The Gift, Singapore Art Museum

1840 1290

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Contents

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Legend The Gift of Entanglement @-#/(c+,

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What Can a Body Do?

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Voices from the Desert Sands: The Responsibilities and Possibilities in Studying the Tarim Basin

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The Bronze Elephant: A Present, A Gift, A Monument !+##"E+.(*+.5.+,.&&#$

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1920

Higashiyama Kaii: The Gift of Landscapes CG/(8&<(!+T-<+.+

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1910

The Gunungan Dialogue: Spirituality and Materiality in Ahmad Sadali and Salleh Japar’s Works

1900

U#";;+(A+<+%"#"#$51+; "*#<"*$

1930

Biographies

1890 1870 ! "$"&)"$"% B&.3%(B+.(?

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1960 1950 1940

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The Gift of Entanglement !"#$%&'(

First of all, the gift only ever appears on the horizon of the other.

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It was 1961 when Nam June Paik first met Joseph Beuys at the Zero Group’s exhibition in Schmela Galerie, with Beuys remembering in unexpected detail Paik’s performance from two years before at Jean-Pierre Wilhelm’s Galerie 22 in Düsseldorf. It would be a moment that Paik would recall fondly during his 1988 exhibition, Beuys Vox 1961–1986, saying: “I couldn’t erase the memory of this stranger from my heart, the image of a man who has never compromised himself in spite of innumerable difficulties, (a man) with a pair of fierce eyes.”@

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This meeting between the Korean-born pioneer of video art and the German “reclusive sage” is preserved in a photograph by Manfred Tischler covering the exhibition’s catalogue.W Theirs would be an enduring relationship, resulting in numerous collaborations over the years as well as intersections between their practices. In fact, even after Beuys’ passing in 1986, their relationship continued, registered in homage within Paik’s artworks as exemplified in his contribution to the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. Representing Germany together with Hans Haacke, the pavilion received the Golden Lion award. Paik’s concept for this Venice exhibition focused on the connection between Asia and Europe; a connection he also made with Beuys through their interest in shamanistic practices found in the cultures of both Tatars and Koreans.P It is such relations, occurring on different levels and taking different forms—within and beyond the domain of art, from personal and social, to the public in culture and history—that The Gift as exhibition considers within its broader project of exchange and enmeshment, Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories.

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Referencing Marco Polo’s journey from Venice to Ulan Bator, Paik presented ‘robots’ of rulers and strongmen that ‘roamed’ the Giardini gardens. The series of robots included Tangun as a Scythian King, Catherine the Great, Alexander the Great, Attila the King of the Huns and Genghis Khan—a parade of those who had shaped the relationship between the two geographic regions in some way. Amongst these, and in reference to Beuys whose efforts Paik clearly counted in this regard, was the Anonymous Crimean Tatar who Saved Life of Joseph Beuys – Not Yet Thanked by German Folks (c. 1993).Q As for Beuys, the connection between Europe and Asia was embodied in its concatenation, Eurasia, to express a utopic yet desired link between global cultures and, more personally, a feeling of closeness and kinship with its place and people—specifically the Tatars who were key in his narrative of transformation, and the basis for his aesthetic choice of fat and felt; even as, under scrutiny, this narrative would seem somewhat mythic.] It goes without saying that Eurasia as history and concept is rather more complex, encompassing a variety of connected definitions and doctrines, just as its geographic extent stretches and spans the continent. To this day, the Eurasian imaginary continues to be a source for regional, national, statist and even post-national claims. In an interesting turn, the designation of Eurasian takes a colonialist slant in Singapore, referring to the descendants of combined European and Asian ancestry since the 15th century, marked by the arrival of first the Portuguese, Dutch and then British.

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While Nam June Paik opens this essay, his work is not shown within this exhibition.b Instead, his significance is in aspects relevant to the subject of the gift: a felt intensity that is neither visible nor always there. Of the former, this profundity is sensed in the emotionally-charged recurrences of Beuys in Paik’s works. As for absences—or the conditions of non-presence—it is productive space for the historical narrative: of that which is past its time and which takes interesting shape in recollection, imagination and projection, to reappear in new forms and guises. Such absences marked by alternative presences have their place too within this exhibition, manifesting in returns and traces, as well as in the circumstances of time (including that of an exhibition prepared in the thick of a pandemic), and time’s suspension which institutional collecting (also a feature of this project) attempts to achieve. As for Joseph Beuys, he is represented in The Gift, but it is certainly not the first appearance of his works in Singapore.

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Organised by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) and presented with Goethe-Institut, Joseph Beuys: Drawings, Objects and Prints was a travelling exhibition that came to Singapore in 1991. It was shown at the National Museum Art Gallery together with another exhibition, Käthe Kollwitz: Engravings and Sculptures.

In parallel with these presentations was an exhibition of local artist, Goh Ee Choo, at the Goethe-Institut Art Gallery. The return of this historical moment today is made possible through the photos of artist Koh Nguang How, captured while he was curating at the National Museum Art Gallery. It is from Koh’s photos that we are able to picture, not merely the occasion of this event, but also read (and reread) the connection between geographies and artistic practices, as well as consider these intersections and their treatment comparatively across time.

Now, the German artists Beuys and Kollwitz had been raised in curatorial discussions for Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories in relation to observations of their aesthetic practices from within Southeast Asia, as well as the desire to include their works within the exhibitions of this project. It goes without saying that their significance is registered in museological preservation reflecting considerations of lineage, cultural and national importance. Yet to simply read from these lines of dependence and influence would be to miss the point.

Accompanying the exhibitions in 1991 was a commentary written by Salleh Japar on “The Beuys Experience,” in which he noted Beuys’ “aura,” “prophetic power and vision of reality.”V Indeed, one might consider connections between Salleh’s and Beuys’ practices, such as through the former’s artwork, Born Out of Fire (1993), exhibited in The Gift, via the artwork installation’s use of elemental materials and signs, as well as the subject of renewal—in Salleh’s case, through fire. However, this is certainly not the only connection to be made, and a further reading of Salleh’s practice is provided in Anissa Rahadiningtyas’ essay within this catalogue, in which Salleh Japar’s works are examined in relation to the paintings by Indonesian artist Ahmad Sadali, underscoring broader cosmological and devotional concerns existing within the region. As for Kollwitz, it would appear there was familiarity of her practice in Singapore, evidenced within discussions on woodcut prints. Through Koh, a further recollection comes to light: of the mention of Käthe Kollwitz by the late artist Chng Seok Tin, in relation to German Expressionist influences on the Modern Chinese Woodcut Movement within her thesis for Hull College in 1979.

Introduced by Lu Xun who thought highly of Kollwitz, Chng made connections between Kollwitz’s sensitive yet emotive representations of working class struggles and the portrayal of similar subjects by Chinese artists such as Chen Ketian and Wang Maikan. Regardless, Chng was careful to note that these similarities were from an early stage of their developments, and

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THE GIFT

that the artists of the woodcut movement would come into their own distinctive styles. U The more intriguing detail of the Beuys and Kollwitz exhibitions is their timing, in coinciding with another momentous occasion for art in Singapore, also captured by Koh: A Sculpture Seminar from 1991. Within Koh’s photo of the seminar in progress, a poster of Beuys’ exhibition can be seen in the far corner.

It is an evocative image that memorialises the convergence of these events and records those gathered in attendance, including—with an almost tongue-in-cheek positioning of his portrait in relation to the group—the late Beuys. In Koh’s recollection, the seminar was neither the result of nor impetus for Beuys’ presentation, although their juxtaposition is persuasive and one could easily imagine how this would shape narrative accounts of these events. What does get overlooked in the study of this image however, is another agency that is entangled. This is the figure of Koh and the frame he creates in imaging this moment.

Within this mediated frame that is not dissimilar from the aesthetic frame and, one might add, the “frame” of the gift that transforms object into especial present, an entanglement occurs between bodies and narratives that this exhibition and its curatorial proposition offers up for exploration. ) !0$" ;'"1%<(7+)f'E7%79gK6#+6C)+#$%E&'#/+I)) ,'$/)$/+)1'-$'"1)(-)$,()%"5'+"$)1(&I)5('"#)) E9).+C+"11("1)!E7%/'C)(-)Y(/(7

Incidentally, in tracing the history of the collection of the Singapore Art Museum, one could go back to its beginnings in the Singapore Library-Museum in 1849 that was established with the gifting of two ancient gold coins by Temenggong Ibrahim of Johor. While this rather enthralling historical nugget helps connect the subjects of the gift and the collection, the concept of the gift is also particularly useful in elaborating the subtle aspects of exchange. Not merely comprised of its object and a change of ownership, the gift extends beyond its form to embody an expansiveness of spirit as well as an implication of obligation. Through the gift, we are thus prompted to examine both the tangible and intangible in the encounter and interrelation, and of how these intertwine.

The gift paradox

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Appearing quotidian and understood, the gift is, in effect, ambivalent and deeply paradoxical, and has, historically, been a source of fascination, discombobulation and debate. An oftcited yet critiqued analysis of the gift is found in Marcel Mauss’ Essai sur le don, published in Sociologie et Anthropologie in 1950, in which he investigates the attributes of the gift: an object that, in being offered, is imbued with an ability to obligate and compel the reciprocation of its deed. His findings drawn from his reading of Elsdon Best’s study on the Maori, titled “Forest Lore,” led

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Mauss to posit a “power” inherent within the gift: the “hau” or “spirit of things.”BA This animation of the gift by Mauss would set in motion a lively debate that continues into the present.

Notable critics of Mauss’ approach include Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida. The former finding fault in Mauss’ easy acceptance of the Maori account, failing to recognise the underlying structure of exchange; the latter, in a more radical observation of the “aeconomic” quality of the gift resulting in the gift being, literally, impossible—both conceptually (in non-circulation) and also chronologically (in requiring a time without return, sans retour).BB Though, one could also say that Mauss’ intention was not too clear, and he could well be read as trying to advocate for a hybridised socio-economic approach.

More recently, a deconstruction of this debate by sociologist Olli Pyyhtinen goes to the heart of the matter. In a multi-pronged approach involving a moderated application of Lévi-Strauss’ dismissal of Mauss as mere projection, extending from Derrida’s paradox of the necessity of non-indebtedness revealing that “the truth of the gift is simultaneously its untruth,”B@ and applying the position of “new materialisms” citing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s “material vitalism,”BW Pyyhtinen untangles desire and reality within the gift by recognising its simultaneous unconditional (conceptual) and conditional (empirical) nature. Then, drawing from Michel Serres, with a quick nod to Alfred North Whitehead, Pyyhtinen redesignates the gift as a “quasi-object”BP wherein the object is able to act beyond its material form, to become relational. While that might seem not so far off from the conclusion by Mauss, with Pyyhtinen’s approach the relational is grounded in social and logical explanation. Pyyhtinen’s conclusion then is that the gift is “so inextricably entangled with social relations that it cannot be grasped as something completely in itself without paying attention to the ties that accompany it … There is no gift outside relations.”BQ Yet this does not quite explain the effect of the gift, which includes its paradoxical danger that arises due to an asymmetry crucial to its meaning. As Mauss had described quite ominously, “the hau follows after anyone possessing the thing.”B] This peril within the gift—that feels as inconsistent in spirit as its indebtedness—had prior mention in an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1844, in which Emerson objects to the practice of

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gifts on the grounds of its unasked and “vexatious” imposition.Bb In fact, it is to Emerson that Mauss refers in the latter’s essay predating Essai sur le don, where Mauss notes the intriguing divergence in Germanic languages in giving meaning to the word “gift.” Contrary to its English meaning of pleasant bestowal, modern German has assumed its other meaning of “poison.”BV Such danger is elaborated in Essai sur le don through Mauss’ description of the potlatch as a “war of property” and “a game of gifts” in its competition of extravagance and social standing,BU) with serious consequences.@A That the title of this exhibition, when read from the perspective of its collaborating European counterpart, Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany, would have a completely opposite connotation at first look may then be serendipitous, in foregrounding the historical and narrative complexities that the project explores, and thus sets the stage for us to contemplate the artworks and artefacts that The Gift offers.

Politics of giving In Mauss’ description of the potlatch, extravagance has competitive advantage. It is thus ironic that generosity becomes threat with the gift. While unease may not be intended, the possibility of peril never quite dissipates. Within the exhibition, The Gift, the far-reaching effects of exchange and the hazards of obligation are explored through artworks and artefacts, both as subject and in consideration of the possibilities of alternative responses, even remedy. ) !"3% e7'+"I#/'<)_(&&)M7(^+5$)'"'$'%$+I)E9)`+*+7+"I) ;'I"+9)86&'5F:)%)-(7C+7)C'##'("%79)$()Y%<%":)'") *'+,)(-)$/+)2C+7'5%")!CC'17%$'(")25$)(-)BU@P ) 32!$ ;(&()+T/'E'$'(")(-)_(""%)L"1D#),(7F#:)!"#$ 7/*#4($2K#,@4$<,+@:)/+&I)%$)3l"#$&+7/%6#) N+$/%"'+":)N+7&'":)8+7C%"9 ) 32!# _(""%)L"1D#),(7F#)#/(,")%$)$/+)17(6<) +T/'E'$'(":)!"#$2",*&0R$%,?#6$L;+",0R#$ &0$)3-(3*#$,08$2/+&#(1:)%#)<%7$)(-)$/+) 36&$67+#9C<(#'6C)R+'C%7)@AB]:)/+&I)%$)) $/+)8%&+7'+)J'1+"/+'C:)R+'C%7:)8+7C%"9 ) 32!% R(7F#)E9)_(""%)L"1)%7+)#/(,")%#)<%7$)(-)) $/+)17(6<)+T/'E'$'(":)!"#$!*##$,4$50$5*($$ QMS#+(:)/+&I)%$)$/+)Rc&I+7/%6#)K6#+6C:) >%CE671:)8+7C%"9

On the latter, a reconciliation is imagined via fictional narrative extension in the installation by Donna Ong. In The Caretaker (2008), an enclosure of wardrobes creates a sanctuary within which one encounters the story of the Friendship Doll Project.

Begun by Reverend Sidney Gulick, a former missionary to Japan, the project was initiated in the wake of the American Immigration Act of 1924 that impacted Asian immigrants, to which the Reverend responded through a presentation of dolls as a gesture of goodwill. The project took off in 1927 with dolls from America journeying to Japan armed with heartfelt letters, and in return, Japan gifted specially crafted kimono-clad dolls to the United States. Called torei-ningyo or ‘return-gesture dolls,’ this act of favourable exchange was well received by both sides.

But what began as a generous and friendly gesture would take a turn with the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and the advent of the Second World War, causing a backlash against the dolls

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who metamorphosised from friend to enemy. Losing their social stature, they would be removed from sight, deaccessioned from collections. Many were destroyed, leaving behind only a small number of these friendship ambassadors and their tragic story.

Here the artist introduces a new ending in the form of a caretaker of both dolls and their memory, as well as a glimmer of hope with images of reunion where the American and Japanese dolls are seen to finally meet.

Of course the reversal of the fates of the dolls was over a number of years, and one might say that such a turn cannot be unexpected as new circumstances arise. But as pointed out in the examination of the complexities of the gift, time is intrinsic in its definition, particularly in increasing or decreasing the value or obligation of the gift, albeit somewhat inconsistently.

Another example of such protracted effects and within a more local setting is the momentous visit of King Chulalongkorn, also known as King Rama V, to Singapore in 1871. Whereas the royal’s European trips are often cited in the narrative of Siam’s modernisation, according to historian Kannikar Sartraproong, it was, however, the first visits to Singapore and Java that were critical in setting the tone and direction of the King’s reign, extending the earlier efforts of the royal’s father, King Mongkut.

In A True Hero: Chulalongkorn of Siam's visit to Singapore and Java in 1871, published in 2004, Sartraproong examines the young King’s extraordinary diplomatic trip, exceptional in not being an act of war or pilgrimage. Nevertheless, the fact of its diplomatic intent made even the smallest detail significant, beginning with the response of the British colonial administrators in Singapore to the royal’s plans, and for a suitably appropriate reception to be afforded to the King. Certainly, one could note that the itinerary was strategic too, putting the King on par with the British and Dutch high authorities, and possibly pitting the hospitality of the two colonialising forces against each other in the consecutive schedule of visits: Singapore followed by Batavia in just over the period of a week. It is this diplomatic dance, comprising subtle gestures and lavish overtures, that are interesting: from the language of communications, the planned events which included a magnificent Ball at the Town Hall with four hundred guests of officials and dignitaries, that was followed by a party at the Government House no less, to the framing of the visit’s events in public record and news.@B In an extension of her thesis, Sartraproong contributes an essay here that considers questions possible only in retrospect about the trip as well as the gift that followed.

