Mapping Asia
An unfolding publication, exhibition and programme
April–September 2014
How we define ‘Asia’ at Asia Art Archive is the question we are most frequently asked. Acknowledging both the value and limitations of the map as a tool, this project practices a mapping of Asia that does not exclusively depend on the map as artifact, but as something that lives and continues to unfold. We share with you some of the threads and (to borrow a geological term) hot spots that are currently shaping our notion of Asia.
You can see the nice view of China from here is a travel photo taken in the 1970s, 20 years before the handover of British-colonial Hong Kong to Mainland China. For present-day Hong Kong, the significance of the sign as marking two distinct territories remains critical to understanding the dissension between them. The sign embodies the wedge between the territories, a relationship that is fraught with both dependence, with Hong Kong relying on Mainland China for nearly all of its energy sources, as well as distrust and resistance—Mainland Chinese still require a special visa to travel to Hong Kong, and there is a growing xenophobia of Mainland Chinese, who are often referred to as ‘locusts’ in the city. With its recent colonial history, status as one country/two systems, ethnic minority communities and fraught cultural and political identity, how has Hong Kong become a platform to reconsider the very idea of nationhood? How can we share these experiences so that societies in Asia and around the globe may enrich one another’s points of reference, providing alternative horizons and perspectives from those well-travelled?
From Hong Kong, we traverse land and sea, connecting Guangzhou to Peru, Lesotho and Elba; we attempt to summon mythologies and track roaming tigers; and we trace intellectual discourses around art and modernism from 20th-century Santiniketan, Yangon and Boston, to 21st-century Kaohsiung and London. By taking a field note-like approach and interweaving artist work, essays, an email exchange, literary extracts, a film plot, exhibition reviews, music, newspaper clippings and comics, we wish to open up multiple vantage points from which to consider Asia, looking beyond inherited boundaries, histories, political and economic systems to entanglements and connections across time, sites, and geographies. As part of Asia Art Archive’s ongoing work, Mapping Asia is one way we hope to positively destabilise the often debilitating notions of territories that we have inherited by activating less visible or dormant sites of knowledge.
Mapping Asia, a publication, exhibition, talk and performance series, is an extension of the third issue of AAA’s e-journal, FIELD NOTES.
FIELD NOTES #3 and publication
Agha Shahid Ali, Steven Apotheker, Rasheed Araeen, Adam Bobbette, Francisco Camacho, Oscar Campomanes, Rachel Chamberlain, Chen Kuan-hsing, Chun Wa Chun, Teboho Edkins, Amitav Ghosh, Toru Hanai, Brinda Kumar, Ho Tzu Nyen, Joan Kee, Yin Ker, Tina Le, David McClure, MAP Office, Andrew Ross and MTL (Nitasha Dhillon and Amin Husain), Gerui Wang, Robert Wessing, Phoebe Wong, Zhou Tiehai
Exhibition
Agha Shahid Ali, Maria Thereza Alves, Bagyi Aung Soe, Adam Bobbette, Francisco Camacho, CAMP, Teboho Edkins, Harry Harrison, Karta Healy, Zarina Hashmi, Ho Tzu Nyen, Kwan Sheung-chi, MAP Office, Erbossyn Meldibekov, Naeem Mohaiemen, Tom Molloy, Wong Hoy Cheong, Robert Zhao, Zhou Tiehai
Talks and performances
Roberto Castillo, John Clark, Sumangala Damodaran co-presented with Spring Workshop, John Nguyet Erni, Wong Hoy Cheong
