Papers by Caroline Ha Thuc
ArtPress, 2025
Between the local and the global, the colonial past and the contemporary capitalism, cocoa is a s... more Between the local and the global, the colonial past and the contemporary capitalism, cocoa is a subject of study for artist-researchers working in Asia. In this paper, Caroline Ha Thuc shares this experience of a collective and artistic form of research that led to the travelling show 'In Stranger Lands: Cocoa’s Journeys to Asia.'
Research-Based Art Practices in Southeast Asia, 2022
Research-Based Art Practices in Southeast Asia, 2022
Axel Vervoordt Gallery, 2022
For more than two thousand years, Chinese painters and scholars have been searching how they coul... more For more than two thousand years, Chinese painters and scholars have been searching how they could represent the essence of things, beyond their visible appearance, and how they could grasp the complexities of an ever-changing world through subtle and evasive landscapes. Jaffa Lam’s own quest for the indescribable is part of this tradition. With a contemporary language and a large variety of mediums, her practice challenges our ontological constructions and perceptions, injecting doubt and fluidity in our rigid modes of representation. Her artistic and personal landscape features natural elements such as rocks, water or wooden planks that constantly transform into one another. Like an alchemist, the artist plays with the usual categories of our reality in order to upend them and escape from their exclusive specificities, chasing their inner substance through permanent states of transition.
Abstract:The Name (2008-) is an on-going sound and image installation by Burmese artist couple Wa... more Abstract:The Name (2008-) is an on-going sound and image installation by Burmese artist couple Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung, featuring 33 portraits of important Burmese figures from the colonial era. Based on a systematic process of work that resembles the methodology of work of historians, the artists aim at correcting the way colonial history has been told and taught in the country. However, rather than being a mere post-colonial discourse and far from a didactic artwork, the installation plunges the viewer into an immersive experience that re-actualizes a myth of resistance and freedom, challenging both past and present productions of historical narratives. This article examines the artists' innovative engagement in research, which seems to be as much a means to gather information and facts about history as a strategy aiming at legitimizing a renewed historical perspective. It sheds light on the artists' potential position in society as initiators of emancipatory modes of know...
South East Asia Research, 2021
With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporea... more With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen questions today’s representations of South East Asia and attempts to embrace the region’s plurality, fluidity, complexity and intangibility from an artistic perspective. Based on academic research, the series embodies the artist’s effort to convert and transform the outcome of his research into multisensorial and empirical art forms. As such, the Critical Dictionary brings forth new creative possibilities and innovative epistemological languages that challenge today’s modes of knowledge production, and in particular a form of rational and scientific knowledge that dominates our society.
Cobo Social, 2021
Questioning the excessiveness of a materialistic culture based on an ever-expanding mercantile lo... more Questioning the excessiveness of a materialistic culture based on an ever-expanding mercantile logic and urge for rentability, British artist Tino Sehgal's live works, presented at Hong Kong's Tai Kwun, aim to re-establish art as a dimension of daily life and daily life as an aspect of art. In today's context of increased general vulnerability and sense of loss, his attempt to recreate an organic social space that favours spontaneous encounters, and values the sense of community, seems particularly relevant, in spite of the simplified vision of society it implies.
The Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts website, 2021
Friction Current: Magic Mountain Project is a multi-media research-based installation by Thai art... more Friction Current: Magic Mountain Project is a multi-media research-based installation by Thai artists duo Jiandyin created for the 2019 Asian Art Biennial. Inspired by the Biennial’s theme of Zomia, and by the mountainous zones overarching various states of Southeast Asia, the work delves into the illegal jade and drugs trafficking that unveils a border-free network of transnational connections flourishing across the region. It aims to turn visible these fluid trans-disciplinary relations that link the political, social, economic, cultural but also scientific and medical spheres within today’s systems of power. As such, the installation is the artistic embodiment of the artists’ foray into the fields of geology, chemistry, economy, culture and politics. It mainly consists of a sculptural water fountain made from marble and jadeite, and operating with drug-contaminated urine instead of water, a single-channel documentary video depicting the carving of the jadeite piece, and various drawings and artefacts that dialogue with these two main artworks. This paper analyses the installation and aims to demonstrate how all its elements crystalize and condense in a very original manner the complexity of the regional context and the issues at stake, inviting the audience to physically perceive the hidden violence that sustains jade mining and meth trade.
The text is published in Chinese language: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oIXDFv2OIefI6Sg7pRAhTQ
South East Asia Research
Vietnamese artist Tiffany Chung defines herself both as an artist and as a researcher. This artic... more Vietnamese artist Tiffany Chung defines herself both as an artist and as a researcher. This article examines Chung’s innovative and complex integration of scholarly research with artistic practice in The Vietnam Exodus Project. Begun in 2009, the project involves an on-going assemblage of cartographic works, archival materials, collaborative paintings and texts relating to the massive flux of refugees fleeing Vietnam from the 1970s, known popularly in the West as ‘the boat people’. Chung’s research-based practice is analysed here as a strategy to ground her artistic practice in the real and to give her work both legitimacy and value. The attitude of denial shown by Vietnamese authorities vis-à-vis the boat people’s exodus is the ultimate ground from which this artistic venture has grown.
Cobo Social, 2021
"Future Herbarium," Laurent Grasso's first solo exhibition at Perrotin Hong Kong, brings viewers ... more "Future Herbarium," Laurent Grasso's first solo exhibition at Perrotin Hong Kong, brings viewers into a not-so-distant future where mutant flowers have become scientific objects of study, inspired by recent ecological transformations, disasters and challenges. Working in collaboration with scientists and experts, the French artist explores man's recurrent fascination and fear of the unknown, opening poetical gaps in our beliefs and certitudes.
