Navigating and Exhibiting Ambivalence: Yin Hua Artist Organization and Sino-Indonesian Relations in the 1950s to 1960s

Abstract

Abstract: This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism and spatial boundedness of the state project’s national identity construction and proposes critical terms of discussion that challenge the limiting nation-centric framework prevalent in the dominant modern art historiography discourse. Drawing on primary archival research, it describes accounts of Lembaga Seniman Yin Hua (Yin Hua Meishu Xiehui, 印華美術協會, Yin Hua Artist Organization), an art organization established in 1955 in Jakarta and analyzes it against the backdrop of the Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relationship during the Cold War era. By engaging with the ambivalent aesthetic and politic of Chinese Indonesian artists, this paper recognizes the active and strategic agency of Chinese Indonesians as both insiders and outsiders in China and Indonesia under the uncertain circumstances of their dual nationality status. It argues that Yin Hua ambivalently navigated between the political patronage of Indonesia and China, performed dual loyalty to Indonesian and Sino-centric art history, and exhibited multiple artistic lineages that disrupted the stabilized territory of postcolonial nation-state geographical and cultural border. Weaving exhibition history, diplomatic history, and critical ethnic studies through a thread of transnational perspective, this paper provides historical narratives that unsettle the roots of racializing logic in the political articulation of nationalism and pushes toward an epistemic shift in rethinking categories of national identity, ethnicity, and citizenship.