Attempts at 'Decolonising Decolonialism': Artistic Responses to Neo-colonialism in Southeast Asian Art

Theories of colonisation in Southeast Asia have articulated colonialism not only as a forced incursion by external aggressors, but equally as taking place within the region. Scholars compellingly describe colonisation ‘without soldiers’ and ‘through grammar,’ and as occurring ‘internally.’ How is this reflected in the region’s modern and contemporary art?     In this paper, I discuss artworks made between the 1950s and the 1980s within Southeast Asia, that allude to colonial apparatuses encroaching from within the region rather than from the outside. I draw on ideas such as critical regionalism, and the ‘audacity’ of the Bandung Spirit. I argue that through a comparative lens, if we shift focus laterally, we see how artists negotiated colonial legacies with and against each other. Embedded within the etymology of the term ‘culture’ is the action of tilling, suggesting that all forms of culture can carry colonial dimensions – even within seemingly anticolonial positions.

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Vera Mey is a Lecturer at the University of York’s Department of History of Art, and Co-Artistic Director of the 2024 Busan Biennale in South Korea. She recently completed a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, studying regionalist tendencies of Southeast Asian art during the Cold War eras in Cambodia, Indonesia and Singapore. Previously, she was a curator at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, and co-curator of SUNSHOWER: Contemporary art from Southeast Asia 1980s to now (2017). She is co-founding co-editor of the journal, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia (NUS Press).