Conceptual Strategies as Markers of Southeast Asian Contemporary Art: Context and Methods

03 pm – 05 pm, Sun 18 May 2025
Heritage Art Space Library
Floor 2, No.6 alley 168 Hào Nam, Ô Chợ Dừa, Đống Đa, Hà Nội
Registration link

From the organizer:

In socially and politically turbulent post-colonial 1970s Southeast Asia, new languages of art began emerging around the region. Paintings, prints, installations, and performances critically engaged the contemporary condition in ways standard descriptive painting could not. In this slide presentation, Southeast Asian art specialist iola Lenzi uncovers how Southeast Asian artists, from Jakarta, to Singapore, to Bangkok, to Hanoi, developed conceptually underpinned aesthetics and circulation strategies to forge ongoing conversations with viewers about issues impacting society. Showing how conceptual approaches in Southeast Asian art grew from local roots, not imitations of Western Conceptualism, Lenzi underlines how these conceptual methods function, and why they are a key marker of Southeast Asian contemporary art. Looking at art from across Southeast Asia, with emphasis on Vietnamese examples, Lenzi argues for the distinctive voice of Southeast Asian practices within global contemporary art.

Programme
02:30 pm – 03 pm: Check-in.
03 pm – 03:10 pm: Start.
03:10 pm – 04:40 pm: Iola Lenzi’s Lecture.
04:40 pm – 05pm: Q&A.

Ticket: 100,000 VND/ person, 50% discount to 50,000 VND/person for students or HAS library’s members.
Language: English with support in interpretation (Vietnamese)
Maximum number of participants: 30 people
The workshop is for everyone from 15 years old.

Iola Lenzi
Art historian and Curator
Nanyang Technological University

Iola Lenzi, LLB Bachelor of Laws, PhD is a Singapore historian and curator of Southeast Asian contemporary art. Framing her research in Asian cultural and historical contexts, Lenzi illuminates connections between artistic innovation and social-political conditions in post-1970 Southeast Asia, with specialist interest in contemporary art developments in 1990s Hanoi. She teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and curatorial methods at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and in the MA Programme of UA, Singapore. She has solo or lead-curated some 40 exhibitions in Asia and Europe, and authored-edited six multilingual anthological research publications on Southeast Asian art. She is the author of Museums of Southeast Asia (2004), and her most recent book is Power, Politics and the Street: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia after 1970 (Lund Humphries, 2024).

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