On changing the terms of visibility and finding new words
By Jennifer Yang

'My Own Words' is a monthly series which features personal essays by practitioners in the Southeast Asian art community. They deliberate on their locality's present circumstances, articulating observations and challenges in their respective roles.

In one of the more pessimistic moments of my academic career—my Honours dissertation had been freshly turned in only a mere month prior—a student asked me if I, an art history graduate, could advise on studying things of “lesser relevance”. I smiled to signal that I amicably disagreed with the question’s insinuations but, admittedly, there was a logic to her words. In a nation where the walls seem to be closing in on both prospective and existing arts workers, we are continuously signalled our unimportance through the defunding of arts education, artists’ and research grants, and cultural institutions. Only recently, the election of a Labour Government in Australia wrangled in Revive, a new national arts and culture policy framework. It promises AUD286 million and a suite of initiatives delivered over the course of a five-year plan to inject life back into the arts and entertainment industry, still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic. But if it is any indicator of the lag between policy and reality, I should mention that the latest addition to my list of un-or-under-paid donations of time is a panel discussion on Revive. It was an occasion embellished with all the necessary accoutrements of finger food and champagne, a harbourside venue, and event staff flown into Sydney... but with no budget space for speakers’ fees.

This struggle for relevance and visibility is one embedded in art historical research, and a recurring problematic for feminist researchers and scholars of non-Euroamerican art. It is most famously evinced in Linda Nochlin’s provocation, “why have there been no great women artists?”.¹ As we scramble to re-discover and elevate forgotten figures to the status of the “greats”, are we simply filling in absences of an already problematic canon, taking up the master’s tools to seal the structures of oppression? I recall in my high-school years, wishing to command admiration in the manner the school prefects did, and to speak with the same mastery of language I thought I could never quite simulate. I took up my chance at a Friday morning assembly in my final year. I was recounting a programme at the National Gallery of Australia and was pleased with myself for crafting one of those excellent-sounding speeches with the occasional comedic quip. Afterward, the school executives huddled to whisper their compliments... so “well-spoken”, “eloquent”! My friend chimed in with a more astute observation: “you sounded so white!” Although I had not truly grasped it then, I realise now that the preconditions for visibility are not separate from the uneven strictures of cultural hegemony.

Yet, I still found joy in the work of recovery. Around the time I began my Honours year, my supervisor Yvonne Low sent me the writings of the Chinese-Indonesian art critic Oei Sian Yok (1926–2000), which had been translated by Brigitta Isabella.² It is rare to encounter research on Chinese-Indonesian art circles in the early 20th century, for much had been erased from history in the wake of Suharto’s anti-communist campaign. I studied her work in relation to an artist, Chiang Yu Tie (1916–2000), who was born in Zhejiang Province, China and migrated to Indonesia in 1948. Material was too scant for anyone to claim that Oei and Chiang were unsung pioneers of their time. But to look at the perimeters of their work, and not in relation to measures of “genius” or “originality”, was to shift the frame of art historical inquiry. Oei was a generous writer; she reviewed exhibitions by artists of repute but held space for the work of foreign artists, students, and commercial designers. Chiang, while a prolific painter, was also involved in Bandung art circles as a teacher of calligraphy, and textile design. There is a kind of solace or redressing, or a tending to a wound if you will, to be found in changing the terms of visibility and the habits of our wording. As May Adadol Ingawanij asks:

“What if invisibility is neither a symptom of her secondary status nor a lack, and agency has less to do with making visible actions and declarative enunciations that lay claim to autonomy, critique or opposition? What if agency means actions or non-actions that are far less invested in idioms of visibility [...]?³“

In other words, might there be other ways of defining agency and looking for its effects? I find consolation in Ingawanij’s line of questioning, for it offers alternative pathways for resistance—or non-resistance, as she might conceive of it—which are not purely staged through radical dissidence. It is a question which continues to reverberate through my practice, academic and curatorial.

A panel discussion on feminist research in East and Southeast Asian contexts, hosted at 16albermarle project space as part of the exhibition, ‘Our Grandfather Road’ (2021). Pictured from left to right: Dr Luise Guest, Dr Elly Kent, Dr Wulan Dirgantoro, Jennifer Yang. Although not present, Dr Yvonne Low was also an important voice which shaped this discussion. Image courtesy of 16albermarle Project Space.

Sam Lo, ‘Our Grandfather Road’, 2016, photographic print on sihl textured artistic archival paper, 90 x 160cm, ed. 5/5. Image courtesy of the artist and 16albermarle Project Space.

