We’re the next big thing, say dealers

Indonesian artist  Tintin Wulia has had enough of borders. Her performance piece is called “Make your own passport”. At the recent Art Stage Singapore fair, she gave visitors paper, pens and glue and, while they got busy, she engaged them in conversation.

“We talk about origins, identity, globalisation, migration,” the 43-year-old explained. The topics fit in well with contemporary art in Southeast Asia, which was the focus at Art Stage.

But can such a broad label as “Southeast Asian art” mean anything, since the cultures and the languages of the region differ so much? “Is there such a label as European art?” counters Art Stage’s Swiss founder, Lorenzo Rudolf, who’s been director of Art Basel for years.

Geography links regions, he points out. Southeast Asia is the part of Asia that’s not China or India, both of which have thriving art scenes. But Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are still separated by history, religion and language. Rudolf’s top tip is Thailand – temple art has developed into a highly creative scene, he says.

“Contemporary art from Southeast Asia wasn’t on anybody in Europe’s radar until a couple of years ago,” says Berlin gallery owner Matthias Arndt, who sees himself as a pioneer, having shown the first exhibition by artists from the Philippines and Indonesia in Germany a couple of years ago.

He’s had a gallery in Singapore for six years and represents many artists as a manager and agent. His colleagues were sceptical at first, he says, but after the boom in Chinese art, museums and collectors are now looking further afield – to contemporary artists around Southeast Asia.

Is this going to be the next China? “In 10 years, definitely,” says Arndt.

Art Stage is one way of preparing the ground as a marketplace, forum for dialogue and information centre, he says. “Contemporary art has a young history here. For many artists it’s a break with their culture.”

Traditional art has often focused on calligraphy and paper-cutting. Colonialism brought new schools of thought and practice from the West, including painting outdoors and painting portraits, explains gallery owner Jacques Renaud. Artists have developed those ideas to create art with a local flavour and global appeal.

Frenchman Renaud’s gallery, ArtBlue in Singapore, specialises in Vietnamese art. He shows off work by Nguyen Lam, who uses brushstrokes inspired by calligraphy and meditation to create abstract works aimed at finding a perfect simplicity.

More than 170 galleries from 30 countries were represented this year at Art Stage, and they took in a wide range of art – from oil paintings to video installations, golden sculptures to 3D pictures, prints and collages to photos hung on strings.

Anon Pairot from Thailand wrote the words “happy” and “love” on two canvases, and if you stepped closer you could see the letters were empty spaces surrounded by thousands of plastic cockroaches.

“Is meaning meaningful when we come closer to the truth behind the meaning?” he asks.

Countries like Indonesia, with its 250-million-strong population, already have booming domestic art markets with well-established artists and collectors.

“That’s an advantage and a problem at the same time,” says Rudolf. “The collectors are friends of the artists, so they don’t need any galleries. That means the infrastructure needed for international success isn’t there.”

Very few are known abroad, such as Entang Wiharso and Eko Nugroho, who were at the 2013 Biennale in Venice. “On the whole, Asian art is still cheap,” says Rudolf.

Renaud has customers, however, who are prepared to pay S$14,000 (Bt355,000) for a Nguyen Lam abstract. Value is relative, he says. “If Singapore’s art museum wanted to buy one, you could stick another zero on the end quick enough.”