River Atlas, Law Yuk-Mui (2021) (EMPIRE LINES x Kakilang, Two Temple Place)

Could the state of state-lessness mean a more continental, inclusive sense of belonging? The contemporary Southeast and East Asian artists of the collective Kakilang certainly think so. Challenging their conflation as ‘Chinese’, their joint exhibition in London spans the historical migration routes of Vietnamese refugees, to audio maps of Taiwan, and post-Tsunami Japan - regions rarely considered by Western audiences, and rarely from local perspectives. Yet these diverse artworks really speak to similarities, rather than distinct identities, between Asian countries, connecting built and natural environments across the continent. Take Law Yuk-Mui’s 2021 video ‘River Atlas’, which follows the flows of rivers with the same name in Hong Kong and India, two former colonies in the British Empire.sh

Curator Ling Tan reveals how photographic art can refocus our attention from the coloniser/colonised relationship, onto common experiences between artists in Asia, in diasporas, and in the UK. They also speak of the role of language for the 46 million people who use Hokkien, and why their captions read in traditional Mandarin, not the simplified form common in China. Drawing on their own practice as an artist, we see how comforting foods could break down the stereotype of Asian countries as environmentally destructive - and why the exhibition combines new scaffolding and neo-Gothic architecture, to reconstruct shared colonial pasts.

State-less 無國界 runs at Two Temple Place in London until 9 April 2023. (You’ll find all the links in the episode notes.)

WITH: Ling Tan, curator of State-less 無國界. They are an artist and the Associate Artistic Director of Kakilang (formerly Chinese Arts Now, CAN), an annual festival which celebrates the work of artists from across the wide spectrum of East and Southeast Asian heritages.

ART: ‘River Atlas, Law Yuk-Mui (2021)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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