After the successful trip, Singapore would be presented with a bronze elephant commemorating the King’s ‘first foreign land visited by a Siamese Monarch,’ with a similar bronze elephant also sent to Java. As Sartraproong notes in her essay, elephants

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THE GIFT

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The GifT of enTanGlemenT

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THE GIFT

had historically been employed as tributes to and from Thailand; was this gift to be similarly understood? In the case of this particular gift, time would, literally, tell as Sartraproong charts the ‘life’ of the sculpture and its reception. Positioned in the front of the Town Hall that was later renamed the Victoria Memorial Hall, and then moved to the front of the former Parliament House and Supreme Court located nearby, from the acceptance of its gift, its public acknowledgement, to its siting in the present, it would seem that this historic visit never ended, as one is constantly reminded of it.@@ Moreover, in its monumentality by virtue of its material of bronze, the elephant gift might also be said to have harnessed time, with its seemingly endless giving that exposes the precarity of gifting.

Collecting entanglements Wrapped in magnanimity and obligation, the antithesis of the gift would appear to be the unembellished economic transaction, though that would also be reductive of both, given neither exists external to cultural and social definition. After all, the routes of economic exchange have historically been deeply intertwined with cultural transmission and influence, where culture is often the reason for economic interest. Returning to the earlier mention of Eurasia, the historical exemplar of such exchange is found in the Silk Roads that go back to the first century BCE , connecting East Asia to the West via Central Asia, with key corridors to India and Xinjiang via the Pamirs and Bactria; connecting Xinjiang and Parthia via Ferghana and Sogdia; and linking Dzungaria and the Pontic region via the Sir Darya and around the Caspian Sea.@W Beyond traversal and traffic, these historical paths in Central Asia reflect appetites for material as much as for influence, with the process of transmission historically facilitated by nomads; nomads that have significant place in Beuys’ representation of Eurasia signified in the recurring motif of the swift-footed hare in his works with associations of transience and movement. For instance, it was the nomadic pastoralist Uyghurs who, in their historical prime in the eighth and ninth centuries, passed on their Sogdian-acquired AramaeoSyriac script to the Mongols, and in their settlement, became the middlemen of Chinese trade with the western regions.@P The Mongols are, of course, known for their unprecedented expansion of empire in the 13th century. Not unlike the mystery of Beuys’ 1944 Tatar rescue, the narrative of Mongol dominion has its myths, including the story of Genghis Khan emerging at birth

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clutching a clot of blood ‘the size of a knuckle’ that is interpreted as heralding his later conquests.@Q Coincidentally, the rise of Genghis Khan followed a successful battle against the Tatars.@] For most part, history has chronicled the massacres and pillage of Genghis Khan. Lesser known is the Mongol contribution to culture across China, Central Asia and West Asia, in the circulation of objects and cultural information, as well as technology and science.@b As observed by Morris Rossabi, the Mongols influenced cultural production through their own preferences (fondness of animals and gold, leading to their inclusion in painterly depiction, and woven into textile and decorations) and social organisation (representation of women, given their relatively higher status in Mongol pastoral life), as well as in the patronage of artists, and even the collection of art.@V This subject of collections is central to the project of Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories, in the loan and presentations of works from partner organisations, and in the examination of how these collections developed. While trekking through the online repository of Germany’s state collections in search of connections significant for this exhibition, I came across a few fascinating images from the Turfan expeditions under the care of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Museum of Asian Art). Now, at the end of their empire in the latter part of the 9th century, the Uyghurs dispersed to surrounding areas, including the Gaochang region in Turfan, north of the Taklamakan desert. It is at these oasis states that Buddhism and Manichaeism flourished, and that became, in time, the source of legendary towns buried under sand with their stores of gold, silver, manuscripts and wall-paintings. Centuries later, these would draw explorers from around the world, hungry for these treasures in this place of “moving sand” (liu sha in ancient Han records), and who would then themselves become entangled in its history, as much as the notoriety of plunder.@U This intrepid group of explorers included the Swede cartographer Sven Hedin, the British orientalist archaeologist Aurel Stein, Russian scholar and ethnographer Dmitri Klementz, German Buddhist expert Albert Grünwedel and his expedition successor, Albert von Le Coq, from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, as well as the enigmatic—according to Peter Hopkirk —scholar-monks from Japanese Count Ōtani Kōzui’s monastery, who were amongst the first to arrive. Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their expeditions would amass numerous artefacts which are now housed in various museum

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THE GIFT

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collections. Within the German collection are images from their particular expeditions, of fascinating documentations of landscapes, caves and wall paintings. What I found most striking in the collection were the portraits—men, women and groups—the direct gaze of their subjects often seeming uncannily intimate. Of these, one group photo of four youths was most unforgettable. It is possible that they were local labourers or nomads, maybe even performers, whom the explorers encountered. Little information would appear to be available on this group and, relative to the artefacts and materials collected, they are not of great significance.

Captured on glass plates, regrettably, these images would be too fragile for travel and presentation, and in place of these arresting depictions within this exhibition is a conversation between Mi You, Susan Whitfield and Puay-peng Ho. Speaking on the Tarim Basin that is at the core of Eurasian trade routes, the findings of these expeditions are described as a receiving of ‘gifts’ from a time past—“a trove of treasures” to be accompanied by the necessary obligations of care and scholarship.

Since their expeditions, the methods of these explorers have come under criticism, but their desire to discover is relatable even today considering the magnificence of their finds. Amongst these are the distinctive wall paintings and frescoes with their complex devotional scenes which may be read in relation to the work of Gabriel Barredo within The Gift. In Barredo’s signature assemblages, figures, creatures, and amulets are brought into phantasmagoric configuration, that is experienced “in a quest of the unknown, the mysterious, the sacred.”WA For this particular work, One (1999), the head of a Buddha is split open to expose a bedecked santo statue of a Spanish noble, their countenances appearing, in Alice Guillermo’s analysis, an intriguing contrast of “intense spirituality” and “unselfconscious vanity.”WB Though, as its title reflects, the two are the same. Indeed, they literally share a winged torso that opens to further reveal a mixed cast of crucifixes, gods, goddesses, saints, and monks, quite unperturbed by this indiscriminate mingling.

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In the conversation between Mi, Whitfield, and Ho, a sense of urgency surfaces, not only in the need to address more comprehensively the historical traces left behind in the Tarim Basin, but also recognising that much is yet to be done to understand lives lived and the cultures of the time, beyond their material and the fragments so painstakingly retrieved. Similarly, the expanded space for encounter and interpretation is also suggested by Patrick Flores for the contemplation of Barredo’s copious compositions. By opening the self to its ecstatic effects, one might then find a sense of levity and even a transcendence, “a flight away from the weight of things, which have become an embarrassment of riches.”W@ WA) 2&'5+)86'&&+7C(:)[8%E7'+&)N%77+I(O)275/%"1+&)(-)2##+CE&%1+:\)'")]?,R#$(/$=#,0&0R6$L44,14$/0$:"&-&KK&0#$5*(:)) Gn6+?(")4'$9O)2$+"+()I+)K%"'&%)m"'*+7#'$9)M7+##:)@AABH:)@WV= WB) !E'I=:)@PA= W@) M%$7'5F)_=)e&(7+#:)[R'$/(6$);67-+'$)"(7)e%$'16+:\)'")%,M*&#-$<,**#8/6$A&4&/04)GN+'^'"1)%"I).%'<+'O);(F%)27$)4+"$+7:)@AAVH:)Bh]=

THE GIFT

Such is the burden of the conservators of history and culture.

Like the gift, having been bestowed with fortune, a weighty responsibility follows. In Berlin, the opening of the much-debated Humboldt Forum museum that occupies the reconstructed baroque Berlin Palace (Berliner Schloss) just the year before, is cited as an opportunity for contemporary conversation on complicated historical pasts, housing as it does the collections of Berlin’s Ethnological Museum and Asian Art Museum. Incidentally, a painting from its Asian Art Collection, which unfortunately could not be brought over either, piqued our interest too, fitting as it was with the subject of cultural exchange.

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Misty Ravine (1989) is a landscape painting by Japanese artist, Higashiyama Kaii, discovered within the collection of the Asian Art Museum in Berlin that seemed to have a tale to tell. In seeking its inclusion within The Gift, it was hoped that it might be part of a conversation on landscapes and, possibly, comparative transAsian devotionalism in relation to other works in the exhibition such as Ahmad Sadali’s Gunungan Emas (The Golden Mountain) (1980) and Salleh Japar’s Gunungan II (1989) from the Indonesia and Singapore collections respectively. Kaii’s relationship with Germany is also remarkable: travelling to Berlin University as the first Japanese-German exchange student under DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, German Academic Exchange Service), studying there between 1933 and 1935.

Serendipitously, Kaii and Beuys would cross paths in a collaboration of fax-art in 1985 initiated by artist Ueli Fuchser, for which a digital triptych was created through fax transmission to combine the drawings of Beuys, Kaii, and Andy Warhol, titled Global-ArtFusion. Kaii would return to Germany and Europe on multiple occasions over the years and was even on the board of trustees of the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin ( JDZB, JapaneseGerman Center Berlin) from 1985 to 1994. Unfortunately, due to the artwork being commited to another exhibition by the museum, Misty Ravine was not available to travel, but which led us to an earlier work by the artist bearing this style and subject.

Titled Morgenwolken (Morning Clouds) (1988), in this painting the viewer is ushered into a breathtaking and serene scene of verdant forests on a mountain gently veiled by mist. Exemplifying the artist’s signature atmospheric aesthetic, Morgenwolken is amongst a range of artworks and artefacts donated by Kaii to the centre over the years; a further evidence of his feelings towards the European country. In fact, the artist’s generosity is recognised even in the present. In 2019, JDZB organised a special presentation of artworks and artefacts from its collection and archive for an exhibition marking the 20th anniversary of the artist’s passing—a tribute to the profound relationship he had with the centre. Although, both Misty Ravine and Morgenwolken have not made it to the exhibition in Singapore, the artist is represented in The GifT of enTanGlemenT

31

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THE GIFT

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materials, the recognition of his transcontinental relationship, as well as, importantly, his story. The narrative of Kaii’s life and rise to prominence is compelling, in how personal circumstance and event had shaped his path both within Japan and overseas.

In Kaii’s case, as the warm reception received overseas matched his prestige at home, he appears to illustrate a positive intertwining of nation and aesthetic. Even in the development of nihonga painting, he seems to have struck a happy balance. An analysis of the artist’s contemplative vision of landscape, the developments of nihonga painting, as well as the influences of the artist’s time abroad is elaborated in Eve Loh Kazuhara’s essay, “Higashiyama Kaii: The Gift of Landscapes.”

Yet this is not always the case. In this project’s proposition of entanglement, what is offered is the possibility of complex and reflexive readings, especially for complicated histories, influences and connections that eschew simple narratives of nation, bound geographies and the unaffected individual. Such historical reflexivity is at the crux of the practice of Korakrit Arunanondchai, found in both his denim paintings and his video-based series started in 2013. Painting with History was developed a year after the controversial ‘body painting’ session by go-go-dancer Duangjai Jansaonoi in the competitive televised programme Thailand’s Got Talent. Duangjai’s performance sparked a public debate on aesthetics that was amplified by the uproar over her nudity as she painted using her bare torso. At the time, national artist Chalermchai Kositpipat weighed in, dismissing its aesthetic value.

Affected by the dismissal of the performance—not to mention the subsequent revelation that Duangjai had been paid to perform by the programme organisers—and to bridge his transcontinental practice spanning Thai-birthplace and New York-artistic base, Arunanondchai would produce the first of his works involving bleached denim and fire. The material of denim, of course, has its reference in Western fashion as much as it signals popular culture that is oft regarded as being at the lower end of the aesthetic spectrum, with Arunanondchai’s series being a commentary on the false binary of high and low. However, it is history that is foremost within these works, with Arunanondchai’s redefinition of “painting” producing the challenge to historical time. Created through performances of burning which are documented and then reintroduced in image to the site of their occurrence, the denim canvases become historical returns that are simultaneously timeless ruptures. This choreography of time also appears in the spliced narratives of the artist’s videos, and one might compare this dilation of time with the experience of time’s seeming compression in the historical collection, as well as in the lingering obligation of the gift that compels its return.

Elaborating on the subject of time, while a factor of actual time dilation is gravity, within scientific theory, time is, importantly, relative. That is, time is intrinsically tied to experience and, thus, the body. In its coinage of Collecting Entanglements and Embodied THE GIFT

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Histories, the body, its subjective presence and its agency are foregrounded within this project. This is vividly presented in the exhibition in the trace left upon its form, and of the body itself as vehicle for transformation and force, such as in the artworks by Holly Zausner, Dolorosa Sinaga, Bruce Nauman, and Ampannee Satoh. An examination of this topic of the body and its performance is examined in Selene Yap’s essay “What Can a Body Do?” Here, the body is positioned as a site of historical inscription and trace, as much as it is of response, and even, resistance.

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In Arunanondchai’s series on histories and time, the Buddhist calendar used in Thailand is referenced, his first solo exhibition assuming the title 2012–2555, with 2555 being the year 2012 on the Buddhist Calendar and the year of this presentation. The solar calendar was introduced in Thailand by King Chulalongkorn in 1889, and its appearance in Arunanondchai’s works might be read as an alternative ordering of the world and its events.

Its effect is of a decentering which entanglement also produces—of relativisation in a multiplication of intersections that, in coming into focus, can call into question inflexible historical narratives, both national and art historical. With the Asian partners of Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories harking from the region of Southeast Asia, it seemed meaningful to complicate this geographic circumscription too. Thus, the project collectively presents a new iteration of Ho Tzu Nyen’s ongoing collaborative project begun in 2016, The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, in the work F for Fold (2021). The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia presents an alternative reading of the region and its connections, through concepts organised alphabetically and through association. Within this dictionary, the letter ‘N’ weaves together the meanings of nation, narcosis, and narrative, in a critique of linearity of national narratives that are intended to produce “an inescapable destiny.” Consolidated as an interactive website, the work that has since manifested in a variety of forms, makes its appearance within this project as an endless physical book that recalls the artist’s sculptural beginnings. Created with concertinaed pages, this dictionary allows for restructuring at will, providing different planes and positions for subjective viewing, in a manner that reflects its online version where associated images are randomly ordered and presented.

In initial discussions on the representation of Ho’s work, and given its early manifestations as an online dictionary and then expanding into individual single-alphabet expositions, the letter ‘Y’ was identified for the exhibition The Gift in its reference to the concept of ‘yielding.’ Yielding within the dictionary was used to characterise the region’s acquiescence to colonial conquest. Subjugation aside, the concept of ‘yielding’ is also read into to the act of perceiving. To see is to yield, to allow the self to be transformed by what is seen: “you move into the interior of images, just as images move into you,” the Dictionary’s narrator whispers. Applied to the gift, one could then say that to recognise the gift is to yield to its transformation, with this suggested as a point where the cycle of return may be broken.

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THE GIFT

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The GifT of enTanGlemenT

38

The gift that keeps giving Although much of the anxiety over the gift is in the expectation of return, this obligation is not inevitable. With reference to Michel Serres, Pyyhtinen’s analysis takes an unexpected turn—though par for the course with the paradox of the gift— in the example of the parasite which gives the gift its truth in a gratuitous receiving.WW Incidentally, Frank McLynn characterised the Mongol’s expansion as succeeding through parasitism which he contrasts with their impressive military achievements.

Noted in a backhanded compliment, he describes the Mongols as unoriginal, in “(relying) on the captive craftsmen and experts for everything;” although one could also claim that their dependence showed that they appreciated the skills of their subjects which they promoted in turn through circulation.WP Of course, a more positive framing of parasitism can be found, ironically, in the ideas and principles of the ‘gift economy.’ Whereas value is transferred to the other as bestowal and obligation in the gift, within the gift economy, value is in the giving—particularly free giving—with giving being its own reward.WQ Sharing the world of the gift economy through a hypothetical letter penned in 2219 (after the time of the ‘Great Give-Back’) for the radical feminist magazine started in the 1970s, off our backs, Genevieve Vaughan distinguished the gift economy via its logic derived from maternal relations and care. Set in contrast to market and exchange that are founded in scarcity at the centre of war and acts of dispossession, this imagined state of non-beholden-giving is seen as accompanied and supported by collective production, shared commons, distribution by need, principles of permaculture and where gifting is ‘circular’ yet not transactional.W] Instead, at the heart of the gift is the willingness of its transmission, with its value as determined by the one receiving, which is the ideal definition of gift: an act that is an end in itself.

Returning then to the subject of monuments, such an end appears within in an artwork by Tang Da Wu that is dedicated to the Thai conservationist Seub Nakhasathien. The environmental activist who devoted himself to protecting Thailand’s wildlife and forests from dam construction and exploitative logging took his own life in 1990 out of despair. His sacrifice sent shockwaves which brought critical attention to the deleterious environmental conditions, and resulted in the establishment of a Foundation in his name as well as the designation of Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary in Uthai Thani as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To this day, an annual ceremony is held at the site of a state memorial erected in his memory within the Sanctuary.

