Recasting Tradition : Heritage and the Everyday as Critical Devices of Contemporary Southeast Asian Art

Abstract

Contemporary Southeast Asian art’s preoccupation with tradition and the everyday is a salient characteristic of the field. This paper argues that regional artists grapple with and harness aspects of tradition in their practice as a way of articulating complex social and cultural frictions arising in globalising Asia. It explores ways in which selected Southeast Asian artists have referenced tradition and the everyday—via images, media, techniques, systems—to develop critical perspectives on social realities. Through studied works, the paper considers how practitioners deconstruct, subvert and recontextualise elements of tradition to create artworks probing sensitive and sometimes politically taboo subjects. The paper shows how these references to tradition operate distinctly from the promotion of national identity. Starting with the reasons and stimuli for regional artists’ quest for new expressive languages from the 1970s onwards, the paper traces artistic change and its relationship to cultural heritage. It also examines Southeast Asian art’s singular appropriation of elements of tradition which are advanced as both expressively sophisticated and easily legible, a critical tool inspiring audience involvement and questioning, rather than an exercise in nostalgia or nationalistic essentialism.