Looking Back, Moving Forward
09:30 am – 12 pm, Sat 15 Nov 2025
German Residence
257 Hoàng Văn Thụ, Ward 2, Tân Bình district (new Tân Sơn Hoà), HCMC
Registration link
From the organizer:
Goethe-Institut HCMC warmly invites you to Looking Back, Moving Forward — a book launch & discussion with Iola Lenzi (Singapore-based historian & curator) and Trần Lương (Vietnamese artist & curator), centered on Lenzi’s new publication “Power, Politics and the Street: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia after 1970” (Lund Humphries, 2024).
Programme Highlights:
“What is contemporary Southeast Asian art, and what field traits are shared across our diverse region?”
The first part of the event will kick off with iola Lenzi unpacking her recent book to examine how, why, and when artists in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and later Cambodia, and Myanmar developed comparable innovating contemporary art languages —initially unknown to one another.
The book exposes intraregionally connected aesthetic, conceptual, and circulatory modes, showing their relationship with local social-political-cultural contexts. The book thus makes a case for Southeast Asian contemporary art’s distinctive identity within global contemporary art.
This presentation will summarise the book’s central arguments and through examples, spotlight the 21st century continuation of essential characteristics of Southeast Asian contemporary art seen in the field as it emerged half a century ago.
Following Lenzi’s presentation, Trần Lương will offer a comparative perspective from Vietnam, drawing on his artistic and curatorial practice as collected in Trần Lương: Soaked in the Long Rain (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2024)—an anthology published to accompany his travelling retrospective of the same title, curated by Biljana Ciric.
Language: English & Vietnamese (with simultaneous interpretation)
Design: Hwa Ngô
Artworks mentioned:
– Josephine Turalba, Sandals (2012–) — slippers made from used bullet shells.
– Trần Lương, Welts (2007–, version 2010, Singapore) — participatory performance.
About our speakers:
iola Lenzi is a Singapore historian and curator of Southeast Asian contemporary art. Holding an LLB and a PhD in Modern Asian art history, her research and writings frame Southeast Asian contemporary art in Asian cultural and historical contexts, arguing for the field’s distinctive aesthetic and conceptual voice within global art.
She has conceptualised and lead-curated some 40 exhibitions in Asia and Europe, including institutional projects at Singapore Art Museum; ARTER, Istanbul; Bangkok Art and Culture Centre; Grand Palais, Paris; The Substation, Singapore; and Goethe Institut, Southeast Asia. Lenzi teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History, and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as well as in the Asian Art Histories MA Programme, University of the Arts, Singapore. She is the author of Museums of Southeast Asia (Didier Millet, 2004), and has edited five multilingual anthologies on regional contemporary art. Her most recent book is Power, Politics and the Street: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia after 1970 (Lund Humphries, 2024).
Trần Lương is an independent curator, visual artist, and major figure in creating space for critical contemporary art in Vietnam. A generous mentor of youth, Tran Luong goes beyond normal curatorship, encouraging performers to push the boundaries, creating exchanges between North, Centre and South Vietnam.
Trần Lương is currently the co-founder of APD Center and member of the Artistic Advisory Council – Asian Cultural Council New York NY. from 2019. He has also participated in many prestigious international art councils such as the Art Network Asia (ANA) (2003 – 2009), International Jury of 59th International Oberhausen film festival in Germany (2013). World prestigious art awards: Prince Claus Prize of the Netherlands (2014), The Andy Warhol Foundation Award for the Visual Arts (1999).
This event is under the patronage of Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ho Chi Minh City.
Follow updates on event’s page.