South East Asia Research, 2021
With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporea... more With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen questions today’s representations of South East Asia and attempts to embrace the region’s plurality, fluidity, complexity and intangibility from an artistic perspective. Based on academic research, the series embodies the artist’s effort to convert and transform the outcome of his research into multisensorial and empirical art forms. As such, the Critical Dictionary brings forth new creative possibilities and innovative epistemological languages that challenge today’s modes of knowledge production, and in particular a form of rational and scientific knowledge that dominates our society.
Arts of Southeast Asia, 2020
For her 2016 video 'Letters from Panduranga,' Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trinh Thi (b.1973) spent t... more For her 2016 video 'Letters from Panduranga,' Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trinh Thi (b.1973) spent two years visiting the Cham ethnic minority in central Vietnam, inquiring about its matriarchal Hindu traditions and customs, against the backdrop of a nuclear plant construction project on their territory. Nguyen’s video, indirectly at least, gives this community a voice, and implicitly challenges Vietnam’s policies towards such ethnic minorities, whose rights are often ignored. From a wider perspective, it explores the processes of remembrance and collective memory when a living culture is mythicized or locked down in museums. Simultaneously, it raises the significance of engaging in an artistic practice that uses ethnographic methodologies as means to address the treatment of ethnic minorities. A such, the artwork questions the role of the artists in today’s society and their ability to reflect upon another culture, without exploiting or misreading it.
Arts in Southeast Asia, 2020
In Cambodia, the concept of contemporary art remains an “amorphous conception.” Pamela Corey show... more In Cambodia, the concept of contemporary art remains an “amorphous conception.” Pamela Corey showed how three distinct artists, Leang Seckon, Vann Nath and Sopheap Pich, can all claim to be “the first Cambodian contemporary artist.” As far as research-based artists are concerned, the question is even more difficult since what is a research-based artwork cannot be neatly defined either. However, and even though the dates and selection of artists can be debatable, Messengers (2000) by Ly Daravuth and the Bomb Pond series (2009) by Vandy Rattana offer two useful benchmarks and points of departure to understand the development of such practices in the country, and the evolution of their form.
CoBo Social, 2020
Deeply informed by the socio-political and cultural context of her country, Burmese artist Nge La... more Deeply informed by the socio-political and cultural context of her country, Burmese artist Nge Lay explores our conceptions of time, memory, and Myanmar's traditions, with a focus on gender issues. She expresses herself mainly through performances, installation art, and photography, and is deeply involved in community-based art projects.
ArtPress, 2020
Today, an increasing number of artists from SEA are challenging the established systems of knowle... more Today, an increasing number of artists from SEA are challenging the established systems of knowledge production inherited from the West and/or modelled on local dominant ideologies.
CoBo Social, 2020
A co-founder of Sa Sa Art Projects and one of the most promising artists from Cambodia, Lim Sokch... more A co-founder of Sa Sa Art Projects and one of the most promising artists from Cambodia, Lim Sokchanlina explores and documents the current socio-economical changes that radically transform his country and its inhabitants’ modes of living. First exhibited at Phnom Penh Photo Festival in 2018, his series “Wrapped Future II” has been selected for the 2020 Sovereign Asian Art prize. Caroline Ha Thuc delves into the artist’s practice and drive.
CoBo Social, 2020
Against any kind of predetermined framework and syntax, Hong Kong artist Samson Young develops em... more Against any kind of predetermined framework and syntax, Hong Kong artist Samson Young develops emancipatory forms of languages that cut across and connect various disciplines, expressing unexpected features of reality. In particular, his practice constantly expands the fields of sound and music by reversing our perceptual habits through innovative sensory and intellectual experiences.
CoBo Social, 2019
From the outset, "Every Step in the Right Direction," the title of the sixth edition of the Singa... more From the outset, "Every Step in the Right Direction," the title of the sixth edition of the Singapore Biennale, impulses a positive energy. Featuring 77 artists and art collectives, it takes place this year in 11 different venues across the city and aims at highlighting the transformative power of art, seen as a potent agent of change. Patrick Flores, its artistic director and chief curator, places it under the umbrella of Salud Algabre (1894-1979), a Filipino woman who fought against American colonialism and defended the rights of the peasants all her life. As a woman coming from a lower-class population, her long, yet unabated, struggle embodies the potency of all emancipatory projects against any normalized yet exclusive established order. The Biennale is far from being straightforward political, though. Rather, "Every Step in the Right Direction" focuses rather on local, almost humble, artistic initiatives that contribute to imperceptible but tangible changes. The general impression is a collection of micro narratives which, when added, bring forth renewed perceptions of the social, cultural and political transformations associated with today's globalization and modernity. This multiplicity expands also our conception of Southeast Asia as a region usually defined from a narrow geopolitical perspective. Instead, Flores aims at reimagining the region from an ethical and geo-poetic dimension, favoring a more relational and open approach. The curatorial team comprising of Flores and six curators hailing from different backgrounds and locales around Southeast Asia and Asia, facilitates this diversity.
Cobo Social, 2020
Phan’s work revolves mainly around two fundamental yet often neglected events that strongly marke... more Phan’s work revolves mainly around two fundamental yet often neglected events that strongly marked Vietnamese history: the romanization of the written Vietnamese language by French Jesuit Alexander de Rhodes in the 16th century, and the great famine that occurred during the Japanese occupation in 1945.
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Papers by Caroline Ha Thuc
The text is published in Chinese language: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oIXDFv2OIefI6Sg7pRAhTQ
The text is published in Chinese language: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oIXDFv2OIefI6Sg7pRAhTQ
Featuring more than 100 artists (many interviewed first-hand), this book analyses how art has evolved against a backdrop of radical social, political and economic change since the turn of the century. It is the fascinating story of contemporary art in 21st century China.