Southeast Asian Artist: To Be Or Not To Be Abstracted Notes, Speculations and Dreams of Reset

Since its inception in the 1950s, the Southeast Asian ‘cartographic designation’ ⁰¹ – a cold war segregation – had been used as a springboard to explorations associated with foreign policy and warfare. A common way to view this region’s geopolitical positioning is that it has been fertile ground for other (wealthier and more powerful) countries to fulfil their own economic and military agendas.

For such exchanges, the rewards come in the form of benevolent gestures offered to Southeast Asia that are subsumed under categories of political protection and trade agreements. These economic pledges include employment promises in the industrial sector, as well as in the realm of the arts.

In the cultural sphere, the Southeast Asian-centred exploration has been the main study and framework for many research projects and professions.⁰² Significantly utilised (and monetised) by art and literary institutions are international and domestic cultural events tackling Southeast Asia as its theme.

In an essay in her book Character, Caroline S. Hau, professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies in Kyoto University, noted what she considered one of the toughest questions she encountered in her dissertation defense: ‘For whom are you writing?’⁰³

She wrote: ‘The question of audience – or, as I was soon to realise, audiences in the plural – has stayed with me all these years. The question has shaped and is, of course, fundamental to the study of language and literature.’⁰⁴

I adapted the question, customised it, and turned it around for others to ponder: ‘For whom are you doing your art? How is your art-making shaped by your conditions?’

Like Professor Hau, I find resonance in the questioning, and also see it as nuanced by the inescapable infrastructures of my origins, such as being a Filipino and a Philippine-passport-carrying art practitioner, who is automatically contained within the Southeast Asian grouping.

By proclaiming an art practice, I contemplate my location and position, and look at a selection of ways by which the region, particularly the Philippines, has managed being managed under this geographical identifier.

I.

Riffing on Hamlet, Southeast Asian Artist To Be Or Not To Be (2017), prods myself and fellow practitioners to assess our conferred value within the global art markets.⁰⁵

Intended as a cheeky epigram, the proposition is simple: The Southeast Asian brand becomes a predicament.

To be Filipino is to repeatedly adapt one’s position into something more desirable or, at the very least, decipherable. To be classified along with other Southeast Asians is to hinge on problematic comparisons and compartmentalisation.

Choosing to be is to navigate the Southeast Asian’s marginalised status in the world of art production. It demands wading through swamps of continuous individual and collective negation, or even fetishisation. To be is to strategically fit in often monolithic formats that are accepted in institutional spaces. Yet to engage in conditional structures comes with the awareness that the breadth of our so-called choices is only according to what is stringently allocated.

To opt not to be is to articulate a type of determination that wishes to resist being pigeonholed in a peripheral holding space. To also decide not to be is to possibly dismiss, erase, dilute the unrecognised narratives of our individual countries.

II.

With the proliferation of mega-events – biennales, fairs, festivals, auctions, summits, curatorial projects, plus other spectacles of similar cultural bent – there is the prevailing logic that ‘global awareness’ is attached to these artistic models. The Venice Biennale, created in 1895 and one of the firsts of such grand affairs, still holds high-tiered placement within the art world hierarchy.

These gatherings, whether state-sponsored or privately subsidised by patrons, promote the idea that they bring together country representatives to take part in intercultural exchanges where connections are fostered, and the local narratives of participating nations are given public representation or recognition. There is a designation of physical and digital spaces, in addition to a presumed flow of information. The accumulation and production of printed materials, online publications, merchandising, live and streaming discussions, archiving, podcasts, among others, are all designed to extend an artwork or artist’s media coverage. In these creative platforms, what is usually not paid attention to – barring all types of censorship – are technically and symbolically granted signal boosts.

Inclusion in these mega-events becomes a badge of honour, holding special and acclaimed standing among the stock of artistic achievements that usually receive notice from big and small cultural institutions.

But in the context of exclusion, a lack of industry pull or patronage, or friendships and networks, can be regarded as a probable rationale for practitioners to be removed and/or isolated from opportunities that bring their works to a larger art context and public.

