Indigenous Art and Archives: Care and the Global Community

June 14, 2022 — 5pm-7pm CEST (GMT+2)

Virtual program streamed live from the PORT Perak project Pera + Flora + Fauna at the 59th Venice Biennale

Curators, scholars and researchers Liisa-Ravna Finbog, Biung Ismahasan, Việt Lê, and Annie Jael Kwan come together with panel chair John Tain to talk about their work on the Sámi Pavilion and (People of Remarkable Talents) PORT Perak Pera + Flora + Fauna at the 59th Venice Biennale. They will discuss the work of PORT and artists from the Malaysian state of Perak and Sámi artists at the Venice Biennale and talk about interwoven topics concerning community, care, healing, and our relationships to the environment. The panelists will discuss Trans-Indigenous art practices, global networks, as well as working with “invisible” archives that sit outside the value system of the colonial archive.

The virtual panel will be streaming live from PORT Perak Pera + Flora + Fauna at the Archivi della Misericordia in Venice and is a part of the Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX).

RSVP for information on how to access the program online.

The online program will be closed captioned.

GAX 2022 Venice is sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU in collaboration with NICHE - The New Institute’s Centre for Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. This program is a part of the Decolonizing Curatorial and Museum Studies and Public Humanities Project and is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional funding comes from the Rutgers Global Virtual Exchange Course Development Grant and Rutgers University-Newark Chancellor’s Impact Seed Grant. Special thanks to PORT Perak, Archivi della Misericordia, and Annie Jael Kwan.

Image Credit: Projek Rabak in collaboration with Kampung Ras

Panelists:

Liisa-Rávná Finbog is a Sámi archaeologist and museologist from Oslo/Vaapste/Skánit on the Norwegian side of the border. She is recently moved to Tampere on the Finnish side of the border where she is currently doing her post-doc at Tampere University on Indigenous methodologies and aesthetic practices. She is also one of three curators for the Sámi Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. Finbog is also a practitioner of duodji [duojár), which is a Sámi creative practice of aesthetics and storytelling [muitalusat] and gives both courses and workshops in customary techniques and practices of duodji.

Biung Ismahasan is a curator, artist and researcher from the Bunun, Atayal and Kanakanavu Nations, three of Taiwan’s sixteen Indigenous Nations. He received a PhD in Curating from Centre for Curatorial Studies at the University of Essex in the UK, with a thesis “Indigenous Relational Space and Performance: Curating Together towards Sovereignty in Taiwan and Beyond.” His research relates to contemporary Indigenous curatorial practice and aesthetics, focusing on Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art. Ismahasan emphasises issues of participation, performativity and the historiography of Indigenous curation and exhibition design. He has received a MA in Cultural Policy, Relations & Diplomacy from the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014. He curated Dispossessions: An Indigenous Performative Encounter (2014–2019, Taiwan); Ngahi’s Routes: When Depth Become Experiment (Taoyuan City Indigenous Cultural Centre, 2019); The Rukai Nation installation artist Eleng Luluan’s Between Dream in Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel (The National Gallery of Canada, 2019- 2020); Resurgence and Solidarity: Indigenous Taiwanese Women's Art (Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park, 2021) - digital presentation collaborated with ORIGINS: Festival of First Nations in London funded by British Council (2021-2022); Biung will play a pivotal role in the artistic development as a co-curator of Aluaiy Kaumakan'’s project (Paiwan Nation, Paridrayan Community, Taiwan) together with artistic director José Roca and Wiradjuri curator Hannah Donnelly at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney (March and June 2022).

Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher based in London and working between the UK, Europe and Asia. Her exhibition-making, programming, publication, and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, cultural and pedagogical activism with an interest in archives, feminist, queer and alternative histories and knowledges, collective practice and solidarity. She leads the research network, Asia-Art-Activism, and is the instigating council member of Asia Forum.

Việt Lê is an academic, artist, writer, and curator whose work centers on spiritualities, trauma, representation, and sexualities with a focus on Southeast Asia and its diasporas. Dr. Lê, Associate professor at California College of the Arts, is the author of Return Engagements: Contemporary Art’s Traumas of Modernity and History in Sài Gòn and Phnom Penh (Duke University Press, 2021). The art book White Gaze is a collaboration with Latipa (Sming Sming Books, 2019). vietle.net

Lê has presented his work at The Banff Centre, Bangkok Art & Cultural Center, Shanghai Biennale, Rio Gay Film Festival, the Smithsonian, among other venues. Lê curated Charlie Don’t Surf!(Centre A, Vancouver, BC, 2005); and cocurated humor us (Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, CA, 2008), transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (ARKO, Seoul; Galerie Quynh, Sài Gòn; UC Irvine Gallery; YBCA, San Francisco, 2008-09) and the 2012 Kuandu Biennale (Taipei).

Lê is an Associate Professor (History of Art and Visual Culture | Visual & Critical Studies) at California College of the Arts. vietle.net

John Tain is Head of Research at Asia Art Archive. His recent projects include the collectively curated Translations, Expansions, AAA’s contribution to documenta fifteen (2022); Art Schools of Asia (2021-22), a seminar and symposium surveying the intersection of the pedagogical and the social in the recent histories of Asia; the exhibition Crafting Communities (2020), devoted to Thailand-based Womanifesto; and MAHASSA (Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, 2019-2020), a collaboration with the Dhaka Art Summit and the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University. He is an editor for the Exhibition Histories series with Afterall and others, the latest volume of which is Art and Its Worlds: Exhibitions, Institutions, and Art Becoming Public (2021). He also serves as an advisor for Asia Forum, an ongoing discursive program. He was previously a curator for modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.