Field Notes From Artworlds

Abstract

This article explores the techniques through which art in Southeast Asia is crafted as a historical narrative. It argues that many of these are informed by the ethnographic, which is mediated in a range of ways as a method and a sensibility, broadly conceived as a reflexive framework. Deployed as a tangent to the art historical, the ethnographic is seen to be able to move away from the ‘Western’ perspective, reference locality and aspire to a possible postcolonial representation. Through a review of key texts in the history of art in Southeast Asia and case studies that reveal aporias of appropriation, it initiates discussion on how an increasingly global contemporary artworld demonstrates an interest in Southeast Asia and the impasse this interest creates as it renders its subject coherent through modalities of presence, from art history to the spectacles of exhibitions.