The Persistence of a Regional Imaginary: Contemporary Southeast Asian Art and Exhibition-Making, Then and Now

This thesis enquires into key contemporary Southeast Asian art exhibitions and art projects from the 1990s to the present. It addresses two overlapping research questions: Why does a Southeast Asian regional imaginary persist in framing contemporary art projects and exhibitions with links to Southeast Asia? How have art and exhibition-making practices positioned contemporary Southeast Asian art in the world, historically and more recently? In exploring these questions, the thesis examines the continuities and ruptures, or what has or has not changed, in regionalising contemporary artmaking and exhibitions in and of Southeast Asia over the past three decades. In this light, the thesis ultimately reflects on what it means to belong to the region, as well as why and how artists, institutions, curators and art historians have established belonging to and with Southeast Asia, then and now.