THERE ARE many who would disagree with the idea of Southeast Asia as a geographical, economic, political or cultural unit. For them, the region is just too diverse and inch. However, it pays to remember that for centuries Chinese traders at least have referred to Southeast Asia as a coherent whole by calling it ‘Nanhai’ or the Southseas. The phrase evokes an image of promise — rich in minerals, aromatics, hardwood and spices — exotic and enticing. For them, the region’s diversity and cosmopolitanism possessed a commonality in language, in food and most astoundingly in a culture of syncretism and openness. Over the ages, Southeast Asia’s great entrepôts — Malacca, Sri Wijaya, Ayudhya and Haiphong echoed with a host of different languages, reflecting the countless visitors — Chinese traders, Arabs from the Hadhramaut, Indian textile merchants from Calicut and Baroda, Spanish and Portuguese adventurers, Bugis privateers and Malay seafarers. Whilst today the region has been divided into a slew of nation states under the ASEAN umbrella, the core historical reality is of riverine cities, rice plains, porous borders and interlocking identities. Still, in terms of business and economics the region has certainly begun to hum with activity. Even though China and India have to a large extent stolen the limelight in recent years, Southeast Asia’s 550 million consumers remain a potent market. Ten years of solid GDP growth at 5-6% combined with strong export-orientated industries has created a thriving middle class and a burgeoning business elite eager to acquire the trappings of the good life. Indeed most multinationals, ignoring national boundaries, approach the region as a unit. However, in order to comprehend the market, managers, like their predecessors from ancient times, need to learn about the different nuances in terms of culture, society and politics and in this respect art — especially contemporary art, which has become a way of entering the psyche of a nation or a region, exploring the innermost workings of a people as they cope with the challenges of globalisation, digitalization, democratisation, environmental degradation and transparency. The shifting tides of civilisation and the movement of peoples has meant that the region’s cultures — at their core animistic and folkloric — have always had the ability to absorb the foreign and the new. Religions have entered the region and been embraced — Hindu and Buddhist traditions from the subcontinent, Confucian thinking from the Middle Kingdom, Islam from across the Indian Ocean and Christianity from the Europeans. Indeed the cultural and civilisational brilliance of the region (and the rationale of much Southeast Asian contemporary art) lies in the way its people have been able to make the foreign and the alien familiar — shaping, for example, a localised Nusantara response to the great global faiths. Witness the Nahdlatul Ulama’s sway in East Java, Bali’s spirit-infused Hinduism and the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects of Vietnam’s Mekong delta region or the El Shaddai sect in the Philippines. Similarly, foreign artifacts have in certain cases, taken on a heightened significance once they enter the region. Ceramics from the kilns of Fujian, Annam and Sawankhalok from Central Thailand and textiles from India have become venerated objects, treasured by the peoples of Eastern archipelago. Even the most humble weavers from Sarawak, Laos or Palembang have appropriated ideas — things they’ve seen and heard — into their elegant puas and ikats, telling visual stories that link the present both with the past and the future. Given the wealth of sources, it is unsurprising that successive generations of artists have drawn from this rich pool of experience and tradition, shaped in turn by the vast historical events of the 20th Century — the Second World War, the Japanese invasion, the collapse of the colonial powers and Independence, followed by the dizzying excitement of nationalism that intoxicated artists for many decades as they sought to achieve a sense of identity that was intrinsically Thai, Indonesian or Filipino. With the advent of the new century and after decades of peace and at times hardwon prosperity, the region’s artists have grown less enamoured of nationalistic causes. Disenchanted with political leaders and business élites, many of the region’s best artists have returned to art-making in its purest form — exploring the personal impulses, memory, love and loss behind their own creativity, drawing the universal from the particular. Valentine Willie 2007 saw the rise of a new generation of contemporary artists in the regional auction market. As an influential sector in a wide field, contemporary art has for many years been given only a tentative space in the shadow of such pioneering modern masters as Affandi, Hendra Gunawan, Ang Kiukok, Ben Cabrera, Thawan Duchanee and Latiff Mohidin. The first dedicated Southeast Asian Contemporary sale held by Borobudur in Singapore in October 2007 took the opportunity to highlight and put in context the extraordinary and exciting range of contemporary art practice in the region, for a wider audience. Its tremendous success confirms that such recognition of the vast potential of Southeast Asian contemporary art has been long overdue. Contemporary art has for some time enjoyed healthy support from local collectors in countries like Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia, bringing up names like Agus Suwage, Geraldine Javier and Jalaini Abu Hassan; while Bangkok’s cosmopolitan makeup has made for a sophisticated appreciation of outstanding artists such as Natee Utarit and Niti Wattuya. Since the 1990s a vanguard of regional contemporary artists including FX Harsono, Tang Da Wu, Mella Jaarsma, Nindityo Adipurnomo, Heri Dono, and Vasan Sitthiket have gained critical attention on the international scene, participating in major events and exhibitions and helping to put the region’s artists on the map. Today they are joined by a new cutting edge including performance artists Melati Suryodarmo and MONTRI, and the versatile Eko Nugroho. This second Southeast Asian Contemporary sale continues with its agenda to represent some of the most exciting artists working in the region today, whether in painting, installation, photography, or performance. It introduces some new names, often precocious young artists with fresh perspectives and approaches, and explores some of the prevalent concerns and interests of current practice — cultural histories, the ironies of present-day socio-political reality, humanity in its physical form and its place in its environment, the problematics of painting. There is strong representation from Vietnam, whose nascent contemporary art scene has blossomed in recent years, revealing a wellspring of bold, sophisticated and highly accomplished artists such as Le Quang Ha, Dinh Y Nhi, Nguyen Minh Thanh and Le Quoc Viet, followed closely by an emerging generation that is fast gaining international exposure in the footsteps of famous precursors such as the Gang of Five’s Dang Xuan Hoa. VWFA