Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 9

The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art opened on 24 November 2018 at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane. Since 1993, the Triennial has brought to the fore the practices of artists and art collectives from Asia-Pacific, enriching the understanding of contemporary art in the region, as well as its cultural, social and political diversity. APT has attracted more than three million visitors over its 25-year history, and most recently in 2015, APT8 attracted an audience of more than 600,000 visitors.

This year’s exhibition includes eight interactive projects developed by artists especially for children and families in APT9 Kids, regionally-focused cinema programmes such as “New Bollywood: Currents in Indian Cinema” and “Microwave Films of the Marshall Islands”, and a public programme of artist talks, tours, discussions, performances and drop-in workshops.

APT9 features a number of Australian and Indigenous Australian artists, focusing on the country’s diversity of language, culture and traditions. Lola Greeno’s Palawa shell necklaces figure alongside Jonathan Jones project on language, and Vincent Namatjira’s family and political portraits. There is also a focus on Pacific islands’ artists bringing in their artistic skills, such as Marshall Islands jaki-ed mat weaving, and Women’s Wealth, a specially commissioned project for APT9 that includes the premiere of a new video by Taloi Havini, and textiles, pottery and body adornment by women artists from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands archipelago as well as Australia.

There are monumental installations like Qiu Zhijie’s Map of Technological Ethics, Nona Garcia’s X-ray works, Aisha Khalid’s tapestries and Iman Raad’s mural. Japanese artist Yuko Mohri’s sound installation of modified pianos and found objects plays an elegant musical composition in GOMA’s River Lounge extending onto the outdoor veranda. A major installation on QAG’s Watermall by Singapore’s Donna Ong and Robert Zhao Renhui explores the natural history and tropical identity of the city-state. Indonesian-born, Singaporean artist Boedi Widjaja presents a project that is the result of the Gallery’s collaboration with the Singapore Art Museum, and premiers at APT9, moving to the Singapore Biennale this Autumn.

APT9 also features Bangladeshi artists, like Munem Wasif and Ayesha Sultana, through a new partnership with the Dhaka Art Summit. From rural Malaysia, Pangrok Sulap – a collective of indigenous Dusun and Murut artists, musicians and social activists – bring their contribution, showing their community engagement through art. For the first time, artists from Laos feature in APT. Bounpaul Phothyzan is one of the most experimental artists from Laos, who explores important social and environmental concerns that the country is currently facing. Souliya Phoumivong is one of the few artists in Laos to develop a media-based practice, and his 2018 work Flow at APT is a stop-motion animation featuring handmade clay figurines. Tcheu Siong is an indigenous Hmoob Dawb who invokes a realm of Hmong spirits, stories and departed ancestors in her distinctive textile works.

From neighbouring Vietnam, multidisciplinary artist Ly Hoàng Ly explores the emotions of the new arrival, the resistance of the displaced, and the significance of memory to those far from home. Nguyen Trinh Thi’s Fourth Cinema (2018), typically combining her own moving images with found footage, turns to the possibility of an indigenous authority in filmmaking in Vietnam. As Zara Stanhope writes in a catalogue essay, “visibility and freedom of thought – or its absence – is a common theme in works by artists from Laos, India, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. In their works, Bounpaul Phothyzan, Mithu Sen, Tada Hengsapkul, Harit Srikhao, Martha Atienza, Ly Hoàng Ly and Nguyen Trinh Thi reveal unseen or distorted narratives and recent histories, highlighting non-Western contexts”. From Thailand there is also Jakkai Siributr, known for his immersive installations of sewn and embroidered fabrics. His meditative work at APT9 continues on his quest to uncover unofficial histories and reveal truths often avoided in official accounts, such as the sectarian friction between Muslim and Buddhist communities in Southeast Asia.

With the work of over 80 artists, collaborations and projects, APT9 adds a vital new chapter to the larger story of the Asia Pacific over the Triennial’s 25-year history. It is their inquiry, thoughtfulness and innovation that makes the APT one of the most anticipated art events in the Asia Pacific … — Chris Saine, Director, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) runs from 24 November 2018 to 28 April 2019 at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, Australia.