This state monument depicts Seub Nakhasathien in life-sized

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THE GIFT

bronze, with the accoutrements of his work: binoculars and camera slung round his neck, notebook and pen in hand. For Tang, however, this portrayal fails to recognise the challenges that the conservationist had faced, battling illegal deforestation and protecting its wildlife till it finally broke him. Rather, Tang’s monument provides an empathic response, recalling Seub Nakhasathien’s valiant attempt through its fragile boat in plaster that is depicted heading upstream of a symbolic hill produced with a simple washing board. Coincidentally, Tang’s representation is encapsulated in a Thai idiom: เข็นครกขึ้นภูเขา, which literally translates to pushing a millstone up a hill, referring to a difficult or impossible task. That Tang did not know the conservationist directly is thought-provoking; still, he felt deeply for Seub Nakhasathien’s plight as it was recounted to him by like-minded friends of the artistic community. After all, Tang, too, had expressed concerns over animal exploitation which would feature in seminal artworks and performances during the time, such as They Poach the Rhino, Chop off his Horn and Make this Drink (1989) and Tiger’s Whip (1990). In Tang’s monument, there is no expectation of reciprocity in this act of remembrance and support. Perhaps this is the ideal gift.

An other

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It would seem then that the paradox of the gift and its adverse effects could be resolved in breaking its cycle of obligation: where the giver gives, the recipient receives. Pinned at the start of this essay is a quote by Pyyhtinen that reads: “the gift only ever appears on the horizon of the other.”Wb For Pyyhtinen, his conclusion was that “gratuitousness” is necessary for the gift.WV However, I’d like to end on the subject of the other, and in a more speculative note; though it is gratuitousness towards the other to which Pyyhtinen refers.

Space Eggs (or Telor Angkasa (1970)) is a rather exceptional artwork

by Anthony Lau, considered amongst the pioneers of modern sculpture in Malaysia, and who is more widely known for his sculptures with themes of nature and elements, such as Spirit of Fire/Jin Api (1959), The Cockerel/Ayam Jantan (1963) and Forest/ Rimba (1967). With its enigmatic forms, this work is recorded to have been first presented at the 13th National Art Exhibition in 1970 at Balai Seni Lukis Negara. This was after Lau received a Fulbright scholarship in 1968 for further studies at Indiana University, USA , and the year following the first moonwalk in 1969 by American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin. Within the catalogue for the 1976 exhibition, A View of Modern Sculpture in Malaysia, T.K . Sabapathy makes a brief comment of this work by Lau in relation to the practice of Constantin

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The GifT of enTanGlemenT

39

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THE GIFT

Brancusi.WU In Lau’s works, concept and subject are given life through his deft use of the material and creation of material effects, and Space Eggs seems no different. Appearing like comets with their tails, the surfaces of these forms are deliberately buffed but not polished, looking as if they were in motion or else had been. While the moonwalk was certainly an achievement in the Cold War race to space, Lau’s Space Eggs may be said to be headed in a different direction—more aesthetic than political or national—even as it is caught up in the excitement and possibilities of human exploration beyond earth. Within the context of The Gift, this presence of another is, however, crucial: in giving meaning to its act. In its subject, Space Eggs may then be read in a presentation and search of this frontier that is the other. That is to say, the gift is only a gift when it is entangled.

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The GifT of enTanGlemenT

41

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46

What Can a Body Do? )$*$#$%&'(

In 1994, feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz wrote: “The body is the site for the emanation of the will to power (or several wills), an intensely energetic locus for all cultural production.”B The “body” that Grosz refers to here follows the idea of the body as agent and active cause of knowledge. Her proposal understands the body not as a self-contained and closed entity but as an open and dynamic system of exchange, constantly producing modes of subjection and control, as well as of resistance and becoming. Subjectivity becomes associated with corporeality, positing the body as a surface that is shaped by social and cultural inscriptions.

Grosz’ theorising of participation and mobilisation was vital in the assessment of embodied practices of dance and choreography in the years where contentions surrounding the ontological basis of dance and choreography led to shifts in theory and practice in the disciplinary field. Up until the 1990s, the fundamental conception of dance had been defined as “movement for movement’s sake.”@ This was quickly eroded when challenges to conceptions of dance as pure movement autonomous from actual or quotidian uses of the body were mounted by artists across the field seeking to establish their own definitions of movement and mobilisation. Dance became its own flexible frame, and the body became a ubiquitous object of study in disciplines across the humanities.

Through the ways in which they acknowledged the quotidian body and its choreography, the selected works by artists Holly Zausner, Dolorosa Sinaga, Bruce Nauman, and Ampannee Satoh reflect an interest in activating the pedestrian quality to movement and the body, lending their works to comparison.

This essay is an attempt to constellate the conceptual interrogations about the performative body and notions of mobilisation crystallised in their practices. Re-evaluations of relationships between bodies, subjectivities, politics, place and movement have emerged from close readings of each artistic practice. Such re-examinations will be used as scaffolds upon which to build this comparative study.

B)

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THE GIFT

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Zausner’s Second Breath (2005) was developed out of a desire to inhabit the architecture and backdrop of the city through movement and choreography. Manoeuvring three figurative sculptures—a male and female made of silicon rubber and another male figure with a knitted exterior—across key landmarks in Berlin, the artist offers meditative and deliberate portraits of the city’s history as expressed through her dramaturgy. The outsized figures with their pliable bodies and long, pendulous limbs are cast from silicon skin filled with carved foam mattresses.

Created to lean or recline, they are animated by Zausner, yet impede her mobility, making the movement of both artist and figure integral to the choreographic mise-en-scène staged within each site and scene. Describing her physical response to the various figures, Zausner said: “I carried them in different ways and moved them, and just used them in relationship to my body and to the specific sites that I was in.”W Watching the artist navigate the city from sites such as Potsdamer Platz to the Kommunication Museum, it becomes increasingly apparent that the idea of the body as a metaphor for the weight of history turns from abstraction to a physical reality. In one sequence filmed in the now-demolished Palast der Republik, Zausner wrestles with the figure in the centre of the building’s theatre, dragging and flinging it around several times before dropping to the ground and rolling with it. Zausner’s grappling with the rubber figure reverberates through the empty space, occupying it with liveness and emotional intensity. At the Neue Nationalgalerie, Zausner engages in a spontaneous and liberating dance with the blue male figure, picking it up, tossing and spinning it as if it were a net being cast against the backdrop of the pavilion’s iconic steel roof and glass walls. In another scene, Zausner is first shot in close-up hauling the figure through a body of water, her right arm hooked around its torso and her left arm pushing against the water as the camera zooms out to reveal the bobbing bodies in the sprawling Spree River. In every sequence, the bodies generate a reading of the particular time and space: Zausner’s interaction with the figure through the gravity of her own body gives shape to the environment. In regarding the city a stage, Zausner implicates the space and the objects and bodies within it. Her choreography presents a series of diverse and non-linear scenes and situations that invert the conventional coordinates of familiar sites, interrupting their daily operations and rendering new subjectivities.

Like Zausner, the physical body becomes the site of a spatial, physical and phenomenological tension for Nauman. Beginning from an interest in the activity of his own body in his studio, Nauman’s exploration of the body in relation to the space around it eventually came to involve the non-trained body of others as a medium for the expression of repetitive, banal and sometimes absurd everyday movements. In Body Pressure (1974), Nauman expands on the creation of performance through a proposal for an executed performance by the viewer. Texts are introduced

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What Can a Body do?

47

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THE GIFT

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within the space of the installation in two parts: a pink poster mounted on the wall and printed versions to be distributed to the audience. The text functions emphatically as instructions, outlining a set of actions or what might be read as choreographic scores: “Press as much of the front surface of your body (palms in or out, left or right cheek) against the wall as possible,” followed by “[press] very hard and concentrate.” With each paragraph, perceptual tasks are blurred and the participant is required to inhabit the work by reading the instructions while experiencing the space through physical and spiritual presence. The instructions begin with tangible, executable actions that later extend into descriptions of the minutiae of corporeal consciousness, where the participant was to concentrate on forming an image of themselves on the opposite side of the wall and feel the “tension in the muscles,” “pain where bones meet,” “fleshy deformations that occur under pressure,” “body hair, perspiration, odors” and so on. By submitting the body to discomfiture, Nauman attempts to foster an intensive embodied engagement and break the literal and metaphorical walls between subject and object. The exercise of melding one’s body with its environment suggests an intention for metaphysical transcendence that blurs the boundaries between the self and the external world. This collapse of one’s existential space and identity with physical space or the process of becoming the space is echoed in Zausner’s work, where minor mobilisations at the level of the subject’s body reveal linkages or mediations within the body politic that offer new ways for perceiving and evaluating the world.P While both artists have foregrounded their use of performance as a conduit for psychological investigation of the self and human experience, their approaches also speak of an interest in “resistive postmodernism,” a shift in focus towards “the body’s signifying power as part of the subject matter” within critical studies in dance.Q Strands of these impulses coincide with the heightened self-awareness of the body as an object of study at the same moment of art’s displacement, dematerialisation and expansion beyond traditional media and modes of production in the 1960s and 1970s. Zausner and Nauman convey a conviction towards the activities of everyday life as investigations of the self and one’s relationship to reality, and the unspoken foil to the everyday for both artists is the monumental. For Zausner, her dance through national monuments and sites in a city gripped by “relentless monument mania” offer some reflections on the issue of the monumental in relation to History: “Every scene has a different meaning for me – the choice of figure, how I handle the figure, whether I am carrying the figure, how I’m holding it, or whether I am violent to it […] it represents the history of Germany, [the] history of myself, [and] how we wrestle with our history.”] The

P)

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What Can a Body do?

49

50

figures, with their colourful outsized and contorted forms set against the leitmotif of monumental architecture—historical buildings, memorials and statues—form no immediate connection to the site. But it is in their cinematic and performative handling that a different kind of commemoration is forged. For Nauman, it is the static, self-contained tradition of monumental figure sculpture that his activities of everyday life sought to work against. Believing that “an awareness of yourself comes from a certain amount of activity,”b Nauman made numerous photographs, films and videos between 1966 and 1970 which recorded his studio activities and various daily routines.V By regarding the interior space as an extension of his psyche, Nauman would use strategies of repetition, desynchronisation and disorientation drawn from everyday activities such as pacing, sweeping the floor or drinking coffee in many of his works.

Ways of perceiving and evaluating politics were perhaps complicated by the appearance of the body politic; to consider the interplay between histories, bodies and movement (and its pantheon of activities) is to shift focus from politics as a stable inscription to politics as mobilised by the body. In Dolorosa Sinaga’s sculpture Solidarity (2000), the figures represent mobilisations of the body in post-New Order Indonesia: the strain and effervescence of their postures and expressions recalling a body inscribed by the events of the regime. Solidarity consists of seven female figures standing shoulder-to-shoulder with hands interlinked, and a single clenched fist raised to the air. The figures reveal a psychical interiority shaped by trauma: their faces are raised to the sky with mouths agape in anguish, their bodies dramatic in their closeness, pressing tightly against each other to resemble an impenetrable wall of unanimity. The work refers to the tragic May 1998 riots of Indonesia that preceded the fall of President Suharto: hundreds of ethnic Chinese Indonesian women, including human rights activist Ita Martadinata Haryono, that were raped and killed in the organised campaign of looting and assaults.

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Sinaga’s sculptures points to the power of figuration as an embodiment of human agency against the great structural forces of the state, society and nature. Commonly depicted in a state of motion, the figures are vivid externalisations of the tensions and triumphs of society’s dispossessed. They demonstrate the artist’s rigorous investigation into the grammar of the body, where her shaping of forms is predicated on the knowledge of anatomical structure and motion, or an ability to “see inside the body.”U As a student of the post-Caroist tradition of “sculpture from the body” at St. Martin’s School of Art in London between 1980 and 1982, Sinaga had already employed the human b)

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THE GIFT

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What Can a Body do?

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THE GIFT

body—its postures and activity—for the articulation of sculptural expressions; this method would continue to run through her later works, drawing upon the body as a critical homage to everyday humanity and idealism. From the 1990s, Sinaga’s works tended strongly to the figurative, and was used to confront key issues ranging from human rights to natural disasters and the struggle for democracy in post-New Order Indonesia.BA The consequences of the authoritarian regime were a central concern to Sinaga, who had sought to raise a voice of protest through her works. Foregrounding the body, in her view, was essential for viewers “to recall or associate it with [their] knowledge of a body,”BB and in doing so, identify with the lived experiences of the figures portrayed. The multi-figure sculptures symbolise a social kinesthaesia, or a gathering of bodies that have been mobilised through a social process: their bodies pushing forward in defiance, bending deeply in mournful sorrow or spinning in liberation to exude an energy that emanates in their surrounding space. For Sinaga, to have her works “come alive” is essential to the mobilisation of the viewing subject to move and be moved towards change.B@ The reflexive mobilisation of the body through the kinesthaesia of daily life is similarly encountered in the installative dimensions of Body Pressure. Nauman’s display or execution of the instructions as a visual object draws the work out into a space of lived experience. Additionally, the extreme straightforwardness of the instructions invokes routine practices of the body, and the experience is authored by the subjectivity of the viewer: the performance changes constantly, depending on the interpretation of the text and intensity of the actions. The artist describes his own and the viewer’s presence in the work as “an attempt … to go from the specific to the general … making an examination of yourself and also making a generalisation beyond yourself.”BW As the original method through which agency is asserted, mobilisation, or the domains of social practice (such as dance and daily routines), has emerged as a point of convergence between the artistic practices of Sinaga and Nauman, as well as the works of Ampannee Satoh. ) 32!2 e7+"5/)E%")(")$/+)6#+)(-)$/+)E67j%)'")) <6E&'5)#<%5+# ) 32!2 2C<%""++);%$(/)5(C<&+$+#)%)5+7$'-'5%$+)'") e'"+)27$)M/($(17%</9)-7(C)fDt5(&+)0%$'("%&+) ;6<u7'+67+)I+)&%)M/($(17%</'+:)27&+#:)e7%"5+

The consequences of cultural identity, nation state and faith on life in the predominantly-Muslim southern border province of Pattani, Thailand, are a central concern to Satoh. Her works revisit a recurring subject—the lives of contemporary Muslimahs (Muslim women) in the province. Presented as large-format photographs, The Light (24:31) (2013) comprises of eight life-sized

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What Can a Body do?

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THE GIFT

What Can a Body do?

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portraits arranged in a sequence. The photographs depict the subject fully draped in black cloth burqas or full-body veils, but each photograph leaves a particular body part revealed, beginning with carefully manicured toes and fingers, a lush head of hair, followed by the underside of a bicep, and a sliver of shoulder and knee. It is in the final images that the subject is photographed wearing the burqa covering in the “rightful” manner. The sequence ends with the garment shrouding the body completely.

Most strikingly, the frames are dominated by copious amounts of dark-coloured fabric that swathe and pool around the subject’s body. Satoh’s attention to the resolution of the folds of drapery pervades her sensitive uses of the fabric, bestowing a new meaning to the notion of “covering.” Rather than oppressing the body, the apparent lightness of the fabric and its excess is made available as a medium for these women to express themselves. As the camera approaches the body from a top down angle with the subject lying on her back, the fabric becomes a sculptural medium and an extension of the body: the drapery appears to cling to the body in animated folds while revealing the contours of the form beneath.

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Satoh’s agency within this narrative takes on a meaningful subversion: photographing portraits of anonymous women lying on and draped in swathes of burqa cloth, Satoh herself questions understandings of doctrines and customs of Muslimah dressing. Satoh grew up in Yarang District, Southern Thailand, a Thai Muslim-majority province, and one would think that The Light (24:31) grew out of her exposure to Islam there. But it was from her interactions with female Muslims living in France during the country’s ban on the use of the burqa in public spaces, that she observed contradictions in perceptions towards the donning of female full body and head coverings. To the women, burqa-wearing was viewed as a cultural and/or personal choice and an expression of autonomy instead of mere adherence to the scripture.BP By the disclosure of skin otherwise conventionally veiled, the work unsettles notions of repression associated with strictures for dressing by female Muslims. To Satoh, the body is regarded as a complex circulation of identity effects and a site for the composition of multiple and mutual associations.

The works mentioned represent discrete moments in each artist’s practice where the body and its choreography becomes an object of study. The notion of the body as an economy with its own internal and nonreducible effectivities has been variously adopted

by Zausner, Sinaga, Nauman and Satoh inasmuch as their works prompt a consideration of the question: what can a body do?

Their approaches reveal relations between the body and politics, as well as articulate what moving bodies can accomplish to execute social change. To borrow the words of dancer and sociologist Randy Martin, “politics goes nowhere without movement.”BQ

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THE GIFT

With the dynamics of mobilisation already implicit in politics, a critical reflection on the body and its choreography through its quotidian practices can help promote fluency in the language of mobilisation that conventional views of politics often overlook. Ideas of mobilisation and agency have typically converged around specific imaginations of political activity. Emerging from the comparison of these practices is a radical re-thinking of what activity is constitutive of the political in a field replete with myriad practices, and the critical refiguration of the body in participation.