Then again, we should be compelled to think: ‘…does earning a public nod automatically translate into mass reach?’…Which public/s? Whose nods?’⁰⁶

III.

To speak of – or to sell tourism in – Southeast Asia is to communicate the region’s romanticised tropes that display the sweet, the beautiful and the picturesque.

But to truly catalogue the landscape is to describe all its other significant characteristics: poverty and labor export, authoritarian and dynastic politics, indigenous struggles, precarious living, and limited mobility, as the citizens of most of the Asean member-states are almost always required to secure a visa to visit other countries.

Consistent in every Southeast Asian nation are historical narratives that involve violent expressions of colonisation, regional disparities, economic class struggles, uneven development, and civil wars. Also contributing to each country’s status quo are levels of government corruption, curtailed press freedom, military power seizures, and, of course, modes of resistance.

The ways in which these attributes are dissected, discussed and re-created for public consumption depend on who mediates the Southeast Asian (artist) discourse. Who controls and curates the conversations? How is the Southeast Asian artist propelled onto the world stage?

Given the compulsory Southeast Asian indexing, and the Philippines being only one of 11 countries in this bubble, which country would be deemed more palatable and profitable? Which provides better optics? Which are likely to receive more monetary support from international organisations? How lucrative – if indeed lucrative – is this particular identity in art institutions?⁰⁷

IV.

Mladen Stilinović’s critical work An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist (1992) easily comes to mind whenever one reflects on language and the politics of access.

The English language, in many ways, still remains dominant in the art world and academia. True, there are exceptions.

However, despite the existence of a national language in addition to the numerous languages spoken in the different provinces of the Philippines, English is still regarded as the primary medium of instruction in the country’s education system. It is also the language used in court proceedings.

Even with the Philippines’ educational crisis where illiteracy and access to schools are never-ending issues, knowledge of and facility in the English language have become a top selling point. With the promotion of a general population as ‘proficient’ in the language compared to its regional neighbours, an economic statement is broadcast to the world: that an exportable and bankable labour force, known collectively as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), is ready and available to provide manpower elsewhere.⁰⁸

The capitalisation on this language skill is also coursed through the phenomenon of outsourcing.  In 1992, foreign companies began call-centre operations in the Philippines, eventually earning for the country the brand of ‘call-centre capital of the world’.⁰⁹ Most of the employees are trained to speak English with an American accent.

V.

It does get tedious when one is constantly put into a situation of having to perform another language on a daily basis. Languages are belief systems. While being knowledgeable in most spoken forms can mean gaining (improved) access to resources, an offshoot of a continuing colonial mindset is to assume that one would receive ‘better’ or ‘upgraded’ service in the Philippines if one speaks English, especially with notable American or British inflections.¹⁰

In cultural arenas where we must constantly transact and translate ourselves, self-performances entail projecting personas based on who, where, and what we are performing for. (As artists) we envision a kind of audience that accepts (or will welcome) us, and we wrestle with the possibilities and trajectories in which our art and our writings can receive meaningful engagement.

Within the art exhibition economy, we (un)consciously conduct ourselves to accommodate the International Art English template, and we wonder at and imagine how lexicons regulate and affect our individual and even collective space, thinking and practice.

In places where we aspire to be seen and heard, what adjustments are we expected to make? What of our selves are we obliged to retain or simply let go?

Meanwhile, multiple worlds are seriously altered when ordinary words utilised in everyday life are now singled out in the United States, and perceived in the negative, simply because these are thought to encourage diversity, equality and inclusion. In 2025, the terms that have been flagged in government documents and ordered avoided or used sparingly include: activism, advocacy, accessible, people-centred care, cultural heritage, equality, feminism, social justice, women, identity, immigrants and multicultural.¹¹

VI.

‘Why are we training everyone in art school to become overnight careerists? What is the impetus that makes students say that the ultimate dream is to be an “international” curator or artist? Is it because being “international” offers us more leg room than being “local”?’

