- writing
To understand the art scene in a region, one has to travel it extensively. This section focuses on in-depth analysis of contemporary art events from Southeast Asia that render my senses captivated with their aesthetics, scale, worlding intention, and site-responsiveness.
Bangkok: If only it is seen, thus, from afar
Zicky Le, ‘Where I was, where I’m going’, 2025–ongoing, photographic prints on smooth pearl paper, dimensions variable. Courtesy: SAC Gallery, Bangkok and the artist “As countries unravel, stories of displacement become ubiquitous. For the young Burmese artists in ‘If only it is seen, thus, from afar’, curated by Sid Kaung Sett Lin,
Kuala Lumpur: The Plantation Plot
Minstrel Kuik, Residence Time, 2025, installation view. Courtesy: the artist, Ilham Gallery and KADIST; photograph: Kenta Chai “‘The Plantation Plot’ at ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, debunks the myth that the successful cultivation of land for crops is only possible through the rigid order and monoculture perpetuated by colonial plantation systems. Assembling wide-ranging work
Saigon: In Absence, Presence
Linh San, Embracement #1: This wrist, that wrist, 2022 (installation view, In Absence, Presence, 2024). Courtesy Nguyen Art Foundation, Ho Chi Minh City “Born between the late 1970s and the early 2000s, these artists work in sculpture, painting and video. The works are split across Nguyen Art Foundation’s two exhibition
Bangkok: Bangkok Art Biennale 4th edition – Nurture Gaia
A cartography of Bangkok and its parallel manifestations, BAB and its seventy-six artists strove not only to showcase its breadth of artistic creativity and engagement, but also to paint a complex portrait of its home city as a melting pot for the old and new, the local and the foreign.
TOP TEN 2024
It has been a great honor to write, converse, and think alongside the artmakers of Southeast Asia for the last two years. This TOP TEN list, while shedding light on critical artistic practice and unconventional exhibitions, is nowhere near exhaustive. Wrapping up 2024 and preparing for 2025 with a heart
Manila: Fever Dream
Detail of CONSTANTINO ZICARELLI’s Dust of men (vertigo records sunset), 2023, sticker (originally graphite on paper). Courtesy the UP Vargas Museum, Metro Manila. “Fevers are our bodies’ biological defense against illness. They also serve as a metaphor for the calenture of overwrought passion, the heat of the city, or the
Kuala Lumpur: Titik Garis Bentuk: Drawing as Practice
One of the oldest art forms known to humankind, drawing has witnessed something of a renaissance in today’s concept-heavy art world. Walking through “Titik Garis Bentuk: Drawing As Practice,” one could not help but notice the endless spectrum of possibilities embedded within this universal and ubiquitous medium: explorations of form,
Passage: Dinh Q. Lê (1968 – 2024)
Dinh’s storytelling was political but not politicized: He interspersed harsh realities with a generous dose of poetics and sensitivity toward marginalized communities—people whose lives were quickly swept under the rug after the war ended.
Baan Noorg Biennial 4th edition
“Thailand is no stranger to biennials. With the state-funded Thailand Biennale currently running, and the privately endowed Bangkok Art Biennale set for the end of this year, the country is quickly orbiting the biennial cosmos, radiating both local and international impact.”
Viva EXCON 2023: Antique
In the globalized age where a nomadic lifestyle is normalized, there is an ever-growing, parallel current that begs the question of returning to our roots. While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact location of these mythical roots, locality (a sense of belonging to the ground on which you are
Jogja Biennale’ 17: Titen
Biennials nowadays are about connections—and not only in the opportunistic networking sense. As social debates turn callous and any macro-narrative that does not fit into a cocktail-size conversation becomes disenchanting, we are all secretly yearning for something soft, small, even intimate.
Thailand Biennale 3rd ed: The Open World
My last memory of the Thailand Biennale was the sun in a cave, part of Apichatpong’s VR immersion, titled A Conversation with the Sun, 2022, at the Kochasan Conference Hall—a bright orb slowly emerging from the ground and swallowing me whole in its luminosity.