What Can a Body do?

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Voices from the Desert Sands: The Responsibilities and Possibilities in Studying the Tarim Basin +#%,-#.$/)'0+-#%1+02%3+%&-"4%)")'#%12+05+$*6%'#6%("'&7($#8%2-

The Tarim Basin was a cradle of ancient civilisations. Kingdoms were established around key trading routes, allowing communities such as the Khotanese, Tangut, Uyghur, and Loulan peoples to flourish. Trekking through vast, sweeping terrain, this discussion explores: what does it mean to be custodians of these cultural artefacts, how should the stories of these cultures be told, and how might we rethink the reanimation of these voices today?

MY

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For our conversation today, I thought we could start by remembering a few of the predecessors who travelled on the Silk Road, both physically and mentally, before us.

The historian Arnold Toynbee recounted the Japanese philosopher Daisaku Ikeda’s account when asked which historical period he would choose to be born into. His answer to this was that he would have liked to be born in Western China right at the beginning of the Common Era. This would refer to the area of Xinjiang, which at the time was a melting pot of Buddhist, Indian, Greek, Iranian and Chinese cultures.

This rich history has inspired many others, including the Hungarian-born, British archaeologist Aurel Stein, who we will be discussing. Stein saw himself as following the footsteps of Xuan Zang. The Swedish geographer Sven Hedin also described Asia as his bride, so I suppose this fascination is something that we all share in our work. At the same time, these archaeological and geographical expeditions are also implicated in imperial expansionist ambitions as we know it today.

As the title of the show suggests, we’ll look at the different facets of the exhibition in our conversation today. We’re interested in reading visual documentations of these expeditions through the lens of the giftchampioned in the context of classical anthropology. The gift binds the giver and the recipient in such a way that the recipient is compelled to return a counter-gift. This compels us to consider the history of this discipline in a critical manner.

Dan Hicks remarks that there is a force, like the force of the gift, that demands us to return to the disciplinary past to destabilise the present. Foregrounding this moment in archaeology is the political discussion of restitution. In a way, restitution is about the politics of giving, of giving back, and the time that has lapsed

THE GIFT

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in between. There is also another dimension to the gift that we’re interested in, which we will hopefully tease out through slightly speculative turns in this conversation.

When we study texts that document these expeditions, they are often illustrated or accompanied by beautiful image plates. Some of these images caught the fancy of June Yap, curator of the show, when she was browsing the archive of the East Asian Museum in Berlin. Looking at those photos reveals something uncanny about them. I know we often speak about the ethnographic gaze, but the gazes of the subjects in these photos are so penetrating that they almost transgress time and the photographic device.

I’d like to propose that we look at the gift not as a discrete object, but as something that creates ties—not between individuals but between two “dividuals.” The gift creates ties and communities between all participating parties. In a way, the archaeologists were also made by these encounters that they experienced.

With that, let’s jump into our conversation proper. Let’s orient it towards the historical background of the region and think through the legacies of the expeditions today. It’d be great if we could also discuss your connection—both speculative or personal—to the Silk Road.

PP

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S

This idea of the gift as parting with something and passing it on to another group is an intriguing frame of view, especially in terms of art history, religious history, geography or cartography.

Most of the early expeditions that we now know of—whether done by Stein, Hedin, Count Ōtani Kōzui or others—probably did not start as something concrete. They might not have been actively thinking about how the things they found would bring one part of the world to another. The notion of “uncovering” and the word “discovery” are used quite often in the context of looking at or understanding another civilisation, and what’s now cemented in the work of contemporary scholars is the exercise of filling in the blanks: although we understand most parts of the world, there is this vast region between India, China, Russia and Turkestan. How do you fill that wide space? What was there before and how can we find out?

I think that’s very interesting, and I also like the idea of the gift.

As you said, it’s about exchange. It has an effect on both the giver and recipient, and that’s very true of this period of archaeology: it’s a two-way interaction. It also exemplifies the broad history of the Silk Road, which centres around interaction between cultures from places both near and far.

The archaeologists and others who travelled to the region during the early 20th century were imbued with a 19th century framework of viewing things—the ethnographic gaze that we see from many photographs in library and museum archives. They would take photographs of peoples in situ and position them in relation to their own points of view, but I also think that they were open to Voices from the Desert sanDs

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THE GIFT

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influence from their experiences. As Puay-peng said, this area is a blank for most people. The explorers didn’t head to the region with set expectations, and this is especially evident when you compare this to expeditions to Egypt, for example. They went without premeditation and for various personal reasons. Stein went because he was interested in Indian, Iranian and Greek influences and how these influences might play out in this part of the world. Ōtani went because he wanted to learn more about Indian and Buddhist influences, which he thought were the roots of classical Japanese civilisation. During their journeys, they were all gifted with knowledge—as well as objects—and a deeper understanding about the region.

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Toynbee’s comment is interesting. The Tarim Basin area of Eastern Central Asia is unique: a very rich cultural area with much to gift back to the travellers of the time, but is often presented as a blank in the modern era. This is an interesting way to look at it, and one I hadn’t really thought about before, so I appreciate this opportunity to explore that.

PP

The sense is that the givers are those in history and the receivers are those around the world. Their cities may have been buried, their monasteries covered and their tombs forgotten. The explorers who went on those expeditions could be thought of as intermediaries. That would be quite an interesting twist.

S

PP

I think that that’s a very interesting perspective. When we raised the idea of the gift, it brings to mind what Dan Hicks writes about about with regard to restitution, the British Museum, and the Benin Bronzes. The Tarim Basin is very different because, as you say, the givers are people whose civilisations mostly no longer exist—the exception is, of course, the Uyghurs. We no longer have the Tangut or Khotanese communities. They speak through their objects which were buried for a long period. It was through early 20th century archaeologists that their voices emerged again.

An interesting point of comparison to this is how the recent move of a few Egyptian mummies to a new museum turned into a procession through the streets. It was as if the Egyptians were trying draw a connection between themselves and the ancient Egyptian civilisation. I’ve always felt that there’s a big divide between ancient and modern-day Egypt, and this parade was an effort to bring the two together. We should explore what you said about the givers in the context of the Tarim Basin as belonging to civilisations that largely no longer exist.

S

It’s interesting that you mention the Egyptians trying to trace that single, homogeneous history—a timeline that extends all the way back to ancient Egypt. Chinese civilisation is also traced in a similar way, often to 5,000 years ago. Whereas it was, in reality, a great diversity of different civilisations.

We can hear the voices of people who lived in the Tarim Basin through their objects and other archaeological finds. Today the

THE GIFT

entire area is under a different regime and the political element cannot be ignored. This is different from the Benin Bronzes, for example. The people of Benin today can be said to have a continuity with the bronzes that were stolen from the country. Of course, the Uyghurs today have a continuity with earlier Uyghur kingdoms in the Tarim Basin, but their culture too is now under threat and the many other once-thriving cultures have long disappeared. Archaeologists and scholars, wherever they may be, need to speak up for these many forgotten kingdoms, cultures and peoples.

PP

S

Speaking up for these people also depends on what has been discovered. I have always believed in historical chances and opportunities. 100 years ago, however, so many things would have been a matter of chance: the climate, guide or availability of water. These turns of events made the explorers’ stories intriguing.

Given such contexts, how can the artifacts they uncovered and brought to the West, Japan or Korea be representative? There was a lot of looting happening at the same time too. Gravediggers would operate actively in those areas. As a result of that, what we see today might just be a very small fragment of what was there before.

Yes, it is a random selection and what’s left is, as you say, found by serendipity. Although random, I also think that there was a lot of systematic archaeology done across the Tarim Basin in the early 20th century. What do we mean when we say that the artefacts are representative of an area? I don’t think there’s a lost civilisation waiting to be found. What the area didn’t throw up, of course, were glittering gold objects like those found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. The Tarim Basin has perhaps received less of a voice in history for this reason. We must push for its voice to be heard. It was only later with excavation of places such as Tillya Tepe to its west that there was the discovery of gold items and other such visually spectacular finds. Some wonderful, important objects have been found in the Tarim Basin, but they don’t have the “bling” or wow-factor that would help make this place interesting to the rest of the world. We’ve found very important textiles, for example, but mostly they don’t look very exciting, even if they tell fascinating stories.

It’s also interesting that these archaeologists weren’t interested in bling. They took fascination in the Buddhism people practiced, their daily lives, and small remains. They were also doing archaeology at the cusp of when it was starting to become a discipline, with Flinders Petrie writing about the importance of recording everything and noting where everything was found so that objects could be dated and assembled. In comparison, other archaeologists of the time were known to seek the gold pot rather than the potsherd. This is very interesting from an academic and archaeological perspective. The Tarim Basin has given us a complex gift; a gift that needs to be researched and read to be understood.

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I’m writing a history of Khotan right now. It’s a kingdom that ruled for over a thousand years, had its own language, culture and art, yet there isn’t a single, comprehensive book on its history. There are a few Chinese books, but these take the form of annals or records. I think the fact that there hasn’t been a scholarly publication on such an important kingdom really sums it up.

A century has passed since explorers ventured into the region and we still don’t have that scholarly voice, let alone a broader voice for these peoples. We’ve a long way to go.

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PP

There is Loulan to the East, and Kizil and Kucha to the North.

Those are major kingdoms as well. Would you also say that this is an everyday archaeology that speaks for the common people?

There are legal documents, transactions, and records of arguments between people. It’s not just an archaeology of the great and mighty, but also an archaeology of the people. These objects are not Instagrammable but they tell us very interesting things.

Past historiographies have been too focused on dynasties, emperors and those in power. We seldom look at the common people. In this case, I think their voices have been given to us.

S

PP

Some of these people might have had no voices at all in their own lifetimes, so this makes it even more important.

MY

PP

We could also speak about living traditions. As you’ve both mentioned, there may not much left to recover from those various sites, but with a bit of imagination we can also find things like the famous theatre scene from Kizil. The scene depicts a form of performative art, where one would show, tell and perform at the same time. That’s something that we can easily recreate, but I’m not sure many people have investigated such a performative form. Other than reconstructing the lives of these people, what can we enliven, enact or re-enact from these cultures? As art historians or contemporary art practitioners, is there more than we can do?

Exchanges are important. They help us to see a connection between people, between states or between monasteries. Those kinds of exchanges could be uncovered from all these remains and ideas. It’s about finding a relational type of existence between entities.

S

THE GIFT

I was just reading an article about the lacquered leather scales from armour found at Miran. These little fragmentary pieces might seem like insignificant objects. In fact, Stein noted that he must have discarded many of them on his first expedition. It was only during the second expedition that he came to realise their importance. But now they are seen as important evidence for the sort of armour that ordinary foot soldiers wore on their campaigns. The nature of these finds has given a voice to different groups of people.

I agree. We’ve barely scratched the surface and much is left to be explored. How many people are writing seriously on this area

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THE GIFT

or studying the wealth of material available? Very few, although there’s material for hundreds of scholars. Again, politics hasn’t been kind to us. There was a long period of time during the middle of the 20th century where there wasn’t much archaeology.

Archaeology began to pick up when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was established, but today the region is in turmoil and its culture under great threat. This is a place that was very connected to Gandhara, what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Yet how many Indian, Pakistani and Afghan scholars are working on these areas? For scholars in this specialisation, how many have visited these regions? I can probably name them with the fingers on one hand. To understand the connections of the past, we need modern day connections to be there. Who feels ‘ownership’ of Khotanese culture, for example? I was in the Swat Valley, Pakistan a couple of years ago, and there were many connections to be made between that area and the Tarim Basin. Someone who would have known about these connections would have been Xuan Zang. We need to get those connections back to exploit, from a scholarly point of view, this trove of material.

PP

S

Yes, these scholarly projects today can help in connecting things to create a fuller picture. This refers to finds from the early 20th century expeditions, recent archaeological expeditions, aerial scans and more. For example, the Central Asian Archaeological Landscapes (CAAL) project by the UCL Institute of Archaeology aims to assemble archaeological work from the Tarim Basin and beyond—including work from all the Central Asian republics— on one database. Initiatives such as these will further scholarship and encourage students in this area.

PP

S

I agree completely. Very few people are working on this trove of treasures. It’s also important that we connect this conversation to what’s been found during recent archaeological expeditions.

How are they are connected to what was discovered over a century ago, and how might they give us a fuller picture of what’s out there?

Susan, what you’ve started with the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is also another way of connecting different collections together. It is much like what UCL is doing now, but on different fronts.

That’s what we hope to do, but modern politics plays a big part in this. The archaeologists in the early 20th century were lucky as they had that little window after the resolution of the Great Game to carry out archaeological studies in the area. After that, archaeological discoveries in the area stopped for a long time. It picked up again later for relatively brief period, but in the interim, many things have been lost.

PP

There was that ten to 15-year period from Hedin’s first visit in 1895 to Stein’s visits in approximately 1900 to 1914. That’s a very narrow window for the visits, which were carried out in treacherous winter conditions. The severe cold and lack of water made Voices from the Desert sanDs

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the window for exploration even smaller. They would have spent three days at each site, or a week if they were lucky.

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S

PP

We’ve had a couple of systematic surveys of a couple of the sites.

There was the Sino-Japanese work at Niya and the Sino-French work at Keriya. However, these are the only two major systematic digs over a whole area since early 20th century archaeology.

Whilst doing fieldwork in the area, I passed by lots of interesting sites such as walled cities, but there isn’t the time or resources to look at them all. They’re disappearing. We’re losing things.

I’m also intrigued by the fact that these explorers were friends and rivals at the same time; they might have criticised each other’s methodologies or choice of artefacts. As you said, it marked the beginning of modern-day archaeology yet none of them had any formal archaeological training.

S

That was because there was no archaeological training! I’ve always felt very privileged to work with Stein’s material because Stein was one to pick up on the importance of documentation, labelling and taking notes. With all his finds, you know exactly where they came from down to the square foot. This is in comparison to objects in German collections with vague designations like “found in the mountains East of Turfan.” There are many archaeological sites that we know of in the mountains East of Turfan, so that description isn’t very helpful. But such labelling conventions were conventional for the time.

The matter of rivalry is also interesting, isn’t it? The expeditions are often presented as a race. Of course, like any scholar or archaeologist, each wanted to get to important sites before anybody else. But most of them were good friends who had great respect for one another. There was also a lot of discussion, interaction and close collaboration between them when they returned from their expeditions. Archaeological finds were sent throughout Europe from one archaeologist to another to study. Although there were personalities who didn’t get on as much, there were very strong links between them. They were working in this new area and had a great interest and enthusiasm for understanding and promoting it.

PP

I’ve read the writings of modern scholars who visited the Tarim Basin in the 1920s and 1930s. Many used the records of Hedin or Stein to look for materials. It was very much in the fashion of travelling in someone’s footsteps.

This reminds me of the 1998 exhibition we did in Hong Kong with the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. It was titled In the Footsteps of the Buddha. I gave some tours following the footsteps of Stein, of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, and of Charles H. Fairbanks. That way you could travel to the Tarim Basin, with Stein as a “guide.” We didn’t see much because we were hampered by time, but we managed to see the Rawak Stupa and Dandan Oilik. When one visits a hundred years after Stein and

THE GIFT

compares what is seen at the sites with his records, there’s great sense of disappointment because nothing remains.

S

Stein himself was traveling in the footsteps of Xuan Zang, so there’s this legacy that goes way back. I’ve been on several field trips with local archaeologists, and they used the maps made by Stein because they are so useful. Though many things have been eroded, I’m always surprised how much is still there as well.

Rawak Stupa, for example, is still there. The southern Tarim is not a heavily populated or developed area, so many things remain, though by neglect rather than anything else. We don’t know what the next 20 years will bring to the area. So many sites are being destroyed without full archaeological surveys due to inevitable development, and that’s unfortunate because there just isn’t enough manpower to document so much that is left.

Eventually, the finds from the early 20th century might be, along with a selection of later findings, our main source of objects for this area. If scholars were to return to the region in 20 years’ time, they might find very little.

PP

S

You’ve been working with Stein’s collection at the British Library, as well as at the British Museum, and many places elsewhere. How do you see the connection between the objects that reside in Western museums or in the museums of Seoul, Kyoto, or Tokyo, and the site of the Tarim Basin itself? Is there this sense of detachment from that context? With knowledge, you begin to imagine what this context would look like. But how have people pictured some of these finds within the context of Loulan or Rawak?

There are very good photographic records of these places, some of which might be of interest to art historians, but many of them are anthropological and archaeological studies about daily life.

Exhibitions tend to select—again—the bling and beautiful objects out of context. The material from the Tarim Basin isn’t that sort of material. It’s everyday material. To set that context and provide that perspective for audiences, you must tie in the material with their lives and make that the focus. These objects— whether a mouse trap, milk churn or a discarded shoe—were used in the everyday lives of these people. I’ve illustrated every exhibition I’ve curated with photographs, site maps and other images of the terrain. Of course, it’s still very difficult for people to connect to them because they’re a long way away in time and space, and there is always a limit to what we can do.

