The ASEAN-KOREA Partnership Project for Innovative Culture (PIC) presents “Perseverance: Art Crossing Borders”. The exhibition offers a transnational perspective on contemporary art practices – not only of the making and viewership of art but also its cultures of collecting – from the 10 member countries of ASEAN as well as Korea. Through the generous loan of artworks from private collections and institutions from outside of the collector’s and institution’s “home country”, the exhibition questions this very term: what is a “home country”, when so much commonality is shared with what exists outside its very borders, and likewise, when so much alienation and polarity exist within them.
The exhibition wishes to highlight instead how the artworks present a sense of borders and boundaries as restless, ever-changing and dynamic. This, indeed, developed out of a specific culture of collecting that emerges from the countries included in the exhibition. At a time when divisions and distances create a pervading sense of hostility, these collections are testament to a deep-rooted curiosity and openness towards the other. They are a fierce reminder that boundaries are never static and always receptive to endless crossings. Beyond that, they show a mutual understanding of how perseverance is requisite in the practice of not only making and viewing art, but also in collecting them.
The artworks play a critical role in proposing alternative viewpoints on ideas about “regional identities”: how geographical specificities, micro- and macro-histories, as well as global forces, inform and shape narratives about what it means to have a collective sense of difference and similarities across borders and topographies that perpetually shift and are continuously reconfigured. This gives rise to particular artistic approaches in responding to issues ranging from ideas about the indigenous, rituals and the use of craft techniques and materials in a contemporary way, reflections on ecologies and engagements with the natural world, from cultural reorientations to the emergence of socio-political alliances through dominant media technologies. Together, the works display not only an inherent tension but also harmony within the regions – founded on a multitude of underlying ambitions, conflicts as well as negotiations.
We hope you enjoy the show.
Mitha Budhyarto and Bob Edrian.
Exhibition Curators.
(Curatorial text for 2023 ASEAN-KOREA Innovative Culture Exhibition, PERSEVERANCE: Art Crossing Borders, 14–25 November 2023, ART:1 New Museum, Central Jakarta, DKI Jakarta, Indonesia)