AWAKENING

[ 14 June 2019 – 15 September 2019 in National Gallery of Singapore ]

“This exhibition investigates how experimental artists acted as catalysts for change during some of Asia’s most turbulent decades. It spotlights artistic responses to major global events such as the Cold War, and explores how artists challenged political, social and artistic conventions. Co-organized by National Gallery Singapore, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Japan Foundation Asia Center, Awakenings draws connections across Asia through over 150 artworks by important artists from China, India, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc.”

Awakening: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s

Awakening is a special international exhibition that portrays the social, cultural and political throughout Asia in 1960s-1990s. It addresses the radicalism that emerges from capitalism, nationalism and anti-modernism, as well as the artistic trend that is formed throughout Asia that is symbolize as a socio-cultural communication.

Four years in the making, this is a big project to combine the work of more than 100 artists from 13 countries and territories in Asia. It is co-organized by the Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (MOMAT), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA) and the Japan Foundation Asia Centre. This exhibition explores three themes: Questioning Structures, Artists and the City, and New Solidarities.

     Questioning Structure focuses on artist structures, avantgrade artistic practices that challenged aesthetic conventions and social structures. It doesn’t only show frustration with old modes of art-making but also confronted local audiences’ lack interest in contemporary art. Artists and the City largely centers on work that critiques media manipulation, capitalism, modernization, urbanization and the influx of consumerism. New Solidarities is represented by artists from Philippines where they question the way female bodies are presented and the role they are expected to fulfill, collectivism, and the reinterpretation of history.

The use of art for social activism is not a new thing but Asian artworks are often overlooked or forgotten in global discussion about art. Artistic activism is a dynamic practice combining the creative power of art to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change.

In what seems to be a new era of intra-Asian colonialism, Awakenings offers a handbook for today’s artist brave enough to make socially engaged art.

When being asked whether the 1960s-1990s period indicates a high-water mark for artists’ political engagement, and even for democracy and liberalism in the region, co-curator Adele Tan says she refuses to be so defeatist. ‘We have to het cleverer,’ she says. ‘We have to find different tactics. We have to manipulate right back…’

read more in:
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3059287
https://ocula.com/magazine/reports/awakenings-art-in-society-in-asia-1960s1990s/
https://weekender.com.sg/w/do/awakenings-national-gallery-exhibition-art-activism-asia/