In the past, important artefacts would be shipped off either to Urumqi or to Beijing when they were found, depending on their importance, and local museums were just left with potsherds. I was very cheered over ten years ago when I was travelling in the region to see that many local museums were being built. It was impressive to see that the local museums were displaying local assemblages of material. Of course, it is not clear what the case is today.

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PP

I remember the exhibition you curated at the British Library very fondly. It was very well done and placed all the material within context. That’s not easy to do. This is in comparison to, for example, the National Seoul Museum where the artefacts are put together very nicely, but aren’t accompanied by enough information for one to understand the context surrounding the artefacts.

When I visit Xinjiang or Gansu, I find that the physical landscape really speaks to me. It is important to be able to understand that vastness, that barrenness, how crucial oases are to the area, the people, crops, trees and desert. I wonder how we can replicate that.

S

All you can do is try to give a sense of it. This comes back to whether we can have different forms of exhibition. Static displays in major museums might not be the best at showing that.

Special exhibitions that have been done on this area were able to bring artefacts and their contexts together.

When I lecture about these places, I try to give people an idea of how forbidding the landscape is. It’s very difficult to communicate.

There are other ways of communicating such environments.

Media, such as films, music, or other forms of artistic representation, are avenues we could explore. Scientific reconstructions of past landscapes too. There’s the discipline of archaeo-botany that studies the crops, fruits, and vegetables of an area as well.

As far as I know, the archaeo-botany of the Tarim Basin is in its infancy, and this is an entire area to be fully explored. Instead of relying on typical static displays, these different forms of media and expression are required to give a sense of context.

We also have the voices of Xuan Zang and other travellers. Some of them recount their experiences of traversing this forbidding landscape very vividly. There were a few Japanese novels about Dunhuang, but there is not much historical fiction that could help with depicting what this period was like.

PP

Certainly. I think the connection to the contemporary is something we would be interested in seeing represented.

S

THE GIFT

There are possibilities out there, but I’m not sure I’m optimistic about them being pursued. Modern politics in the region is impeding this. This is also material that demands a lot of interpretation and hard scholarship. I’m afraid that isn’t something most students are encouraged to do. Furthermore, to have students, you need to have good professors. How many people are working on this subject who could supervise students? I fear that even though the Silk Road is a growing field of study, this particular region will continue to be neglected and comparatively under-studied.

PP S

I’m doing a history of Khotan as no one has done it yet. Many histories of the region have been centred around the early 20th century explorers, rather than the voice of the people of these places. I think that’s a shame because these explorers were trying to give voices to the people with their findings. Yet so often when we tell the story of the Tarim Basin, we show it through this early 20th century lens. We need to reframe these stories through the eyes of the peoples of Khotan, Kizil, Turfan, Ganzhou, Shanshan/Loulan and so on.

PP

MY

Your attempt at writing the history of Khotan is very admirable.

That would really give voice to that period of history.

Today, the Chinese still think of these explorers as thieves, robbers and looters that took away these artefacts. However, they’re not looking at the material themselves or giving voices to the people who lived there. A history can be written of these “foreign devils,” but writing the history of the people who lived there would make more sense and be more important.

A lot of this was and remains framed by geopolitics or international politics. Could we consider whether we can reconstruct the intuition of these explorers by taking off our filter of geopolitics in our encounter with these materials? There is a famous instance where Stein traced a connection between an artefact and a story of a Chinese princess who smuggled silkworms out of China. Such an exercise requires a certain level of intuition and imagination. How might we revive this intuition in encountering objects, people, and these sites? I’d also like for us to include something a little more personal here. Have you experienced intuition playing a role in your encounters with the sites, people or objects?

S

That’s a very good point, and that’s why I think that efforts such as writing fictional accounts of such places can be a good way of bringing things together that ‘dry’ scholarship might not. I use my intuition all the time when I write. I’m trying to tell stories about objects that are much broader than simple descriptions.

As mentioned, I’m writing about Khotan, an area that practised Buddhism very early on, although how early remains uncertain.

It’s very difficult to see Khotan as a single sacred landscape today, although a lot has been written about this. There is no high point where one can stand to see how everything fits together. I was in the Swat Valley in Pakistan with the Italian archaeological mission in 2019, and it was evident to see how clearly the sacred landscape laid out through all the stupas, monasteries and shrines in the area: a thought-out vision marked by sacred buildings. I found that experience very helpful in giving me new insights into the geography of Khotan and how it might have been conceived by the people of the time.

PP

Intuition is something you might chance upon, what a researcher would use to ascertain which paths to take to find certain Voices from the Desert sanDs

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THE GIFT

answers. Intuition is always there during research, excavation or archaeological work.

In excavations or archaeological expeditions, everything boils down to chance. At the same time, Stein was very methodological in his work and made very detailed records and documentations.

S

PP

Stein was very methodological, but he certainly relied on his intuition a lot when he was in an area. It was because of this intuition that he discovered or looked for certain places. He couldn’t explore all the area in the desert. He could then be methodological around a certain area. If you read his writings, you’ll find thoughts such as “I feel there should be something over there,” or “I think something happened here.” All intuition is based upon knowledge and experience, and I think he used it a lot.

I agree with that. It’s how you find your way around.

What could intuition mean in relation to gifts? These materials came to us as a gift from the people of the time, made possible with the intuition of the explorers. This is how the gift was given to us.

MY

S

With all gift exchanges, there’s always something withheld and something preserved. Again, I don’t think there’s another undiscovered civilisation, but I do think that we are all acutely aware of the vastness of what lies beyond our comprehension. In this context, that may make us all a little humbler.

Although I don’t think there’s a new civilisation to be discovered, I believe we have yet to discover the details of these civilisations we’ve already found. Something is still certainly withheld, nurtured by the desert sands for future scholars and archaeologists.

Maybe those things won’t present themselves to us until we’ve fulfilled our end of the agreement. By being given this gift, we must return something to it through scholarship: by interpreting this material fully and by giving it its rightful place. We haven’t yet, I think, paid our dues for the gift we have been given.

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The Bronze Elephant: A Present, A Gift, A Monument 9'##+9'/%)'/0/'(/--#8

At the entrance of The Arts House, previously known as the Court House and later as the Parliament House, stands a bronze elephant, placed on a high quadrangular pedestal with an inscription in four languages—Thai, Malay, Chinese and English.

“His Majesty, Somdech Paramindr Maha Chulalongkorn, the Supreme King of Siam, landed at Singapore, the first foreign land visited by a Siamese Monarch, on the 16th March 1871,” informs the English text to passers-by; the texts in the other three languages tell the same story, from a different perspective: Singapore was the first foreign land ever visited by the Siamese monarch His Majesty Chulalongkorn. Every word tells a story and when they are brought together, words open up to an infinite number of stories.

King Chulalongkorn’s visits to foreign lands could be explained as demonstrations of his attempts at modernising Siam. In particular, the visits to Europe in 1897 and 1907 are often described in terms of the climax of His Majesty’s endeavours to introduce ‘civilisation’ to the Kingdom of Siam, and naturally these visits had a beginning, a first: the visit to Singapore.

Notions of ‘civilisation’ and ‘modernisation’ had begun to circulate during the reign of King Mongkut (King Rama IV), the revered father of King Chulalongkorn (King Rama V). King Mongkut’s intensive dealings with Europeans took place in the palace and within the Kingdom of Siam’s realm. Three years after he ascended the throne in 1868, King Chulalongkorn began to make visits abroad. His first journey out of Siam was a visit to Singapore and Java, foreign lands that were controlled by the European powers of Great Britain and the Netherlands, respectively. It was the first time a Siamese monarch went out of his realm not to wage war, not to make a pilgrimage, not to acquire sacred objects or animals in an attempt as royalty to prove that he was at the zenith of his power, the Cakkavatti Raja, King of the Universe. In fact, King Chulalongkorn’s visit to the South was the beginning of an essential and vital mission not only to become familiar with possibilities of introducing modernisation to his realm; he also wanted to show himself to the powerful Europeans as an equally powerful ruler, remind them of the existence of the Kingdom of Siam, affirm Siam’s sovereignty over the northern part of the Malay Peninsula, and explore the expansion of trading contacts. On March 13, 1871, he arrived at the Johnston Pier, Singapore.

THE GIFT

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His Majesty’s first visit was not as smooth as silk to begin with.

These were hectic times in Singapore as Sir Harry St. George Ord, the first Colonial Governor of the Straits Settlements, was leaving for England and Sir Edward Archibald Anson was appointed Acting Governor.B The correspondence between Caophraya Phraklang, Minister of the Treasury and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok, and Phraya Atsadongkhotthitsaraksa (Tan Kim Ching), the Kingdom of Siam’s consul in Singapore, had been an uneasy one, troubled by concerns of how His Majesty the King of Siam should be received and in particular where he should take up royal residence during his stay in the city.@ The problems were solved by the merchant community of Singapore which was eager to contribute 10,000 dollars to His Majesty’s reception.W Arrangements for the official reception were obviously beyond Siam’s control, but in order to ensure that the presence of His Majesty would be grand and impressive, Caophraya Phraklang asked the consul to prepare an appropriate locality for His Majesty’s stay, and two officials were sent ahead to make sure that preparations were made in accordance with His Majesty’s status and dignity.

The visit was a success: His Majesty was very satisfied with the reception that the Singapore government had arranged for him.

While still in the city, he sent a royal telegram to Queen Victoria to thankfully inform Her Majesty in London of the wonderful reception which the Singapore government had organised for him, in wordings that contain not even the slightest suggestion that Siam’s authority was inferior to that of Great Britain. Eight days were spent in Singapore before the king sailed for Batavia and, on his way back from Java, he was to pay a short private visit to Singapore before returning to Bangkok.

After His Majesty the King of Siam’s visit, discussions between the royal guest and the dignitaries around him and the Singapore government, represented by John Frederick Adolphus McNair, Colonial Engineer of the Straits Settlements, Surveyor General, Member of the Legislative Council, circled around the question of how the Siamese monarch could show his royal appreciation and gratitude. Caophraya Phraklang and McNair, who had apparently come to respect each other in personal meetings and correspondence, shared the necessary communications on the matter;P in October 1871, Caophraya Phraklang wrote: At the time the Supreme King of Siam paid a visit to Singapore, Your Excellency informed His Majesty that Your Excellency is willing to establish a monument that will be an important sign that His Majesty the King of Siam made a journey to Singapore, Colony of the British. And it was also the first time that the King of Siam made a visit to see a colony of the British. At this moment (Bangkok authorities) have sent a brass elephant with Phraya Samutburrak (and) Luang Sorayut to Your Excellency so that you erect this monument…Q

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THE GIFT

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Moreover, Caophraya Phraklang made it clear that the Kingdom of Siam would cover all costs and expenses, leaving the design of the pedestal on which the bronze elephant would be placed as well its location to the authorities in Singapore to decide, but proposing Johnston Pier as the appropriate location for the monument, the place where His Majesty the King of Siam had come ashore. In the same correspondence, Caophraya Phraklang told McNair that the King was seriously concerned that people would distrust the idea of a gift and would perhaps spread rumours that His Majesty by presenting Singapore with this bronze elephant primarily meant to glorify himself rather than show his deep gratitude for a very pleasant and dignified reception. McNair made the decision that the bronze memorial of the Siamese king’s visit should be placed in front of the Town Hall.

And on 29 June 1872, The Straits Times newspaper announced that the bronze elephant had found its place in Singapore.

In the early 1870s, Singapore’s newspapers termed the elephant “a present” from the King of Siam rather than “a gift.” Ever cautiously examining the intentions and activities of the government, the local press and its public were curious to see if this bronze elephant might be the beginning of an infinite system of gift exchanges. Or was it perhaps meant to be a “tribute,” and did the King ask for protection? Either possibility would not be quite inconceivable: successive rulers of kingdoms in the North had developed a tradition of paying tribute to the emperor of China in exchange of protection from aggression, and rulers in Ayutthaya and later Bangkok had acted as suzerains over states around them, demanding tributes in various forms, with varying degrees of success. In the 1850s and 1860s, King Mongkut had expanded royal contacts with empires even farther away than China: envoys had been sent to Queen Victoria of England and to Napoleon III of France with a wide variety of precious gifts in hesitant attempts at presenting his Royalty as being equal to British and French Royalties. King Mongkut’s diplomatic policy of making contact with the outside world by way of envoys and missions served as the very model that his son, King Chulalongkorn, was to follow in person: he would visit a number of polities outside his realm during his long reign.

Since time immemorial, elephants had been traded to India, China and Japan from Siam, and smaller states had sent elephants as tributes to the court of Ayutthaya and, later, Bangkok.

One of the kings of Ayutthaya and, later, King Mongkut had sent elephants to the Kingdom of France as gifts of friendship, but both consignments had ended in failure: Ayutthaya’s elephants had drowned on the way to Europe, King Mongkut’s elephants were eaten by the hungry people of Paris.] In consultation with his courtiers, King Chulalongkorn decided to send a bronze elephant to Singapore: a material and solid sign of gratitude and appreciation would be a practical and lasting alternative to a living elephant—and certainly a more effective gift than a white elephant, the symbol of the Kingdom of Siam, gesturing to the virtue and majesty of the Royal House.

The Bronze elephanT

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According to Siamese tradition, white elephants should be presented to the court in Bangkok whenever they were found or caught; in circles of British travellers, diplomats and literati quite a different story had taken root, inspired by reports about Southeast Asia: ownership of white elephants only caused trouble as those who were given a white elephant by the King of Siam were bound to besmirch their own authority and power if they were unable to take care of the animal in the appropriate manner. The Cakkavati Raja, proud owner of white elephants since time immemorial, decided in 1843 to have a white elephant in the national flag that was to accompany King Chulalongkorn on his first visit to Singapore. A living elephant—white, pink, or grey— would certainly do no good to British-Siamese relations and it made perfect sense to King Chulalongkorn to send Singapore a solid bronze elephant instead. Meant to be “a monument” (the term used by the court in Bangkok), it was made by the royal Division of Traditional Thai Crafts to showcase the expertise of Thai craftsmen and establish its status as an ever-lasting memorial (but then, it is worth mentioning that the four metal plates with inscription attached to the quadrangular pedestal were engraved in Calcutta for 1,200 dollars).b Thus, in front of the Town Hall, the elephant was to stand on its pedestal for some fifty years, and while Singapore was fast expanding and the Town Hall was progressively transformed into Victoria Memorial Hall and, later, Victoria Theater and Concert Hall, the sculpture remained a stable and solid point in front of the building that repeatedly saw its function changing. “A present” of the King of Siam, the Singapore press termed the shiny sculpture initially, and also as “a monument’ in memory of the “first visit of a Siamese Monarch to a foreign land.” But regardless how solid and respectable its location, the elephant was to experience contempt, disregard and indifference from generations of Singaporeans, who gradually substituted the more meaningful word “gift” for “present,” as though they were not too impressed by the monument’s beauty and elegance. “A little porker,”V “a long snouted pig in copper,”U “a relic of one or another visit,”BA and “a graveyard monument” are some of the qualifications that were reported in The Straits Times around the turn of the century.BB Moreover, an ever decreasing number of Singaporeans were aware of its existence: “Nine people out of ten who use the Court House have no idea at all what it means,” remarked The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser in 1933.B@ All too often people did not even notice the elephant’s presence, even as the building it was meant to guard changed more than once in function in the fast-expanding city. Largely unnoticed and unseen throughout the years, the bronze was on occasion painted pink and green in celebration of a victory by members of a local European cricket team who apparently wanted to bring the elephant to life.BW No wonder that the aristocrat, royal representative of peninsular elephants, was described as “weather beaten”BP and “lonely”BQ in the press. No wonder that the Department of Public Works had to take occasional action to preserve the elephant’s well-being.

THE GIFT

Unfortunately, it is not known what King Chulalongkorn and his son King Vajravudh were thinking of the rather sad state of the Siamese memorial gift on their official visits to the city.

Perhaps they were simply happy to know that the royal gift was surviving the relative indifference of the local population. The bronze symbol of Siamese royalty remained silently protecting the Kingdom of Siam from potential invasion and aggression, an emblem of kinship and friendship among the polities of Southeast Asia and beyond.

When in 1919 Singapore celebrated its hundredth anniversary, the bronze elephant—still standing as monumental gift and largely disregarded—had to make place for a statue of Raffles, the founding father of the city. It was moved to the front of the, then, Supreme Court, now The Arts House, a building which it has continued to guard until the present day.

