DIASPORA: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia
Curated by Loredana Paracciani
Selected Screening of Charwei Tsai
MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiangmai, Thailand
3 March 2018 ~ 3 March 2019
Prompted by the growing interest in migration and border crossing, and in response to
the positive feedback received from both local and international audiences, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to extend the exhibition DIASPORA: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia to continue to explore, through contemporary art, issues of displacement and hybridity of the region.
DIASPORA: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia presents contemporary art from Southeast Asia that considers the recent and ongoing movement of people within and away from the region since the outbreak of the Vietnam War. Eighteen established and emerging artists from Southeast Asia and beyond explore three defining passages of dispersion, reflected in the title: to exit, or to leave the home country for economic betterment; to be in exile, or refused return for oftentimes political reasons; and to move in exodus, as a group of stateless and dispossessed people fleeing crises
or war. Exit, exile and exodus are the cornerstones of these thought-provoking works, both existing and newly commissioned, featured in the exhibition. Developed around the notion of ‘diaspora’ as methodological framework, the works not only reflect the artists’ impression of their own experiences of transitory life and resettlement, but also examine the migratory circumstances that have shaped Southeast Asia as a region of diverse ethnicities, religions and languages.
In line with DIASPORA: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia outreach program, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum is delighted to announce Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai
special screening, specifically showing together three video works of the Singing Project Series. Through the universal language of song, these works shed light on the condition of migration and displacement in the United Kingdom, Nepal and Southeast Asia. Selected works were commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and featured at Southbank Centre, London, in 2017.