Present Passing: South by Southeast

Osage HK
4/F, Union Hing Yip Factory Building, 20 Hing Yip Street, Kwun Tong

Opening Reception
Saturday, March 23, 2019 | 18:00 – 20:00

Curators-led Tour
23 March 17:30 – 18:00

“Present Passing: South by Southeast” presented by Osage Art Foundation, curated by Patrick D. Flores (Philippines) and Natasha Becker (USA), will bring together 16 artists in total – 5 from South Africa, 2 from the Caribbean, 7 from Asia/ Southeast Asia and 2 from Hong Kong.

“Present Passing” pursues the “South by Southeast” project that seeks to widen and sharpen the imagination of Southeast Asia. It releases this region from commonplace assumptions about its scope and unburdens it from the legacies of the colonial theater and the geopolitics of the Cold War. It thus offers equivalent articulations of the southeast elsewhere.

In the previous initiation in 2015, Southeast Asia found its coordinate in Southeast Europe. This iteration unravels the ties between Southeast Asia; the Caribbean, which is southeast of the hegemonic North American mainland; and South Africa, which links to Southeast Asia and the Caribbean through seafarers. This South by Southeast framework leads us to revisit how we reflect on the place of region in the contemporary. It does not only broaden the sympathies of Southeast Asia, which is the main node of this network; it gestures towards a theory of the global, the worldly, the hemispheric through the southeast, which is not north and not west.

The title is taken from the French feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous whose intuition of the present and the passage evokes the urgent and fragile ties within the Southeast ecologies of art. Standing their ground, the artists of the exhibition investigate the nuances of this intersubjective space as they face the demands of collective gestures across political regions, natural histories, migrating objects, and intimate relations with others.

Curators:

Patrick D. Flores (Philippines)
Natasha Becker (USA)

Participating Artists:

Buhlebezwe Siwani (South Africa)
Bundith Phunsombatlert (Thailand / USA)
ByungJun Kwon (South Korea)
Chris Chong Chan Fui (Malaysia)
Curtis Talwst Santiago (Trinidad / Canada)
Kanitha Tith (Cambodia)
Kelly Sinnapah Mary (Guadeloupe)
Kiyoko Sakata (Japan)
Leung Mee Ping (Hong Kong)
Lhola Amira (South Africa)
Rory Emmett (South Africa)
Samak Kosem (Thailand)
Sarah Lai (Hong Kong)
Sharlene Khan (South Africa)
Thania Petersen (South Africa)
Zeus Bascon (Philippines)