South by Southeast. A Further Surface

Featuring: Art Labor (Vietnam), Pio Abad (The Philippines), Jon Cuyson (The Philippines), Maung Day (Myanmar), http://frombandungtoberlin.com (trans-national), Nilbar Güreş (Turkey), Ahdiyat Nur Hartata (Indonesia), Maja Hodošček (Slovenia), Ana Hušman (Croatia), Eisa Jocson (The Philippines), Šejla Kamerić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Li Jinghu (China), Dalibor Martinis (Croatia), Sebastian Moldovan (Romania), Jakrawal Nilthamrong (Thailand), Aemilia Papaphilippou (Greece), Raluca Popa (Romania), Lia Perjovschi (Romania), Marko Tadić (Croatia), Saša Tkačenko (Serbia), Pradeep Thalawatta (Sri Lanka), The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (Romania), Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), Zhou Tao (China)

Common is the notion that the south lies at the opposite of north and that the north is supposedly ascendant, more prone to power, and closer to the imagined center. The south is cast as the peripheral and the dispossessed and that it gathers at the perceived fringes of provinces on a map of asymmetries. Such a curious psycho-geographical, or geopolitical, imagination yields another antinomy: the west and the east, bearing more or less equivalent valences as north and south. This procedure of organizing the world reduces the latter into polarities and verticalities, the west is modern and everywhere yet the east is timeless and afar. The situation where the south and the east cohere to form the coordinate of the southeast is exceptional. It is possibly a double negation: not north, not west. And as such, it is a productive locus: it is not the center, twice.

Commencing from a specific geography and a state of mind to generate a certain way of observing and understanding locality, the exhibition discusses the spectral idea of artistic initiative through the lens of materiality and reciprocity as poignant and also resolute stances. The body of works presented in the exhibition centers on the “Southeast” as a trope to understand the world today.

The exhibition extends the original concept of South by Southeast held in Osage Art Foundation, Hong Kong in March 2015 by the invitation of Guangdong Times Museum. It is a gesture of the Times Museum to trace its location to Southeastern China and to take part in mediating the imageries and geopolitical implications of the “Southeast” that were brought to the fore in the first part of the exhibition. Artists from Southeast Asia and Southeast Europe are convened to create an experience and a climate that evoke the structure of the Southeast.

Co-curated by Patrick D. Flores (The Philippines) and Anca Verona Mihuleţ (Romania)


“Artist as Visitor/Collector”
2016 Guangdong Times Museum + New Artrends talk series
Cooperated with New Century Art Foundation, Guangdong Times Museum holds “Artist as Visitor/Collector—2016 Guangdong Times Museum + New Artrends talk series” in 2016. The talk series focuses on how artists respond to different political, economic and cultural contexts, as well as institutional histories and structures, by creating not just artistic proposals or site-specific projects, but also by shifting their own roles from detached visitors to agents who observe, collect and intervene with social phenomena, cultural events and political issues with discrepancies. Instead of adopting the conventional mode of “production-display,” more artists tend to transfer these visits into opportunities of social investigation, information collection and cultural research in order to break away from the perspective of the Other as a cultural visitor and producer. Most of the speakers of this talk series are emerging/mid-career Chinese artists who have participated in international programs and exhibitions. They will share their own trajectories of art practice by reviewing their experiences as “visitor/collector” in various platforms. International artists who have been living or working temporarily in the Pearl River Delta are also invited to put forward their own research perspectives and projects about the rich yet complicated geo-political landscape.

Founded by art collector Wang Bing in early 2014, New Century Art Foundation (NCAF) aims to study and promote Chinese contemporary art. NCAF provides support for Chinese contemporary art outside of the existing art ecology. Through observation, research, and collaboration, NCAF offers multiple platforms to promote the work of young artists.