Stories Across Rising Lands

‘Stories Across Rising Lands’ is a survey exhibition of Southeast Asian contemporary art, co-curated by Museum MACAN’s curator Asep Topan and Jakarta-based Korean curator Jeong Ok Jeon. It features artists from across South East Asia, including the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia, who work in a range of media, including video, installation, photography, painting, and video performance. ‘Stories Across Rising Lands’ focuses on everyday actions and the small daily narratives that help to define social and cultural connections to place. As a survey of art from South East Asia, this exhibition reflects the diversity and substantial geographic spread of the region by emphasizing personal and fragmented connections to history and politics observed through the perspectives of artists. The exhibition includes eight artists and artistic collaboration. Born in and around the 1980s, these artists are connected by their generational experience of media technology; the impact of shifting economic and political discussions within their home territories; and approaches to different aesthetic formats that reflect the subtle movement between local, regional, and global contexts. The artists selected for this exhibition are widely respected and actively contribute to the various conversations of contemporary art in their home situations, whilst regularly participating in regional and global conversations.