Five years ago, Wang Gong Xin felt it was time to move from being a painter for 15 years to exploring a form of art that was gradually seeping into contemporary art galleries bizarre humour mixed with an underlying sense of sadness and melancholy.

For the artist, this video installation offers him a way of expressing himself using more dimensions than the rigid two-dimensional format of a painting on canvas. I can capture dimensions such as sound and time, which are not possible in a typical painting, says Wang.

The advances in computer technology, new digital programmes offer more possibilities for video installations, affirms Wang. It is a medium that works well for me to express what is happening in my society today, in my city, Beijing.

Contemporary art

Wang's video installation is but one of 10 contemporary art works by Asian artists from China, India and Thailand on display at an exhibition called Sorry for the Inconvenience which opened in Bangkok on Feb 23. Their works range from video installations, photo installations and performance art to sculpture and computer graphic prints.

This exhibition is part of a broader cultural endeavour to provide a window into the world of contemporary art by young and emerging Asian artists. Similar exhibits by other Asian artists have been held or are to be held in cities like Seoul, Bandung, Manila, Bombay, Beijing and Ashiya.

These exhibitions will lead up to a final collective show that will open in December this year in Tokyo, states the Japan Foundation Asia Centre, the promoters of this artistic initiative, titled Under Construction.

The collective exhibition will reconstruct these local exhibitions and highlight the various Asian perspectives on contemporary art within the region, the Japanese promoters add. The goal is to show an actual as well as current Asia in the age of globalisation.

For Gridthiya Gaweewong, curator of the Bangkok exhibition, the state of contemporary art in Asia varies from country to country, a feature evident in the new kind of artistic language that the region's artists are choosing to express their individual thoughts.

Transition to modern lifestyle

The exhibition deals with the similarities and differences among Asian situations, Gridthiya was quoted as having told the local press. It surveys the idea of how individuals respond to transition from a traditional lifestyle to a more modern one, rural to urban culture and the influx of mass media.

Diversity is also reflected in the works of artists from one country, such as those of Bharti Kher, Subohd Gupta and Sharmila Samant from India.

Gupta, for instance, is featured in a video installation of him taking a shower to wash off the cow-dung covering his body — a process described as the artist's effort to focus on the anxious terrain inhabited by Indians within their own country and their nation's place within a globalising culture.

Kher for her part has incorporated the bindi, which is the colourful circular pigment that women and men in India traditionally wear on their foreheads, into her visual vocabulary. Her exhibit at the Bangkok show was a fibreglass sculpture of fornicating dogs with a pattern of bindi covering their bodies and set against a vinyl sheet that had an intricate weave of colourful bindi.

For Samant, who is exhibiting computer-generated prints of traditional textile patterns created in Indian villages, the exhibition reinforces the idea that the work of Asian artists cannot be classified into simple categories as Asian art or Indian art.

That is the beauty here. We cannot say this is Asian art. It is true for the region, since there is no one Asian identity, says 34-year-old Samant. I have been working with local and global influences, but have always lived in the city, like Bombay.

Realities of rural people

Wang, the Chinese artist, feels likewise, stressing that the current exhibition amplifies the variety of the contemporary art scene in Asia. The artists are responding to their individual realities and drawing from many influences than being limited to only local elements.

However, Thanom Chapakdee, a Thai art critic, is troubled by the exhibits on display for only responding to the culture of Asian cities. Asia needs contemporary artists to address the realities of the rural people, where the majority of the continent's people live, he says.

He also faults some of the exhibits for placing greater emphasis on the hybrid cultures emerging in the region and consequently ignoring essential Asian elements. The hybrid culture comes out, but where is the identity that it is art coming out of Asia, he asks.

Gridthiya, the curator, thinks otherwise, asserting that her choice of artistic works for the exhibition was to bring out this hybridisation that is happening rapidly across Asia.

This hybridisation of everyday life is interesting. And it is this kind of hybridisation that could create a new paradigm, which we would like to portray in this exhibition. (IPS)