I wrote that fragment in an essay years ago when I was struck by this prevailing disposition.¹² Since then, I’ve constantly wondered: Is this the crutch to view our sense of self and location as always the subordinate?

When the notion of the ‘international’ reinforces the opinion that artworks from the West (along with other wealthy nations in Asia) are of better quality than the homegrown, I think of moments when it was normal to believe that graduate schools overseas are better, inclusion in foreign publications is more validating, and even art exhibitions are more triumphant when held abroad.

There is the nurtured attitude where people are socialised to think that a local practice can only travel the shortest distance. I speculate that this twisted aspiration for the international as a legitimising agent is rooted in different points in the country’s history.

Digging into the not-so-distant past, I find that this yearning for the international had been advanced in Philippine art as part of the country’s cultural agenda connected to the 1950s Cold War strategies and diplomacy.  This inclination for the international was furthered in the 1970s during Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s martial law regime, when then first lady Imelda Marcos, who had been appointed Metro Manila governor by her husband, envisioned the City of Man as part of her beautification programme.¹³

The suppression of press freedom, the disappearance and imprisonment of political activists, artists, writers and other cultural workers, the hiding and airbrushing of fundamental issues such as poverty and hunger, plus the hurried and also disastrous construction of spaces such as the Manila Film Center, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum, among others, were intended to transform Manila into a global hub of beauty, culture and commerce in Asia.¹⁴

VII.

It should be considered troubling, or tragic even, when the arc of comprehending Southeast Asia is tethered to the logic of the market.

In the last decade, creative industries were given significant spaces in commercial and academic landscapes.¹⁵ Granting that artists are workers needing to earn a living, creative economy packages loomed over Southeast Asia with the business models regarded as practical sources of financial growth for a country.

With the championing and practice of art production as essentially a form of livelihood, more than a tool for potentially radical discourse, what are likely to saturate the local spaces are creative hubs that expect profit-driven ideas and causes.

Even if the bias for the entrepreneurial is advocated as imperative for economic survival, one can still argue that a reliance on export-dependability templates encourages artists/writers to focus more on cultivating work that may be appraised as marketable. Experiencing unstable domestic employment, artists strive for the ‘international’ as a predictable motivation and marker, and the studio-to-market practice becomes the preferred (and the only accepted) road to take.

To tread this industry path is to typically follow the model of maximising profitability as the foundation for success. Unequal access to resources (such as decent paying jobs) encourages the competition for very limited resources (such as funding support). Those who are more connected and networked are able to accumulate projects and opportunities, leaving others with little or no chances.

How is the value of a cultural worker even calculated? Is it dependent on how much currency one can generate?

VIII.

Even if it seems almost inconceivable to envision a world in which those who are consistently in the peripheries can also claim the power to speak and to be actively listened to, we can repeatedly return to and improve on the questions I asked in the beginning: For whom do we do our art? What can we do to make it possible for us to do what we must?

Transforming the art worlds into sites in which people have the space and the right to resist unfair labour practices, fight all forms of imperialism, impose changes, and uphold freedom of expression, is the enormous challenge we face.

To re-define and re-design the metrics with which artistic labour is often measured is to give marginalised cultural practitioners a chance to re-position themselves in the creative landscape. Within the world context, impoverished Southeast Asian artists should also be able to exercise the authority to question (or even reject) the institutional standards with which their/our works are evaluated.

Early in 2025, the organisation Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) introduced the Artists and Cultural Workers Agenda, an ongoing study that raises the question: What kind of future do we want for Filipino artists and cultural workers?¹⁶ By refusing a position of resigned acceptance to state policies that disregard grassroots issues, CAP urges the public to advocate for cultural workers’ better working conditions.

2025 also marks the 70^th year since the trailblazing Bandung Conference was held on 18 April 1955. As a gathering of 29 countries from Asia and Africa, the conference showed the world the capacity of countries considered lesser in political and economic strength to convene, collectively condemn colonialism, and advocate for peaceful coexistence.