After 1961, authorities of the newly proclaimed Republic of Singapore were made aware of the importance of creating a tradition for the new nation-state; history should be treasured, identity should be taught to the local population, and concerted efforts were made at shaping a narrative about the city’s evolution from a small fishermen’s village to the glorious metropolis of today: memorable buildings erected and remodelled since the city’s foundation should be restored, preserved, and perhaps remodelled again. Moreover, the creation of a strong identity was important in order to be able to play a prominent role in the global economy and in international politics, in particular in the framework of ASEAN. In developing relevant policies, the authorities must have been reminded of the fact that the King of Siam had been the first who initiated diplomatic and economic connections of friendship and equality between two polities in Southeast Asia a long time ago, symbolised by the bronze elephant placed in front of the Court House, standing on silent and solid guard while the building it was meant to protect changed shape and expanded in the spirit of Singapore’s dynamic development, progressively functioning as Parliament House, Supreme Court, store house, Department of Social Welfare, Legislative Assembly, and Arts House.

Lonely, ignored and neglected, once meant to be the symbol of everlasting and grateful friendship, the bronze elephant is still standing on its pedestal, in glory and commemoration of the good relationship between Singapore and Thailand, in the spirit of the wishes of His Majesty Chulalongkorn, King of Siam.

The bronze elephant: a present, a gift, a monument.

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THE GIFT

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THE GIFT

W)

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P)

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89 4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)$() 4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1:)@]);+<$+CE+7)BVbW:)K`=Q)`fg3.qBb:)BWQ:) 4(77+#<("I+"5+)E+$,++")4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+) 4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)%E(6$)1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BVb@gBVbb:) 4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$)(-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:) 0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-)./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"Id) 4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)$()K%^(7)K50%'7:) Bb)L5$(E+7)BVbW:)K`=Q)`fg3.qBb:)BPA:)4(77+#<("I+"5+)E+$,++") 4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)%E(6$) 1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BVb@gBVbb:)4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$) (-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:)0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-) ./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"Id) 4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)K%^(7)K50%'7)$()4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1:) BU)K%75/)BVb]:)K`=Q)`fg3.qBb:)@Qb:)4(77+#<("I+"5+)E+$,++") 4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)%E(6$) 1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BVb@gBVbb:)4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$) (-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:)0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-) ./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"Id) 4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)K%^(7)K50%'7)$()4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1:) ])e+E76%79)BVbV:)K`=Q)`fg3.qPA:)]B:)4(77+#<("I+"5+)E+$,++") 4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)%E(6$) 1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BVbbgBVbU:)4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$) (-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:)0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-) ./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"Id) 4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)$()K%^(7)K50%'7:) B])K%75/)BVbV:)K`=Q)`fg3.qPA:)]W:)4(77+#<("I+"5+)E+$,++") 4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)%E(6$) 1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BVbbgBVbU:)4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$) (-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:)0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-) ./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"Id) 4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)K%^(7)K50%'7)$()4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1:) @b)K%75/)BVbV:)4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)K%^(7)K50%'7)$()4%(</7%9%) M/7%F/&%"1:)@b)K%75/)BVbV:)K`=Q)`fg3.qPA:)]]:)4(77+#<("I+"5+) E+$,++")4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+) %E(6$)1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BVbbgBVbU:)4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$) (-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:)0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-) ./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"I= Q)

4(77+#<("I+"5+)-7(C)4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)$()K%^(7)K50%'7:) BV)L5$(E+7)BVbB:)K`=Q)`fg3.qW:)@QA:)4(77+#<("I+"5+)E+$,++") 4%(</7%9%)M/7%F/&%"1)%"I);'%C+#+)4("#6&)%$);'"1%<(7+)%E(6$) 1(*+7"C+"$)%v%'7#)I67'"1)BV]UgBVbB:)4(I+T:)`(9%&);+57+$%7'%$) (-)3'"1)`%C%)a:)K'"'#$79)(-)e(7+'1")2v%'7#:)0%$'("%&)275/'*+#)(-) ./%'&%"I:)N%"1F(F:)./%'&%"I=)

])

้ กรุ งปารี ส=\) [)[ช้างบรรณาการ\)จากรัชกาลที่ )P)จบชี วิตที่ รา้ นขายเนื อ ศิ ลปวัฒนธรรม:)W)พฤษภาคม:)@Q]P=)255+##+I)Y6"+)b:)@A@B=)) /$$<#Oqq,,,=#'&<%gC%1=5(Cq/'#$(79q%7$'5&+_@UA@=)

b)

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V)

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U)

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92

Higashiyama Kaii: The Gift of Landscapes $.$%*-2%9':"2'/'

What is scenery? We recognise scenery when we feel something pulling in our heart the moment a particular scene meets our eye.

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Higashiyama Kaii dedicated his life to painting and referred to himself as a “landscape painter.”@ Kaii’s paintings, however, were more than mere depictions of scenery. As he had alluded to above, his works moved and won over people’s hearts. Known as the “people’s landscape painter,” Kaii is a renowned artist of important national and global acclaim.

Born in Yokohama city, Kaii showed great interest in art as a child and often spent his days drawing in his room. With the approval of his father in 1926, he enrolled at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts or Geidai) on the condition that he would specialise in nihonga.

Nihonga and the Crisis of Japanese Painting Nihonga (日本画) or Japanese-style painting is a term that came to be in use during the Meiji period (1989–1912).W Its literal translation means “pictures of Japan” and essentially refers to all painting based on Japan’s past pictorial traditions. Nihonga is a continuation of the techniques and conventions seen in opulent decorative folding screens, lyrical flower-and-bird hanging scrolls to monochromatic ink paintings. The term was conceived as the binary counterpart to yōga (洋画) or Western-style painting (primarily oil-painting) that was gaining popularity in Japan at the time.

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During the Meiji period, the government embarked on a series of modernising reforms in a bid to catch up with other countries that were ahead in the industrial revolution. Reforms swept across Japan rapidly, transforming not only the political and social aspects of Japanese life, but art and its institutions as well.

Previously having closed its doors for more than 200 years in the Edo period (1603–1867), Japan now actively sought foreign knowledge and expertise to help modernise and transform the country.P The endeavour to modernise created a crisis in painting and the introduction of oil painting to Japan was the tipping point. Oil paintings embodied the progressive hallmarks of modern art—their techniques were a display of the scientific advancements the Japanese so admired. In addition to taking up the new oil medium, Western art techniques like perspective, shading and the depiction of realistic three-dimensional forms were also incorporated. Conversely, traditional Japanese painting was less preoccupied with such details. They tended to emphasise the painted line while keeping compositions relatively flat.Q This crisis in modern Japanese art created the bifurcation of painting into nihonga and yōga and further divisions in the art world. When nihonga artists submitted their works to the annual government-sponsored exhibitions, they were asked to choose between categories of the old and new factions of nihonga to exhibit in. Such measures effectively pigeonholed artists through the creation of labels and definitions.

The nihonga curriculum at Geidai supported the movement championed by the new faction of nihonga artists. Students under the tutelage of Kaii’s teachers were encouraged to innovate by synthesising Western techniques in their practice. This earlier generation caught at these crossroads shouldered enormous responsibilities of upholding Japan’s painting traditions in the face of modernisation and westernisation.

The popularity of nihonga and yōga would ebb and flow, and at times it seemed that one could cause the demise of the other.] Yet almost more than a century later, neither would prove to dominate the Japanese painting scene as both continue to co-exist and thrive today.

The primary point of differentiation between nihonga and yōga is in the medium used. Colours in nihonga are derived from iwaenogu (岩絵具) or mineral pigments, which are then pulverised to their desired particle size for texture and hue—finer particles P)

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THE GIFT

result in lighter colours and smoother textures. To this, a binder known as nikawa (膠) is added to help adhere the pigments onto painted surfaces which range from Japanese paper to silk, and wood (in the instance of architectural features in temples).b Compositions can be presented either in a hanging scroll format or framed, just like oil paintings.

Today, nihonga is almost indistinguishable from yōga in terms of subject matter or style. Nihonga artists have long since experimented with the application of mineral pigments like oil paints and adapted styles that were then popular in the Western art domain such as surrealism and abstraction. Yōga artists on the other hand, have also borrowed and reworked visual motifs and symbolisms specific to Japanese painting in their artworks. Some practitioners today produce mixed media compositions that involve some pigments and other materials from nihonga. The painted subjects of nihonga are not fixed and reflect prevailing trends and artist preferences. Nature, however, remains a popular and enduring subject.

Kaii’s Early Career Kaii has painted countless landscapes of mountains, forests, country paths, and seascapes in all four seasons. Autumn in the Mountains Country (1928), his debut at the annual government exhibition, featured Mount Yatsugatake on an idyllic autumn day with a few villagers working in their fields.V When Kaii was a freshman at Geidai, he embarked on an arduous hiking expedition in Nagano that spanned several hundred kilometres. Enduring all sorts of weather conditions including relentless torrential rain, the trip culminated in the successful ascent of Mount Ontake, the second highest volcano after Mount Fuji. On this trip, the artist’s first-hand experience of nature’s sublime beauty and power created a lasting impression on his work.

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The early years of Kaii’s career were wrought with ups and downs.

Many artists sought the recognition and acceptance of governmental exhibitions. In fact, it was not uncommon to spend years producing a work worthy of being exhibited and many poured their entire efforts into doing so. Seeing his peers succeed ahead of him, Kaii was anxious that he had not yet obtained the same achievements. In 1929, his hard work finally paid off when Autumn in the Mountains Country was accepted to the government exhibition. After graduating from Geidai, Kaii went to Germany to further his studies in Western art history in the years 1933 to 1935. He then returned to Japan after receiving news that his father had fallen ill. Upon his return, he was drafted to World

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The GifT of Landscapes

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96

War II and subsequently lost all his remaining family members; only he and his wife survived. Various memoirs chronicle these years as the hardest period in Kaii’s life—not only did he deal with such immense loss and financial difficulties after the war, he faced successive rejections from the government exhibitions.

Despite this, he found resolve in landscape painting. Kaii persevered and travelled to many parts of Japan, seeking solace in nature to sketch and paint from.

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Kaii and Postwar Japanese Art The breakthrough for Kaii came when Afterglow (1947) and Road (1950) were exhibited and well-received by the public and art critics alike. Both works depict scenes based on the Japanese countryside—the Kanō mountains and a rural country road near Tanesashi coast respectively. Through a limited colour palette and the reduction of details, Kaii created simple landscapes of peace and tranquility.

A single country road takes centre stage in Road. Starting from the foreground, it traverses in a straight path up the composition, extending towards the top where the horizon lies. Lush greenery surrounds the path, bringing a sense of vitality to the painting complemented by clear skies in the background. The use of pale colours (white and off-white) for the road helps create a sense of empty space, a deliberate artistic interpretation by Kaii. The idea of the empty space in East Asian painting is highly valued for balance, beauty, and the potential for contemplating possibilities.U The way Kaii crops the road in the foreground then trails it off inconclusively adds to the evocation of possibilities he intended for this work.

Created just five years after Japan’s defeat in the war, many who saw Road were encouraged by the sublime beauty and deeply reflective nature of this simple landscape. Road became one of the masterpieces of postwar Japanese art and was especially symbolic in encouraging people to contemplate their future and the re-building of Japan.

Misty Ravine (1989) depicts a lush mountainous scene enveloped in mist at its peaks. Using his favourite pigment rokushō (緑青), Kaii juxtaposed different shades of green for the foliage. Rokushō is obtained from the mineral malachite ground to varying particle sizes for different intended shades. When heated, it becomes black-green or even black. A range of greens can be seen in the treatment of the foliage, which Kaii achieved with his masterful handling of pigments and by painstakingly layering them until the desired outcome is obtained. The overlapping trees in this U)

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undulating terrain endows the composition with a lyrical quality, enhanced further by the atmospheric mist that meanders through the ravine.

The work is dated 1989, the year Kaii held his solo exhibition, Landschaften, in Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna.BA Mountain scenes like this have been a consistent theme for him. In fact, Misty Ravine brings to mind one of the panoramic murals (Mountain Clouds (1975)) at Toshodaiji temple which features a mountain shrouded with clouds.

Many of Kaii’s paintings are serene masterpieces, the result of his life-long dedication to understanding nature and his deep reverence for it. Compositions like Road and others centering on nature appeal to audiences because of their timelessness. Additionally, nihonga pigments endow these landscapes with an overall sense of soft refinement. One of the greatest experiences of viewing certain nihonga paintings is seeing them glitter discretely under certain light conditions as if coming to life. This is due to the physical properties of the mineral pigments whereby each granule becomes a prism that traps and refracts light.BB Kaii’s paintings are described as being deeply spiritual and this can be interpreted in a few ways. In the Shintō religion, there is a long-standing association of the presence of kami (神, gods or spirits) in elements of nature. The contemplative sentiment from these works, alongside Kaii’s own testimony to the paintings being his prayers, help further explain these spiritual aspects.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) whom Kaii had a close friendship with, wrote: People are able to feel the nature of Japan through his landscape paintings. They discover their Japanese identity and are soothed by the quiet comfort of the pictures… In future, even more than at present, his landscape paintings will represent the beautiful soul of Japan, and he will be respected as a landscape painter the Japanese people will treasure forever.B@ Kaii painted his landscapes from the heart, with a desire to soothe and inspire all who encounter them. He was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in 1969, a recognition of his contributions to Japanese culture. Decades after his passing, Kaii’s popularity shows no signs of slowing down and his exhibitions continue to attract visitors far and wide, maintaining his important position in postwar Japanese art.

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104

The Gunungan Dialogue: Spirituality and Materiality in Ahmad Sadali and Salleh Japar’s Works '#+))'%/'2'6+#+#80&')

In the Southeast Asian context, gunungan is an all-encompassing word or image that captures various ideas of spirituality within and beyond certain religiosity. It can be seen as a symbol of creation, or the representation of cosmic Mount Meru in the Hindu-Buddhist religious system. It is a visual metaphor for a spiritual bridge between humans and higher realms, an axis of power, a signifier for non-linear temporality in vernacular storytelling and performance (specifically, Javanese and Balinese wayang, or shadow play theatre) and a marker of movement and transition. It is also the image of the real mountain itself. Gunungan stands on its basic triangular structure, a transhistorical symbolic form and compositional method that has been utilised widely across places, times, and cultures. Etymologically, “gunungan” stems from the Malay word “gunung” or mountain, a shared word found in Javanese and Sundanese. “Gunungan” then can be translated as “mountain-like,” referring to the heterogeneous manifestations of the form in Southeast Asia: from monumental and vernacular architectures such as temples and traditional houses, to illustrations or decorations in manuscripts, textiles, paintings, wayang and so on. As noted by Astri Wright, gunungan is a pervasive motif that continues to inform the artistic preoccupation of modern and contemporary artists in Southeast Asia.B Gunungan Emas (The Golden Mountain) by Ahmad Sadali and Gunungan II by Salleh Japar are two of many works that feature abstractions of the gunungan motif. The three-dimensional construction of Sadali’s Gunungan Emas with ochre and dark green colours is accentuated by the application of gold leaves, pasted carefully on the textured surface in the center and top part of the canvas. When juxtaposed with Salleh’s slightly bigger rendition of the motif in Gunungan II, the three-dimensionality in Gunungan Emas certainly provides a stark contrast. However, Salleh’s comparably textured surface and the experimentation of unlikely materials beyond tube paints produce a relatively similar effect of extreme texturality.

Sadali and Salleh belong to different generations of artistic training and artmaking traditions. If Sadali aspired to push the boundaries of painting as a medium within the period of high

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THE GIFT

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THE GUNUNGAN DIALOGUE

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THE GIFT

modernism in Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s, then Salleh’s method of representation and artmaking developed within the context of Singapore contemporary art in the late 1980s and 1990s. Salleh and his contemporaries forged new practices that sought to re-examine the foundation of art and expand the connection between artists, art, and the public using multimedia, multidisciplinary, and multicultural approaches.@ This emerged as a re-evaluation of established practices and values of previous generations. Sadali and Salleh’s reinterpretations of and approaches to transhistorical symbolic form that permeates widely across time and space in Southeast Asia provide frameworks for looking at shared affinities, genealogies, and points of divergence.

As a hypericon or metapicture in the Mitchellian sense, the gunungan can capture different relationalities to the world, through ethical, political, and aesthetic models, and to the Divine.W Sadali’s three-dimensional gunungan, made of solid and enduring materials, with parts covered in gold, seems to represent a straightforward transcendental and vertical movement from the dark ochre base to the top golden surface. Many of Sadali’s critics and contemporaries often experienced his “concrete” forms as a contemplative journey towards piety. Further defined by his artmaking process, Salleh’s gunungan, on the other hand, shows a rather cyclical movement, capturing both an ecological and cosmological relation and process of creation, preservation, and destruction. Nevertheless, like Sadali, Salleh’s gunungan series that he began creating in 1984 originated from his religiosity: from an inclination to unveil Truth through material experimentation, informed by global Sufi intellectual traditions and the specificity of the Indo-Malay cultural traditions.

