The portrait in Southeast Asia has a different history from that of its Western counterparts. The rendering of a likeness of specific persons is in certain Southeast Asian societies deemed taboo, or most commonly used to preserve the memory of the deceased.

Southeast Asian peoples, come slightly late to modernity, exist on an imagined periphery of global politics and culture; many have been colonized by Western powers. Historically, we have been "depicted" by outsiders, regarded or studied as an exotic "other". Within the often multi-ethnic context of many regional societies, issues of self and identity can be pressing and/or problematic.

Contemporary artists use the template of portraiture - in drawing, painting, photography and to a lesser extent, sculpture - to exploit, address and redress existing taboos, the complex nature of identity and individual cultural histories, and the way in which that identity and cultural history has been stereotyped or made exotic by "others" within and without our societies.

It is telling that the mask is a more prominent feature of our cultural practices than the portrait, and we see here that artists often adopt related strategies of disguise and projection to communicate the subtleties of identity and its meanings.