Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The West’s view of Asia is often impregnated with an exoticness that ultimately prevents a more accurate or comprehensive understanding of the complexities and subtleties of cultures from that continent – which obviously poses difficulties when it comes to being described in general terms, seeing as it houses half the planet’s population. Not by chance, the Malayan Sherman Ong has said, during his stay in São Paulo alongside other artists featured in the show, that he nurtures “a special interest in social displacement.” In fact, a large portion of contemporary art productions from the region sets forth their own poetical vision of this highly peculiar symbolic and imagetic universe, creating new layers of meaning – and strangeness. The Asian artists featured in this edition of Southern Panoramas present works that are well illustrative of this scene.

The dimension of performance, which currently prevails in much of the art hailing from China and Taiwan, especially in photography, is a strong aspect of the work of several of these artists. Hou Chien Cheng, for instance, is featured in Panoramas with his All the others: standing in the middle of a very busy public staircase, the protagonist appears to question social invisibility, the way individuality can be silent and implacably absorbed and annihilated by collectiveness. The fact that he is a Taiwanese surrounded by Caucasians in transit even further underscores the atmosphere of indifference and solitude that the piece evokes.

Performance is also a strong feature of the video Mongolism (picture above), by China’s Tao Hui. In it, the artist moves through scenes and settings which, like his attire, are reminiscent of a typical, folkloric China, with overtones from soap operas from the mass media. However, similar to Hou Chien Cheng’s work, there is a certain attitude – or non-attitude – on the part of the main character, which endows his relationship with his surroundings with various meanings. Despite the visual delight that the piece elicits, there is a profound strangeness in the sequences, where the main figure, his attention-grabbing clothing and ways notwithstanding, slides throughout sceneries and groups of people in clear disconnection with himself and the social environment. The piece efficaciously questions cultural and gender identities, as well as the notion of social recognition and belonging. Artificially symmetrical planes further highlight this harsh critique.

Whereas a meticulous visual construction marks Mongolism, in Motherland (below), by Sherman Ong, the voice of reality is what emerges. The Malayan-born, China-based artist explains that throughout his production, he has had “a special interest in social displacement and the speech of people who have adopted a language other than their family’s original tongue. I am interested in what can be called the mother-tongue.” In the series of three videos that comprise the piece on show at Southern Panoramas, Ong straddles issues such as emotional helplessness, memory as an island of affective comfort, and of course the sensation of (not) belonging in one’s medium. It is curious to notice that while Ong’s camera creates a complicitous, intimate relationship with the three people who narrate their thoughts, the sociopolitical dimension of their experiences does not get lost.

China’s Ip Yuk-Yiu does something profoundly distinct, and yet related to Ong: he derives a sociopolitical commentary from a piece whose structural features at first seem to render that impossible. His video Another day of depression in Kowloon (below) does not include what is supposedly the essential item for an ethnographical examination: there are no human figures, or even images of an actual city, and yet the piece uses video game animation to create a symbolical portrait of Hong Kong. The timing of sight, bad weather, and urban decay are reminiscent of Tsai Ming-Liang’s films, and yet Yuk-Yiu’s work boasts a highly particular level of conciseness, as if the artist had placed us in the opposite of the metropolis, its existential vacuum.

The vacuum also interests Morgan Wong, another Chinese artist represented in Southern Panoramas. His video installation Demolishing Rumor contains elements from performance and tackles the frequent demolitions taking place in his country, in this particular case in the Caochangdi neighborhood, home to a large number of artist studios. “I don’t intend to make the typical critique to the Chinese situation,” said the artist, who is also averse to dichotomist views of art and politics, art and market. Thus, he created a piece that preserves the ambiguities of the event he comments on. A brick building (which is in fact a 1:12 ratio scale model of a building in that neighborhood) houses a monitor where the artist is seen hammering down a similar mockup. The ambiguities of the subject matter are therefore reiterated by the piece’s meta-linguistic character, whose vehemence is further reinforced by the insistent, amplified noise of the hammer strokes.

Alongside the artificial and human landscapes of the other cited pieces, the video by Indonesia’s Mahardika Yuhda transports our view to another form of landscape, situated at the boundary between natural and social landscape. The Brahmaputra River passes through Nepal, China, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh, and constitutes a major route for transit and commerce – including trafficking. Centered around the movement at an illegal port, the piece associates the role of separating North and South (which the river plays for Indians) and the idea of transition between the rural and urban settings. This is the only river in India with a male name, and this expands even further the wealth of meanings of the piece’s name (Suara Putra Brahma, “the sound of the Brahmaputra”).

Finally, another representative of the Asian continent has already become a Brazilian artist, in a sense. Working out of São Paulo for over a decade now, the Japanese artist and sociologist Nio Tatewaki mostly bases his production around photography. His pictures of São Paulo suggest an uncommon gaze for a foreigner: instead of typical sceneries and landscapes representing the more easily recognizable aspects of the megalopolis, Tatewaki focuses on the ephemerality of architecture in the city. In his photographs of demolished or hidden spaces (Sculptures of the Unconscious series), the artist gives body to the absences and impermanences in a city characterized by dynamism and the transitory, reflected by its difficulty in establishing an urban design identity.

Get to know the other artists and artwork in Southern Panoramas and follow the Festival program in our Schedule.