Gunungan and the Image/Idea of Spirituality

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For many who knew Ahmad Sadali, he was an intellectual, a modernist, and a pious artist without contradiction. Many critics and scholars of Indonesian modern art considered him “the father of abstract painting” in Indonesia, having developed the legacy of painterly and formalist abstraction both in his pedagogy and artistic practice.P However, Sadali often refused the attribution of his works as “abstract” as he argued that his forms were derived from a concrete “reality” of the world that he experienced.Q This idea certainly reflects Sadali’s engagement with the modernist approach and Sufi essentialist tradition of apprehending reality or “Truth” as beyond the perceptible world, and therefore must

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THE GUNUNGAN DIALOGUE

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108

be observed through ‫( عقل‬āql or rational thought; reason).] As Bandung’s first generation of West Javanese artists trained by Dutch teachers in the tradition of mid-20th century international modernism, Sadali and his cohort influenced the making of new representations of modernity that responded amicably to the new social and political reality under the New Order regime (1967– 1998).b The “Bandung School” of aesthetics, cultivated by the Dutch teachers and further developed by Sadali and his cohort, prioritised universal principles of art that placed emphasis on the essence of forms and colours. This approach to aesthetics allowed artists to engage with the spiritual aspects of their artmaking practice. As a devout, modernist-leaning Muslim who believed in the fruitful interaction between Islam, science, and art, Sadali found the principles and language of modernist abstraction to be in harmony with Islam.V Sadali noted, “The teaching of Islam shows the artist the ways and means to achieve beauty, truth, and excellence in art. As such abstract art is most congenial to Islam.”U Art and Islam for Sadali were both universal.

In the 1960s, Sadali began experimenting with Quranic and Arabic calligraphy in search of Islamic expression in modern painting. The painting Lukisan illustrates Sadali’s early experimentation with Quranic calligraphy. Translated as “painting,” “lukisan” shows the effort to interpret and make universal Clement Greenberg’s essentialist notion of painting and its supremacy as a medium in the Indonesian context. Painted in 1966, the year that marked the rise of artists associated with the Bandung School and their formalist aesthetics in the Indonesian exhibitionary space, Lukisan displays a tense juxtaposition of colours and irregular shapes in the centre that form an intricate horizontal swathe resembling a zoomed-out urban landscape.BA In this painting, Sadali gave substantial attention to textures by creating brushstrokes of different thicknesses on the canvas. As we ])

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THE GIFT

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THE GUNUNGAN DIALOGUE

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see in Sadali’s later works in the 1970s (such as Gunungan Emas), texture became increasingly important for him as he explored its complexity using unlikely materials to experiment with the boundaries of painting as a medium. It is on the wide strip of almost yellowish ochre that Sadali incised inconspicuous shallow writing of the Quranic verse from the second sura, al-Baqara, verse 255.BB This intimate writing was Sadali’s early attempt to inscribe a personal note to express his profound utterance of love and praise to God. Gunungan Emas, however, is without any calligraphic inscription on its protruding pyramidal surface. On its base is a layer of brown delineated neatly with darker brown, which Sadali subsequently overlaid with marble paste in ochre and dark green, the colour of oxidised bronze. There is a sense of irregularity in the structure of the artwork, created by the jagged edges and textured surface of the marble paste contrasted against the plenitude of straight lines. In addition to the lines that construct the pyramid, Sadali also etched two parallel square lines into the marble paste layer, further framing the summit of the gunung structure. The most dominant element of Gunungan Emas is certainly the emas (gold) created through the careful pasting of delicate gold leaves along the top part of the composition and on the peak of the gunungan. Gunungan Emas is as much a formal and careful inquiry into space and materials as it is a proposition for spiritual contemplation and devotional expression praising God’s greatness.

While gunungan has a strong association with Hindu-Buddhist cosmologies, it could picture or theorise a different relationship informed by Islamic theology. Through an Islamic lens, gunungan may signify the idea of tauhid (oneness of God) and the Islamic ethics of the balanced relationship between humans and God and between fellow human beings. The gunungan in this work might capture an understanding of an upward movement towards the Divine’s oneness through contemplation and reflection. However, Sadali claimed that his use of the gunungan did not originate from an intention to create a spiritual metaphor when he first experimented with it in 1969. Instead, it was derived from how he imagined a viewer would interpret and form an association with it.B@ In an interview with Krishna Mustajab in 1983, Sadali elaborated: Gunungan is only an appellation, similar to mass, chunk, surface, bar, nodule, green, red, ochre, gold, etc. These elements convey an almost automatic association in the viewer’s mind because of how these elements make a suggestion in the viewer’s mind. Often, they (the viewers)

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THE GIFT

interpret the triangle that grows on my canvas as gunungan, and I came to use it as a name of the (triangular) element.BW When Salleh Japar saw Sadali’s paintings as a student at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in Singapore, he read their significance to be other than a manifestation of spirituality. Perhaps it was Sadali’s rather formalist approach to forms that led Salleh to interpret the paintings as such.BP However, Salleh found peace in the intensity of colours and serene swathes of strokes that make up Sadali’s colour field paintings. At the exhibition, Salleh remembered looking at Sadali’s work Bars with Gold Remnants (1984), a painting depicting the dialogue of rectangular elements and gold leaves swatches: two other formal elements other than gunungan and calligraphy that preoccupied Sadali’s composition throughout the 1970s and 1980s.BQ Since the present whereabouts of Bars with Gold Remnants is unknown,B] Batang-Batang Melingkar (1987) might serve as a tenable comparison to Sadali’s earlier works for it demonstrates an exploration of the same formal elements. This work also shows Sadali’s latest experimentation with smaller works on paper before his passing in 1987.

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Salleh belongs to a generation of artists in Singapore that came to prominence in the late 1980s. This generation, as characterised by T.K . Sabapathy, questioned the ideals and values of universalism and internationalism championed by Singapore artists in the 1960s and 1970s, sharing parallels with Sadali’s generation in the Indonesian context.Bb Salleh’s emergence and prominence in Singapore art history are closely tied to Trimurti, one of the most important and experimental exhibitions in Singapore which opened in March 1988 at the Goethe-Institut.

In this exhibition, Salleh and two of his NAFA contemporaries, S. Chandrasekaran (b. 1959) and Goh Ee Choo (b. 1962), sought to re-examine dominant artistic practices, methods and values, as well as the ones disseminated by NAFA . Informed by the concept of trimurti in Hindu mythology, Salleh, Chandrasekaran, and Goh employed the trimurti as a method to examine notions of belonging and ethnic identities in modernising Singapore.

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THE GUNUNGAN DIALOGUE

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THE GIFT

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The three artists engaged in multimedia and multidisciplinary approaches in investigations of the self in relation to their cultural memories and experiences. Trimurti also displayed these young artists’ preoccupation with newer forms of artmaking and representational strategies, such as installation and performance art, which allowed for a more direct ways of confronting issues through immediate dialogues between the artists, artworks and audience.BV The basic configuration of trimurti is the cyclical movement and shifts from creation, preservation, and destruction. These ideas seem to have an enduring presence in Salleh’s subsequent works including, I would argue, Gunungan II. However, Salleh interweaves and strengthens the trimurti concept with new and existing ideas from Persianate Sufi philosophy; in particular, those that govern the levels of knowledge within the “logic of three”—the Expert, what is known, and true knowledge (Truth).BU Right after the Trimurti exhibition, Salleh continued his studies at the Curtin Institute of Technology in Australia from 1989 to 1990. During this time he continued working on his series involving the gunungan motif, and Gunungan II came into existence. Salleh also learned about indigenous technologies and methods of being through Aboriginal faculty members at Curtin, and his closer experience with open nature impressed upon him and his subsequent works. Learning about the indigenous method of controlled bush fire from the Aboriginal people in Australia, Salleh professed, allowed him to think of a different relationship to be had with nature and more importantly, fire as a regenerative power. Salleh’s preoccupation with the destructive yet generative potential of fire is further reflected through his artmaking process and his choice of materials.@A This approach manifests most visibly in his installation Born Out of Fire (1993), where he displayed three hanging canvases inscribed with personalised hieroglyphs and sign systems on textured and monochromatic surfaces. The three canvases loomed large over a rectangular acrylic stand containing a burnt book, signifying the cyclical and tense relationship between knowledge and power.

Made before Born Out of Fire, Gunungan II seems to manifest Salleh’s then-newly discovered approach to materiality stemming from long-standing ecological practices and knowledge of the Australian Aborigines, along with Salleh’s understanding of gunungan in the Southeast Asian context. Reflecting on this work, Salleh also recontextualised his fascination with fire as a method of religious contemplation and devotion as he affirmed the view of Muhd. Mostamali Nadjari, who asserted that “the BV) .=3=);%E%<%$/9:)[.7'C67$'O)4("$+C<(7%79)27$)'");'"1%<(7+:\)'")5*($,08$54&,$:,+&'&+G$2/3("#,4($54&,$7/+34:)BUUW:)QP= BU) ;%&&+/)Y%<%7:)'")5("*+7#%$'("),'$/)$/+)%6$/(7)(")Z((C:)Y%"6%79:)@A@B=);%&&+/),%#)'"-&6+"5+I)E9)E((F#)(");6-'#C)E9)M+7#'%")%6$/(7#)$/%$)/+)7+%I) E%#+I)(")$/+)7+5(CC+"I+I)&'#$)(-)7+%I'"1#)(")!#&%C'5)%7$)%"I)%+#$/+$'5#)E9).=3=);%E%<%$/9=)f'F+);%I%&':);%&&+/),%#)'"-&6+"5+I)E9)<+7+""'%&)$/(61/$#) '")!#&%C'5)%7$)/'#$(79:)#65/)%#)$/(#+)-7(C);+99+I)>(##+'")0%#7:)f%&+/)N%F/$'%7:)%"I)0%I+7)27I%&%":)$/%$)'"$7(I65+)!#&%C'5)%7$)%#)C%"'-+#$%$'(")(-)%") %E#$7%5$)5("5+<$)(-)(,3"&8=)./+)I'v+7+"$'%$'(")E+$,++")[,/%$)'#)F"(,"\)%"I)[$76+)F"(,&+I1+\)-'"I#)7+#("%"5+)'")$/+)/'+7%75/'5%&)#$%1+#)'");6-'#C:) ,/+7+)$/+)-'7#$)7+-+7#)$()$/+)#$%1+)(-)5(CC(")F"(,&+I1+)%"I)$/+)&%$$+7)$()$/+).76$/XF"(,&+I1+)$/%$)("+)%5j6'7+#)$/7(61/)#<'7'$6%&)6"I+7$%F'"1= @A) ;%&&+/)Y%<%7:)'")5("*+7#%$'("),'$/)$/+)%6$/(7:)Y6"+)i%<:);+&+"+)i%<)%"I)3+""+$/).%9)(")Z((C:)_+5+CE+7)@A@A=

THE GIFT

contemplation of secret is like the burning of fire, which is itself the contemplation, and its sparks are sings, and the fumes of fire are like a prayer.”@B In Gunungan II, Salleh performed multiple controlled burnings of strings, fibers, soil and other non-traditional materials on his canvas. During our conversation, he reminisced that the process of making Gunungan II was one of the most challenging and labour-intensive ones as he had to work with the uncertainty of chance and unexpected consequences of multiple burnings. The result is layer upon layer of fossilised ephemerality; some textured surfaces are thicker than the rest, some are cracked, and some cover faint traces of circular lines and writings around the circles within the triangular structure. the ephemeral quality of the materials used in this artwork certainly contrasts with Sadali’s use of marble paste and gold leaves to signify enduring monumentality in Gunungan Emas.

The presence of diagrammatic lines, incised pathways that connect the three circles within the gunungan, use of individualised scripts, and the talismanic configuration of the artwork’s composition also seems to correspond to Salleh’s prevailing interests in mandala patterns, Islamic geometry, and talismanic scrolls.

These elements can be found in his 1988 work, Fitrah/Human Nature.@@ In its entirety, Gunungan II manifests Salleh’s exposure to new environments and technologies he encountered during his travels and studies. It is also an illustration of his continued interest in the mixing of Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic forms—a “syncretic” approach, as Sabapathy asserted in his essay on the Trimurti exhibition, to the region’s visual traditions.

Materials, Texture, and Religiosity Sadali and Salleh belong to different generations of artists. Their works respond to distinct social, cultural, and political contexts of Indonesia and Singapore. Despite this, they both engaged with corresponding ideals of spirituality and religiosity in their art. These ideas manifest in their engagement with extreme texturality and attention to material specificities to inspire contemplations of reality in different ways. While Sadali never intended for the materials in his works to take on metaphorical meaning as he was a true modernist, his use of pulverised marble and gold in combination with paint gives rise to a sense of grandeur, establishment and permanence. In his other works, textures built on smeared marble paste, oil and acrylic paints also bear resemblance to stone walls or ruins that weather through time—an allusion, perhaps, to the impermanence of worldly materials in the longue durée of space and time. Materiality in Sadali’s works is therefore a paradox. It is a desire to capture a fraction of the Divine greatness, yet surrender to knowing that it cannot @B) ;%&&+/)Y%<%7:)'")%),7'$$+")'"$+7*'+,)*'%)+C%'&),'$/)$/+)%6$/(7:)Y%"6%79)@A@B= @@) ;%&&+/)Y%<%7:)'")%),7'$$+")'"$+7*'+,)*'%)+C%'&),'$/)$/+)%6$/(7:)Y%"6%79)@A@B=

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THE GIFT

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be perfectly captured through human creation. In comparison, the materiality of Salleh’s works demonstrates a rejection of medium specificity in the metadiscourse of Western modernism, where art is thought to be capable of reflecting the modern world. In Gunungan II, Salleh’s cyclical process of creation and destruction through the use of fire for its capricious nature is both a processual contemplation (an extension of Salleh’s daily prayer) and a surrender to unknowing and chance as a way to “see” things better.@W For Sadali, materiality and texture play an important role not only in the expression of beauty, but also his religiosity. As described in a note found in the artist’s archives, he yearned to regain human’s God-gifted poetic sensitivity through the interplay of textures, a subtlety of expression that he felt we had lost.@P Likewise, texture is significant in many of Salleh’s works such as Gunungan II, which involved a laborious and somewhat unpredictable and dialectic process of destruction and creation.

Salleh’s preoccupation with texture was further invigorated after his encounter with the Bandung artists’ works when he attended the traveling ASEAN Art Exhibition: Third ASEAN Exhibition of Painting and Photography as an art student in 1984. Salleh still remembers the Balinese prahu (boat) of Srihadi Soedarsono (b. 1931), the calligraphy on the textured and fragmented surface of A .D. Pirous’s canvas (b. 1932) and Sadali’s Bars with Gold Remnants.@Q But it was the reproduction of Sadali’s painting Gunungan dan Bulatan (Gunungan and Circles) on an illustrated page shared by Salleh’s Indonesian colleague that made a strong impression during his initial experiment with texturality.@] Furthermore, like Sadali,@b Salleh also found appreciation in Antoni Tapies’ (1923–2012) works, an abstract Catalan artist who is known for his exploration of textures and humble everyday materials.@V While their practices are defined by an often-rigid distinction between modern and contemporary art discourses in the Southeast Asian context, both artists interrogate the largely

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THE GIFT

secular vision and conception of modernity in their practices.

Their heightened attention to materiality is a way to unveil the true reality and beauty that indicate the existence of God as the almighty Artist. Echoing perennial thoughts in Islamic art history proposed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Ibrahim Titus Burckhardt, Sadali believed that art is a form of devotion. Sadali thought of his paintings as methods, tools and products of that devotion and dhikr (reflection and an awareness of God). In the development of modern art in Indonesia, this devotional aspect of art was thought of by Sadali and reiterated by Sanento Yuliman as dimensi yang tersisihkan or the “neglected dimension.”@U Salleh’s artist’s statement for Trimurti also shows a similar understanding of the significance of Islamic religiosity in his artistic practice. Salleh was influenced by the works and ideas of Sadali and those who shared similar views, such as A .D. Pirous, Sulaiman Esa, Latiff Mohidin and Ibrahim Hussein. Salleh reaffirmed that his artistic practice is an extension of ibadah or religious servitude for God and the community of umma.WA Therefore, even though the gunungan motif in Sadali and Salleh’s paintings might reflect different movements and cosmological relations, it also pictures similar ethical, political and aesthetic assemblages guided by Islamic ethics and piety.

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Biographies

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A visual artist, filmmaker and storyteller, Korakrit Arunanondchai employs his versatile practice to tell stories embedded in cultural transplantation and hybridity. His body of work merges fiction with poetry and offers synesthetic experiences engaged in a multitude of subjects primarily based on lives of family, friends, and colleagues as much as local myths.

Arunanondchai has collaborated extensively on videos, performances and music with others.

The first video in Arunanondchai’s series 2012–2555 (2012) arose from the ideas of death, rebirth and the fictionalisation of time. It was shown at MoMA PS1, New York. The video installation was also accompanied by a live performance, created alongside Arunanondchai’s twin brother Korapat Arunanondchai and performance artist, boychild and artist Alex Gvojic, for the museum’s Sunday Sessions. In 2015, his work Painting with History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 3 was exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and for his first solo show at BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY in 2016.

