Present Passing: South by Southeast

Osage Art Foundation - Hong Kong

Curated by Patrick D. Flores and Natasha Becker

By Paco Barragán

As is common, Art Basel generates many parallel exhibitions in museums, galleries and alternative spaces during the celebration of the fair. One such exhibition during Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK) was “Present Passing: South by Southeast” at the Osage Art Foundation, curated by Philippine Patrick D. Flores and South African Natasha Becker, who is based in the United States. The Osage Foundation, established in 2004 by gallerist and philanthropist Agnes Lin, is housed in a large warehouse in the Kwun Tong district in Kowloon.

The current show is, according to the foundation, part of “Regional Perspectives,” a larger series of exhibitions that juxtaposes the artistic production of the region with art from other geopolitical areas. As such, the show conceived by Flores and Becker brings together 16 artists from South Africa, the Caribbean, Asia/Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. According to the curators, the title “Present Passing,” is taken from French feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous, “whose intuition of the present and the passage evokes the urgent and fragile ties between the southeast ecologies of art.”

The exhibit features South Africans Buhlebezwe Siwani, Lhola Amira, Rory Emmett, Sharlene Khan and Thania Petersen; Bundith Phunsombatlert and Samak Kosem, both from Thailand; ByungJun Kwon, from South Korea; Chris Chong Chan Fui, from Malaysia; Canadian-Trinidadian Curtis Talwst Santiago; Kanitha Tith, from Cambodia; Kelly Sinnapah Mary, from Guadeloupe; Leung Mee Ping and Sarah Lai, both from Hong Kong; Japanese Kiyoko Sakata and Philippine Zeus Bascon. The show presents a wide array of media spanning from painting and installation to video, photography, sculpture and performance. The visitor finds a strong number of artists from South Africa, but surprisingly not from other parts of the African continent, which I understand as a gesture of pushing South African artists by Natasha Becker.

Buhlebezwe Siwani, AmaHubo, 2018, video, 13mins 1sec. Courtesy of the artist, WHATIFTHEWORLD and Osage Art Foundation.

“Present Passing: South by Southeast” faithfully portray today’s narratives around ethnicity, trauma, globalization, post-colonialism, gender, migration, pop culture, difference, ideology and authenticity, to name a few. One of the most stunning pieces in the show was Siwani’s video AmaHubo, which deals with the black, female body, rituals and spiritual practices, and memory and revealed a poignant mix of performativity, narrativity and mystery very uncommon these days. The idea of memory was also very present in Phunsombatlert’s artist’s book, as well as, especially, in the fragile, porcelain pieces with illustrations of Asian Americans tackling the long history of migration to the U.S. by both Caribbean and Asians. This work dialogued very well with Kwon’s sound installation in the ‘patio’ with songs of Yemeni refugees.

Also, Curtis Talwst Santiago explored the idea of, or better said, the absence of memory in the official narratives through a series of delicate, miniature dioramas in ring boxes, while Kelly Sinnapah Mary tackled Indian diaspora in the Caribbean by means of a colorful installation made of fabrics and paintings with subtle, naïve scenes that explore religion, colonialism and racism. These are also topics explored by Lhola Amira in her video work Appearance and Being Present. The same topics of post-colonialism, gender and identity are also very present in other South African artists like Thania Petersen, Sharlene Khan and Rory Emmett. Finally, the personal and intimate expressed through folklore, pop culture and interior landscape united the work of Zeus Bascon, Sarah Lai and Leung Mee Ping.

“Present Passing: South by Southeast” presents challenging perspectives of today’s neo-liberal landscapes in which today’s artist exemplifies the untethered subject desperately in search of his roots in a vast and very often contradictory global world.

(March 24 - May 26, 2019)           

Paco Barragán is a PhD candidate at the University of Salamanca (USAL) in Spain and the former visual arts curator of Centro Cultural Matucana 100 in Santiago, Chile. He recently curated “Juan Dávila: Painting and Ambiguity” (MUSAC, 2018), “Arturo Duclos: Utopia´s Ghost” (MAVI, 2017) and “Militant Nostalgia” (Toronto, 2016). He is the author of The Art to Come (Subastas Siglo XXI, 2002) and The Art Fair Age (CHARTA, 2008).