In June 2021, I inherited a project at Sydney-based 16albermarle Project Space which was initially conceived as an exhibition of privately collected works by 17 contemporary Southeast Asian women artists by the former curator, who was unable to continue working on the show. In a different sense from academic writing, there were tensions at play in curating; the show needed to be marketable. But to interpret the works only through the categories of “woman” and “Southeast Asian” artist would be an oversimplification. In many ways, the artmaking practices on show resisted such labels. Most blatantly, the exhibition borrowed its title ‘Our Grandfather Road’ from an early photographic series by Singaporean artist Sam Lo, who is transmasculine. The exhibition also gathered the works of artists from a wide array of localities. Indonesia was well-represented.This was a testament to the collector’s personal interest in the country, but artists also had backgrounds in Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Myanmar. Even here, the nation as a category fails to suffice; many, like Emily Phyo and BussarapornThongchai, had migrated elsewhere or practiced mobile, transnational livelihoods.

People dance to dangdut (Indonesian pop music) at an exhibition closing event and panel discussion hosted by Artlink Magazine, 16albermarle Project Space, and Balai Bahasa Indonesia NSW. Photo by Jennifer Yang. — People dance to *dangdut* (Indonesian pop music) at an exhibition closing event and panel discussion hosted by *Artlink Magazine*, 16albermarle Project Space, and Balai Bahasa Indonesia NSW. Photo by Jennifer Yang.

Further to my point, the artists are divided again by their choice of media, their generational milieu, with established names like Arahmaiani and IGAK Murniasih exhibited alongside emerging artists like Olga Rindang Amesti; and also their ideologies, for many would object to attempts to label their works as feminist. So, while it was not entirely possible to escape the allure of the paradigms of gender and geography, I laboured to produce a plethora of supporting material—a catalogue essay, wall-texts, a media kit, and public programming⁴—which challenged the thematic axes of the exhibition. Rather than fixating on monolithic conceptions of womanhood, nationhood, or regionality, I considered how potential affiliations between works and their socio-political motivations may be drawn through the broader thematic of “body” in response to “place” without neglecting points of contextual difference. I pondered how we might transgress those categories and find new words, ones which may still be imperfect but approach, infinitesimally, a more nuanced representation of the artmaking practices emerging from the region.

“Rather than fixating on monolithic conceptions of womanhood, nationhood, or regionality, I considered how potential affiliations between works and their socio-political motivations may be drawn through the broader thematic of “body” in response to “place” without neglecting points of contextual difference.”

This resistance to the exhibition narrative is most legible in text-based materials attributed to my name. It is, however, more accurately a sum of the work of the feminist researchers and curators who came before me, the critical conversations shared between my mentors and I, email exchanges with the artists, discussions which emerge from public programs, and the handing over of ideas and writing from the previous curator. There is no guarantee of success or disruption here, but there is possibility for continued deliberation and generative conversation which engender the conditions for repair or change.

Recently, I was asked by another student if it is better to work for an institution in which they felt as if they had no place, or to create a space for themselves from the outside. I could only admit that I was probably too deeply entrenched in academic institutions to advise, as someone who is preparing to submit a PhD proposal before the end of the year. But, I thought, I would “make do” anyway; there will surely be smaller-scale acts and adjustments which take place, ones which may not always be visible or wholly transformative, but that which make our work worthwhile. The student smiled and replied with an observation I agreed with. I am quite the optimist after all.

This essay was first published in CHECK-IN 2023, A&M’s third annual publication. Click here to read the digital copy in full, or to purchase a copy of the limited print edition.

Read all My Own Words essays here.

Notes
¹A question which haunts me, in my first-year art history tutorial classes and in my methodological thinking. From Nochlin’s seminal 1971 essay, first published as Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, ARTnews 69, no. 9 (January 1971): 22-39, 67-71.
²See Brigitta Isabella and Oei Sian Yok, “Translations”, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 3, no. 2 (October 2020): 285–309,
³doi:10.1353/sen.2020.0013. Accessed 22 May 2023.
⁴May Adadol Ingawanij, “Making Line and Medium”, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 3, no. 1 (March 2019): 15. doi:10.1353/sen.2019.0001. Accessed 22 May 2023.
⁵Exhibition catalogue available digitally: https://www.16albermarle.com/exhibitions/our-grandfather-road-the-gendered- body-and-place-in-contemporary-southeast-asian-art. Accessed 22 May 2023.