In early 2018, Arunanondchai co-founded Ghost Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Thailand aimed to support the video and performance art series entitled Ghost. He curated its inaugural series, Ghost:2561, in Bangkok. Arunanondchai lives and works in New York and Bangkok.

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THE GIFT

Over the course of his decades-long practice, Gabriel Barredo sought to create opuses, building them through months of bricolage, sketching and painting. Combining intricate design and sub-narratives, Barredo’s works are distinctive for their ornate visual language and often feature sound and light, as well as moving mechanical parts. His works have shown internationally, cementing the status of his pioneering work in kinetic sculpture in the Philippines.

Joseph Beuys was a German artist, teacher and art theorist who was highly influential in international contemporary art through the latter half of the 20th century. In the early years of the Fluxus art movement, he was part of its artist network in Germany. He was also a practitioner and exemplar of Happenings and performance art.

Beuys’s work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy, and anthroposophy; these culminate in his “extended definition of art” and the idea of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) that he ascribed creative and participatory properties, as well as the potential to shape societal and political processes. While he employed a range of media such as paint, sculpture, graphic art and installation, his career was characterised by open public debates on a wide range of subjects including political, environmental, social and long-term cultural developments.

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Higashiyama Kaii graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (presently Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) in 1931, specialising in paintings in the Nihonga style, a Meiji-era aesthetic approach that expanded upon earlier traditional conventions. Kaii became the first Japanese artist to be awarded a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) scholarship to further his education in Germany, where he studied at the Berlin University of Germany from 1933 to 1935. He was drafted into the Japanese army during World War II, but returned to his practice after and created a series of masterpieces, such as Afterglow (1947) and Road (1950), which received special recognition at the Nitten (日展) exhibition.

By confronting nature in earnest, Kaii created a deeply reflective world through his art. While highly esteemed for its universal qualities, his work also reflected a uniquely Japanese outlook and ethos. Kaii returned to Germany and Europe on multiple occasions, and has held notable museum presentations in Germany, including an exhibition of drawings presented at Altes Museum and the Leipzig Museum in 1979, and a solo exhibition in Germany in 1989. His paintings are in the collections of several museums in Japan, the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin ( JDZB), and commemorative exhibitions of his works were held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2008, the National Art Center, Tokyo and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in 2018. He was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Emperor of Japan in 1969.

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Ho Tzu Nyen makes films, installations and performances that begin as engagements with historical and theoretical texts. His recent works are populated by metamorphic figures such as the Weretiger (One or Several Tigers, 2017) and the Triple Agent (The Nameless, 2015), under the rubric of The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, an ongoing meta-project.

His works have been presented at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media; Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg; Kunstverein in Hamburg; Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai; Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Guggenheim Bilbao and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. He was featured in the Singapore Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

Ho’s recent group exhibitions include the 12th Gwangju Biennale, Aichi Triennale and 2 or 3 Tigers at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. With Taiwanese artist Hsu Chia-Wei, he also co-curated The Strangers from Beyond the Mountain and the Sea, the 7th Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

Artist And Contributor biogrAphies

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Salleh Japar is a multi-disciplinary artist whose conceptual work addresses concerns of identity and society, Muslim values and globalisation.

Combining contemporary concepts of aesthetics with Islamic philosophical ideologies, Salleh’s paintings, sculptures and installations culminate in expressions of spirituality and religion.

Japar came to prominence through his involvement with the seminal 1988 collaborative exhibition Trimurti, and as a representative showing in the Singapore Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. He received formal artistic training from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore before going on to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the Curtin University of Technology, Australia in 1990. He went on to pursue his interest in art training and education at the University of Central England, Birmingham in 1994 and later earned a Master’s degree in Art by Research from RMIT University, Melbourne in 2005.

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Koh Nguang How is an artist and independent researcher on contemporary art in Singapore. He was a curatorial assistant at the National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore from October 1985 to January 1992. Koh’s artistic practice began in 1988, encompassing photography, collage, installation, performance, documentation, archiving and curating.

Koh has been associated with the art collective The Artists Village since 1989, and started to exhibit art archives at Gallery 21’s Performance Week in 1992. In 2005, he initiated the Singapore Art Archive Project (SAAP) with which he presented more than 15 thematic works and exhibitions in Singapore and abroad, including Artists in the News at the Singapore Biennale 2011: OPEN HOUSE , Art Places at Jendela Visual Arts Space and On the Cusp: Early Contemporary Art Activities in Singapore (1976–1996) at the Singapore Art Museum.

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THE GIFT

Anthony Lau was a sculptor known for an aesthetic that focused on “truth to material.” He trained at the Brighton College of Art, England and Indiana University, USA , and was also an arts educator. Lau worked with metal and wood to create compelling sculptures, culminating in an oeuvre emblematic of the developments in modern sculpture in post-independence Malaysia. His works have been widely exhibited in Malaysia, and further afield in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Italy and France.

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman’s artistic approach incorporates Body Art, Minimal Art, Performance, as well as video art. After studying mathematics, physics, and art for his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, he received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Davis, in 1966. Since 1979, Nauman has lived and worked in Galisteo, New Mexico. The confrontation with and exploration of the body is a theme that Nauman revisits time and time again through his performance, video, holography, installation, sculpture, and drawing.

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Donna Ong is an installation artist from Singapore, best known for her evocative and thought-provoking environments made from furniture, found objects and original artwork. She has exhibited her work locally and internationally, in shows such as the Gallery Children’s Biennale at National Gallery Singapore; the Thailand Biennale, Krabi; Touchwood in the Museum of Modern Art Carinthia, Germany and the Moscow Biennale for Young Art. Ong’s installations have been collected by a number of institutions worldwide, and shown in various international galleries and art fairs. She has also participated in several art residencies, including the Arts Initiative Tokyo, Japan; Koganecho Bazaar Yokohama, Japan; STPI, Singapore and most recently, at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. More recent projects include the Kinderbiennale at the Gröninger Museum, Netherlands as well as a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.

Ong received her Bachelor’s degrees in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College London and Architecture at University College London, and completed her Master’s degree in Fine Art at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 2012. In 2019, she received the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award from the Singapore government, in recognition of her artistic achievements. That year, she also received the People’s Choice award for the President’s Young Talent Competition.

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Ahmad Sadali was an Indonesian artist who furthered the genre of abstraction in painting. He embarked on his exploration of visual art in 1958 when he undertook a two-week study trip to the Netherlands funded by the Dutch cultural institution Stichting voor Culturele Samenwerking tussen Nederland, Indie, Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen (Sticusa). A year later, he received a fellowship to study in the USA and tour the art centres of Europe, the Middle East and Japan from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Division of Humanities.

Sadali arrived at abstraction in painting following years of creative experimentation, and his best work from this period is typically dated to 1980.

He was known a pious Muslim whose works were inspired by reflections on Al Qur’an. Sadali used lines, colours, space and texture as signs, tokens of religiosity and mortality that reached for spiritual awareness. For his pioneering work in the field of modern Indonesian art, the Indonesian government honoured him with the Anugrah Seni (Arts Award) in 1972.

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Ampannee Satoh studied Photography at L’École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, France and in 2013, received her Master’s degree in Fine Art at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, where she is now based. Her work draws on traditional subjects in her home region of Pattani, Thailand to examine issues of cultural identity, the concept of the nation-state, faith and individuality, through a wide range of media including photography and video.

Ampannee’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Patani Artspace, Pattani; A+ Works of Art, Kuala Artist And Contributor biogrAphies

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Lumpur; the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines; Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway; the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; TS1 Yangon, Myanmar; Para Site, Hong Kong and Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore. Her work has been collected by institutions such as the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai and the Singapore Art Museum. She was awarded the First Prize for Photography in the Young Thai Artist Award, Bangkok, in 2017.

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Dolorosa Sinaga is an artist and human rights activist. After graduating from the Jakarta Art Institute and Central St. Martin’s School of Art, London, Sinaga joined the humanitarian movement Voluntary Team for Humanity, under which she organised the fundraising Art For Friends exhibition with the National Commission on Violence Against Women, to support advocacy for women’s rights across several regions in Indonesia.

In 2012, she crafted a syllabus for a new class on Art Activism at the Jakarta Art Institute’s Faculty of Fine Arts. She organised the 2016 exhibition Chronicle of IANFU, held in remembrance of the women held in sexual slavery by the Japan Military Institute during World War II. She also coordinated the Turn Left Festival Exhibition, which included public talks centring around political propaganda disseminated by the militarised Indonesian regime of 1965.

Her curatorial work goes beyond activism: Sinaga has served as head of the jury to assess artistic proposals for Indonesia’s participation in the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, and was appointed Honourable Patron of Hampstead School of Art, London the same year. She was also selected to create a monument of the first President of the Indonesian Republic, Soekarno, in Ajier, Aljazair. Sinaga was most recently appointed Artistic Director of the 2021 Jakarta Biennale.

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Tang Da Wu is widely regarded as central to alternative art practices in Singapore. A graduate of Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 1988, he led a group of young artists to establish The Artists Village in Singapore. The art collective spearheaded artist-initiated projects in performance, installation and painting, as well as exhibitions in public spaces.

Since the 1990s, Tang’s artworks have dealt with the subjects of memory, history and the environment. He was featured in the Singapore Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, and has since brought critical attention to the development of art in Singapore, with works such as First Arts Council (2011), Our Children (2012) collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and in an exhibition and performances at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. More recently, in memory of artists Chng Seok Tin, Tan Kian Por and Lee Wen, he led a two-part performance titled (WALK DARKNESS WALK) by La Tristesse Opera, also in commemoration of the opera’s 10th anniversary.

THE GIFT

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Holly Zausner is an artist who works in film, performance, photography, sculpture and collage. She graduated from Boston University, Bard College and The New York Studio School. In the 1990s, Zausner lived and worked in Berlin, and currently resides in New York. She is a grant recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts in sculpture and has participated in the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) Artists-in-Residence programme for film in Berlin.

Zausner’s work has been presented at institutions including the Sculpture Center, New York; University of Tennessee Museum, Knoxville, Tennessee; Herbert Johnson Museum, Ithaca, New York; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; bode-museum, Berlin; KW, Berlin; Württembergische Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense, Denmark. Her work can also be found in public collections at the Centre Pompidou Paris; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin.

Writers $.$%*-2%9':"2'/'

Eve Loh Kazuhara is currently a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore working on post-war nihonga artist Tanaka Isson (1908–1977).

She is particularly interested in the historiography of nihonga, contemporary nihonga and the connected histories of art between Japan and India.

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Anissa Rahadiningtyas is an art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art in Indonesia and Islamic Southeast Asia. She received her PhD from the History of Art and Visual Studies Department at Cornell University. She was a 2019 fellow at Cornell Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences and is currently a part-time Assistant Curator of Asian Art at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum. She has also worked as an independent curator since 2008. Her interests include postcolonial theory, India Ocean studies, comparative modernisms and Islamic studies.

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Kannikar Sartraproong was a lecturer at Mahidol University, Bangkok from 1994 to 2005, and later taught at the Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand. She is the author of Rajadhiraja, Samkok, and Saihan: World Views of the Thai Elites (1998) and A True Hero: King Chulalongkorn of Siam’s visit to Singapore and Java in 1871 (2008). An independent scholar, she is presently working on a book about contemporary Thai novels. She lives in the United States.

Artist And Contributor biogrAphies

137

138

Interviewees ("'&7($#8%2-

Puay-peng Ho is currently Head of Department of Architecture and Professor of Architecture at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and holds the UNESCO Chair on Architectural Heritage Conservation and Management in Asia. Before joining NUS, Ho was Professor of Architecture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, assuming offices including University Dean of Students and Director of the School of Architecture.

Ho received his Master’s degree in Art in Architectural Studies and Diploma of Architecture from the University of Edinburgh, and practiced architecture in Edinburgh and Singapore before taking up his PhD research at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He has directed close to 100 projects in historic building conservation, heritage studies and consultancy works in Hong Kong, Singapore and China over the past 15 years. This includes the Centre for Architectural Heritage Research, which won recognition for conservation excellence.

Ho was named Patron of the International Dunhuang Project, British Library, and a member of the Senior Advisor Board of Global Heritage Fund. He currently researches and publishes in the areas of Buddhist art and architecture, and Chinese architectural history.

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Susan Whitfield is a scholar, writer, traveller and lecturer on the Silk Roads. She is Professor in Silk Road Studies at the University of East Anglia and Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Prior to her appointment, she worked at the British Library as curator of the Central Asia manuscript collection for 25 years, focusing on the work of M. Aurel Stein and others in the early 20th century. She developed and directed the International Dunhuang Project, an international collaboration to make information, manuscripts and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available online.

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Mi You is a curator and interim professor of art and economies at the University of Kassel/documenta Institute. She works with the Silk Road as a figuration for old and new networks and technologies. Under this rubric, she has curated shows and programs at Asian Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea; Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival, Mongolia; Zarya CCA , Vladivostok. She is currently co-steering the research/curatorial project Unmapping Eurasia with Binna Choi.

Her interest in the politics around technology and futures has led her work on “actionable speculations,” articulated in the exhibition, workshops and sci-fi-a-thon Sci-(no)-Fi at the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne, as well as in her function as chair of committee on Media Arts and Technology for the transnational NGO Common Action Forum. She is a curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale.

THE GIFT

Curators

139

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Joella Kiu is Assistant Curator and Research Assistant (Director’s Office) at the Singapore Art Museum. Her previous curatorial projects include to gather: The Architecture of Relationships, Singapore Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and The Deepest Blue at the 2018 DISINI Festival. She holds a Master’s degree in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a Bachelor’s degree in History of Art from the University of York.

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June Yap is Director of Curatorial, Collections and Programmes at the Singapore Art Museum, where she oversees content creation and museum programming. Her prior roles include Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator (South and Southeast Asia), Deputy Director and Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore and curator at the Singapore Art Museum.

Her exhibitions include: They Do Not Understand Each Other co-curated with Yuka Uematsu from National Museum of Art, Osaka, at Tai Kwun Contemporary; No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative; The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale with artist Ho Tzu Nyen; The Future of Exhibition: It Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore; Paradise is Elsewhere at Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany and media art exhibitions Interrupt and Twilight Tomorrow at the Singapore Art Museum. She is the author of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016).

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Selene Yap is Assistant Curator at the Singapore Art Museum. Prior her appointment at the museum, she has held research positions at the Future Cities Laboratory and Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Yap was also programme manager for visual arts at The Substation, Singapore, where she provided research and curatorial support for exhibition projects that sought to defy conventional use of the arts space. As an independent curator, she has co-curated the projects opening day (2017– 2018), browsing copy (2019) and State of Motion 2020: Rushes of Time with the Asian Film Archive.

Artist And Contributor biogrAphies

Acknowledgements >.?*@/(?A)J61+"+).%" BCD.'./.(<:EF?;/.(<:;<=:E(G*=./(?A)Y6"+)i%< EF?;/(?.;H:&--.-/;<@*:;<=:E(G*=./(?-A)Y(+&&%)3'6)%"I);+&+"+)i%<) E(HH*@/.(<-:6;<;I*J*</A).+"1)i+")>6' E(<-*?);/.(<A)K+&%"'+)N%77+$$:)0(7)2'"')LC%7:)K%7'F()>'7%"(:)) 2"$/("9)f%6:)`+1'"%)f'+,:)a%"+##%)f'+,:)`(?+C%7'^")*%"")I+7)K(&+":)) f+(");'C)%"I)a'5F"+#)./%"%#+1+7%" E(</*</:>*)*H(,J*</A)Y(95+)4/(("1:)M%$7'5'%)f++:)L&'*'%)R("1)%"I)R("1)Y'%)K'" 9?(=F@/.(<:6;<;I*J*</A)f%779)3,%:)L&'*'%)f'C:)Y6C%7');%"'(":)) .+()f(()N'"1)%"I)2"I7+)R%"1 BCD.'./.(<:>*-.I<A)Y+%""+$$+)e(()%"I);+E%#$'%")4/6" 6;?K*/.<I:E(JJF<.@;/.(<-:;<=:E?*;/.)*-A)4/(9)K9":)3%7+")3(/:)) 8,9"+$/)f'+,:).7%59)f%C:)f9"");'C:);$+</%"'+)R("1)%"I)i++)i+("1)4/("1 B=F@;/.(<L:&@@*--:;<=:9?(I?;JJ*-A)067D%'")N$+)0((7)N%"':)M%6&'"+)4/+("1:)) 4/6%)n'"1)>6':)8%E7'+&&+)f++:)f'C)4/9+)>("1:).%")4/++);+%")%"I)0'5(&+).%" 9;?/<*?-D.,-:;<=:8,(<-(?-D.,A).%");/'7)J+:).'v%"9)R%")%"I)Z/%"1);?+&'"1 M.-./(?:BC,*?.*<@*A);'*%)36C%7:);+(,)i6'/);%")%"I).'C($/9).%" 9F'H.@;/.(<:;<=:N*'-./*:>*-.I<A)4677+"59 9?(O*@/:M.-F;H:P=*</./QA)4+5'&)K%7'%"'

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