Greet the Asian invasion

[Supharidh Hy]

The Times
London
January 28, 2006

Greet the Asian invasion
By Morgan Falconer

From China to tiny Bhutan, there’s a feast of East Asian art waiting to be
sampled, and it’s coming to Blackburn

Paul Flintoff may have finally silenced those who scoff at publicly funded
research junkets. Some time ago, the head of the Blackburn Museum and Art
Gallery was flown to Japan by the Arts Council, notionally in search of
some woodblock printmakers. What has he returned with? Almost every exhibit
in Parallel Realities: Asian Art Now, the third exhibition from the Fukuoka
Asian Art Museum in Japan, a dazzling and ambitious survey that takes in 50
artists from 21 countries across East Asia. Indeed, Flintoff’s booty is so
vast that exhibits have had to be placed in venues right across Blackburn.

This man is so bold that he has organised for video art to be projected
during half time at Blackburn Rovers games — a children’s animated
adventure set in Cambodia, and a video in which an ecstatic middle-aged man
wanders the city by night kissing passers-by.

Indeed, when Manchester United come to play Blackburn on Wednesday, he has
arranged for the Indonesian performance artist Tiarma Dame Ruth Sirait to
expound her philosophy of “synthetic love” and, as he puts it, “parade
around in one of her pink outfits”.

“Is she really ready for the fans?” I ask, sceptically. “Are they ready for
her?” he replies.

Flintoff is justly proud of the exhibition, as it puts his museum at the
fashionable vanguard of the recent explosion of interest in Asian art.
There can be no surer sign of this style credibility than that Selfridges
in London has also been luring Chinese artists. Two who recently figured in
the Victoria and Albert Museum’s wellreceived exhibition of new photography
and video art from China, Between Past and Future, are coming to decorate
the store. In February, Song Dong will be constructing an elaborate
confection entirely from sweets and biscuits. And, when I visited, Wang
Qingsong had already created an installation that spread the length of the
19 storefront windows. Some mannequins appear to fly through the air,
others engage in a crowded tug-of-war, and all are dressed in clashing
ensembles of Western fashions and traditional Chinese outfits — Qing
dynasty kitted out by Vuitton.

There are Chinese emperors, soldiers, figures from traditional opera, as
well as Wang’s selection of Western icons, such as Snow White, Santa and
mermaids. And many of the figures appear to be trying to lay their hands on
the hotch-potch of consumer durables rigged up on a spider’s web at the
centre (Wang had razor wire in mind for this; Selfridges talked him out of
it).

Wang’s enthusiasms may be largely in harmony with Selfridges, but one might
wonder what the connection is between the borough of Blackburn with Darwen
and the provincial Japanese port city of Fukuoka. Flintoff, joking that
Fukuoka now regards Blackburn as its own “parallel reality”, believes there
are echoes. “Well, 15 per cent of Blackburn’s population is Asian,” he
says. “And we’re very conscious of our historic links with Asia through the
cotton and textile trade. But also, Fukuoka is an area that is
regenerating, much as Blackburn is, and in the process, both towns have
been attracting high-tech industries.”

But one needs few excuses for importing such a rich survey of Asian art.
Its range alone is remarkable: works from a pro- ject called VAST, based in
Bhutan, show sophisticated work coming out of impoverished countryside
where there are no established art schools. Meanwhile, the rainbow-coloured
installation Sponge City, by the Vietnamese Tiffany Cheung, imagines an
entirely artificial urban life. The show also presents aspects of Asian
life now familiar even in the West: Abdus Salam’s paintings are scabrous
satires of Bollywood cinema; and the Thai artist Deang Buasan evokes the
rainy season in an installation that also recalls the childhood drowning of
his brother.

The East’s convulsive embrace of capitalism, and the new attention lavished
on Chinese art in the West, might give the impression that all Asian art is
fixated on the relationship with the West. Parallel Realities shows us not
only the difference in approach in its many countries, but also that they
have more on their minds than us. Sometimes they are trying to recover
their past: a series of works by Ho Tzu Nyen resurrects the mythical first
king of the Malays and the pre-colonial founder of Singapore, Sang Nila
Utama, a figure forgotten today. Other times they seem advanced into the
frightening future: one essay in the catalogue notes how sales of mobile
phone ringtones now equal a third of Japan’s sales of CDs.

But for Wang, dressing the mannequins in the windows of one of London’s
temples of capitalism, the relationship between East and West is clear as
day. “Who do you feel closest to?” I ask him. “Your Eastern neighbours, or
your old Western enemy?” He laughs: “We feel closest to the richest one!”

Parallel Realities: Asian Art Now is at the Blackburn Museum and Art
Gallery, Museum St, Blackburn (01254 667130), until Apr 9. Window displays
by Wang Qingsong will be at Selfridges, Oxford St, London W1
(www.selfridges.com), until Feb 26

The don’t-miss list at Blackburn

Chakkrit Chimnok finds 101 uses for the banana skin. They are sometimes
used for thatching roofs in Thailand, but this selection of clothes and
furniture, including tailored jackets and trousers, sofas and lamps, is
something very new.

Disturbed by his relatives’ religious squabbles over the proper way to
mourn his grandmother, the Malaysian artist Chang Yoong Chia has taken to
embroidering images of the dead he finds in newspaper obituaries in an
ongoing project called Quilt of the Dead. It’s ritual without religion.

Zai Kuning started to visit Bintan Island in 1999 to get to know a
settlement of sea gypsies who live among the 3,000 islands of the Riau
Archipelago off the coast of Singapore. His documentary is an invaluable
record of a little known people.

The Bangladeshi painter Nazlee Laila Mansur has evolved a vividly coloured
magic realism to speak of the injustices against women in her country. Her
pictures have shades of Paula Rego and Frida Kahlo, and some capture Louis
Kahn’s extraordinary National Assembly building.

The Chinese film-maker Yang Fudong showed a striking love story in Tate
Modern’s recent Time Zones show. Here he presents a new two-screen film
based on traditional folk tales which are populated by peasants and fools,
intellectuals and snakes.

Masooma Syed’s sculptures have an appealing decorative quality from a
distance. Hard curved shards are arranged in lines like writing, or strung
on threads like necklaces. They just aren’t so appealing when you learn
that they are made of human nails.

The Cambodian artist Ly Daravuth combines photographs of contemporary
children with those of children who acted as the messengers of the Khmer
Rouge. All look innocent, but, as Daravuth suggests, the lines of guilt and
innocence are never too clear.