-arts tradition,

creating multi-media cross-disciplinary practices. Tan was known for his unique and intriguing artistry of applying recycled and abandoned everyday materials to his works, such as carton boxes. Tan’s work varied in scale and medium, from collages of cigarette packets, which he cut and painted to life-size temple and boat installations

made of appliance boxes. Vu Dan Tan’s Venuses--cut out corset armor made of card-board paper, have come

to symbolize the artist’s works in the last decade of his life. His work has been widely exhibited and collected in countries such as France, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Finland, Japan, USA, Singapore and Vietnam.

From left to right: Fashion # 40

2009

recycled cardboard

80 x 39 x 3 cm Fashion #41

2009

recycled cardboard

84 x 37 x 5 cm Fashion #42

2009

recycled cardboard

77 x 38 x 5 cm Fashion #43

2002

recycled cardboard, chinese ink

85 x 52 x 8 cm Fashion #44

2004

recycled cardboard

89 x 37 x 10 cm

Zun ei Phyu A medical doctor by training, Zun ei Phyu (b. 1986) works in multimedia formats to address challenges facing

Myanmar society, such as the education system, obstacles to the advancement of women, and religious tension.

“Allergy” is a moving depiction of children from the northern Chin Sate in Myanmar who have been adversely

affected by the recent floods and landslides. The work is composed of three layers of cut paper, overlapping in one frame and references the lack of government support for those in dire need of humanitarian aid.

Point of View and Insecure both reflect the changing roles of women in Myanmar society through increased

social, economic, and political authority. Zun ei Phyu created these two works for the October 2015 exhibit in

Hong Kong, Burma by Proxy: Art at the Dawn of Democracy that captured the hopes and doubts of an emerging democracy in the run-up to Myanmar’s 2015 general election.

Allergy

2016

Cut paper (three layers)

60 x 90 cm

Point of View 2015

Paper cut

49 x 36 cm Artwork courtesy of Melissa Carlson and Pyay Way, “Burma by Proxy: Art at the Dawn of Democracy”

Insecure 2015

Paper cut

38.1 x 45.72 cm Artwork courtesy of Melissa Carlson and Pyay Way, “Burma by Proxy: Art at the Dawn of Democracy”

ALL WORKS OF ART COPYRIGHT © AUNG MYAT HTAY, AUNG MYINT, BUI CONG KHANH, CHAN DANY, CHRISTINE NGUYEN, DINH Q. LÊ, HTEIN LIN, LEANG SECKON, MANIT SRIWANICHPOOM, MAUNG DAY, MICHAEL SHAOWANASAI, MOE SATT, NGUYEN THÁI TUAN, NOV CHEANIK, SAN MINN, SUTEE KUNAVICHAYANONT, SVAY KEN, SVAY SARETH, TAWATCHAI PUNTUSAWASDI, THE PROPELLER GROUP, THI TRINH NGUYEN, TUN WIN AUNG AND WAH NU, VANN NATH, VANDY RATTANA, VU DAN TAN, ZUN EI PHYU A VIBRANT LIFE PUBLICATION / 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Designed by Frankie Leong Tsoi Chi This catalogue is published on the occasion of SHAPESHIFTING: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong from March 21 - 26.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-988-16893-4-4 Printed in Hong Kong, 2016

Shapeshifting: Contemporary Art From Southeast Asia During Art Basel Hong Kong or by appointment, March 22-26, 2016, 11am-6pm 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Art Projects, Chai Wan Unit 604, Chai Wan Industrial City, 60 Wing Tai Road Chai Wan, Hong Kong For more information: info@10chancerylanegallery.com, 2810-0065

G/F 10 Chancery Lane, Soho, Central, Hong Kong T: (852) 2810 0065 info@10chancerylanegallery.com