I have been to an exhibition SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now in Roppongi, Tokyo.
Although I have only seen the exhibition of the Mori Art Museum yet, I highly recommend this exhibition so if you are still wondering to go or not I recommend to go!
I also attended a lecture as related events of this exhibition, ” Lecture “Difficult Comparisons: Surveys, Themes, and Other Ways of Curating Southeast Asia” “. Mr. Patrick from the University of the Philippines explained about the flow of contemporary art related exhibitions in Southeast Asia (mainly Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia etc) in this 2 to 3 decades using slide images.
In particular, in Japan, the exhibitions related to Southeast Asia were often held in Fukuoka (Even now Fukuoka is like entrance of Asia in Japan). And some more interesting facts I’ve heard were “exhibition of contemporary art of Southeast Asia like this is held in Tokyo for the first time in this 20? years.” “Think about 60% of the visitors at the Mori Art Museum are under forty generations, to see contemporary art in Southeast Asia will be the first time for most of the visitors.” “So they needed to think carefully about what kind of exhibition style will be the best.”.
While there may be technically somewhat childish artworks from the artistic point of view are also included, this time the exhibition focuses on communicating the current cultural and political background in Southeast Asia, and such works are intentionally included.
I think that I was interested in contemporary art in Southeast Asia probably since I saw it in Shanghai about seven or eight years ago.
There was an art fair named SH contemporary held every year, and at the beginning there were many participating galleries from Europe and the United States, but after some years later, the number of the participate galleries from Southeast Asia gradually increased, then I was quite surprised about the freshness of these artworks and I started loving the contemporary art of Southeast Asia.
Contemporary art in Southeast Asia is often like satire politics and consumer societies, but since there are some kind of humor to make fun of these facts and colors are bright, it is simply fun to see these works.
Occasionally, don’t you get too tired of watching too many beautiful artworks at museums?
Because works in this exhibition don’t make you tired, I recommended for those who say “Yes… I may visit museums but I don’t want to see difficult work now.”.
I am also a contemporary artist, but when I see a lot of works at once, my brain is very tiring.
People often see arts like me can get tired, so it is normal for people who usually do not go to the art galleries or or museums to get tired of seeing many artworks.
Somehow many people may think that we need to try hard to understand the meaning of each pieces. But if you get tired or can’t understand the meaning at all, just sit down and see it briefly, or seeing a little while walking around, it is okay to have a free way of seeing.
If I never understand the meaning of the work when I see it, sometimes I can suddenly understand it after a few years later.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why some people will be in love with contemporary art.
