NEWS | PROGRAMS
WELCOME POLLINATION ED.4 CURATORS (& Advisors)
15 FEBRUARY 2024
in-tangible institute is pleased to announce the fourth edition of POLLINATION, nurturing artist-curator networks surrounding the contexts of Malaysia and Myanmar. Edition 4 begins March 2024, where emerging curators Diana Nway Htwe and Mark Teh will invite select artist/s to co-conceive a collaborative project in early 2025 – for realization in Kuala Lumpur (and other cities, such as Yangon and Chiang Mai, should locale and funds permit).
Throughout the coming year a series of residencies, dialogues, and collaboration between/with relevant artistic community will be undertaken, where Edition 4 Pollinators will explore cross-border themes of faith, migration, and politics. Their research and curatorial methodology will be guided by the following questions:
- How does artistic approach, method, and documentation of subject/site/community drive curatorial commitment to said subject/site/community?
- How can curatorial commitment to community be better demonstrated to its constituents, as a consequence of involvement/participation in artistic research, towards advocacy for (financial/social/intellectual) support?
- How can the mentoring of curatorial investment in artistic production as a dialogical space of knowledge transmission generate alternate modes of historical memory and its recall/record?
- Can such independent curatorial research networks generate/advocate a more holistic and ethical approach to the documentation and collection of contemporary art that respects the need to attend to its sites of production?
Such questions will be explored in conversation with Edition 4 curatorial advisors Penwadee Nophaket Manont, Rahel Joseph and Sumit Mandal.
You can learn more about the history, ethos, supporters and program structure of POLLINATION here.
MEET THE CURATORS:
Diana Nway Htwe is an art historian, critic, and writer based in Myanmar. She approaches art and culture as embodiments of human intentions through time, working between contemporary art, ancient art and architecture. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (USA) in 2020. Her main medium is research and writing, some of which are featured on UNLIRICE, Jakarta Biennale (2021), Fwd:Museums, Art&Market, Artists Need Art Historians, and more. She also goes by the pen name Diana Zaw Win. On rare occasions, she curates: /Shi Exhibition (2022-2023), The Universe Shall Be Seen: A Rahula Retrospective (2022), If I Say It’s True Seven Times: Moe Satt Solo Exhibition (2018). Away from the bustle of Yangon and its art world, she is currently finishing her postgraduate diploma in Pali and Buddhist Studies at Shan State Buddhist University in the hilly regions of Taunggyi.
Mark Teh is a performance maker, researcher, and curator based in Kuala Lumpur. His diverse, collaborative projects take on documentary, speculative and generative forms, and address the entanglements of history, memory, and counter-mapping. His practice is situated primarily in performance, but also operates via exhibitions, education, social interventions, curating, and writing.
His projects have been presented at the Yokohama International Performing Arts Meeting (2022), George Town Festival (2022), Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2022), First Trans-Southeast Asia Triennial, Guangzhou (2021), MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai (2020), Salihara, Jakarta (2019), Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre (2019), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] (2019), TPAM, Yokohama (2019 & 2016), BIPAM, Bangkok (2023 & 2018), OzAsia Festival, Adelaide (2018), Fast Forward Festival, Athens (2018), MMCA Seoul (2018), SPIELART Festival, Munich (2017), Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), and Bangkok Arts & Culture Centre (2017), amongst others. Mark graduated with an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a member of Five Arts Centre, Kuala Lumpur.
MEET THE ADVISORS:
Rahel Joseph is Gallery Director of ILHAM, responsible for the curatorial and public programming of the Gallery. She has held this position since the Gallery’s inception in 2015, and has built the gallery to be a leading public art institution in Malaysia. She has co curated various exhibitions , most recently ‘Kok Yew Puah – Portrait of a Malaysian Artist’ (2020), ILHAM Art Show (2022) and also co-facilitated ILHAM Contemporary Forum Malaysia 2009-2017 (2017). She has written extensively for both print and media. She was an art and culture columnist for both the New Straits Times and The Nutgraph and co-editor of Narratives in Malaysian Art Volume 3: Infrastructures (ed. Rogue Art). She is the author of several publications including Beginnings (ed. Rhina Press), Malaysian Art Book for Children (ed.Khazanah Nasional Berhad), and Awesome Art from Malaysia (ed. National Gallery of Singapore).
Penwadee Nophaket Manont is an independent curator, researcher and cultural worker. She is Founder of ‘Rai.D Collective’ and Co-Founder of ‘Project-PRY’ – two differing curatorial initiatives supporting alternative creation of space for art in Thailand, dedicated to socio-political issues and locality-based practices (established 2016/2020 respectively). Following her curatorial appointment at The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok (2007-2012), Penwadee’s consequent curatorial experiences include ‘UNDERLYING’, a traveling project in collaboration with the Mekong Art and Culture Hub (2007-2008); ‘Poperomia/Golden Teardrop’, Thai Pavilion, the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2013); ‘[R]Ejecting Mantra’, a research and archive-based exhibition series, Thailand (2017-present); ‘Altered-in-Between’ as part of ‘Migration Narratives in East and Southeast Asia’, a research and contemporary art exhibition project in Germany, Mongolia, South Korea, Thailand (2018-2020); ‘Do we live in the same playground?’ in ‘Biennale Jogja XV Equator#5’, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2019); ‘BERSAMA Minority Voicing Festival’, an alternative art festival (2019-present); ‘PLUVIOPHILE Pavilion: Open World-Thailand Biennale’, Chiang Rai 2023.
Sumit Mandal is a transregional historian. His research concerns historical forms of inter-religious and inter-cultural interactions and their outcomes in the Malay world as well as contemporary Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Currently, his research explores the Muslim shrines that underpin a historical sacred geography spanning the Indian Ocean from Jakarta to Cape Town. Before joining the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in 2015, Sumit worked at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and held fellowships at New York University and Kyoto University. He completed his doctoral degree in history at Columbia University in 1994.
