'Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia' -- a new exhibition about conceptual approaches to making art for, with, and about the collective and collective issues in Southeast Asia is presented by Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) till 2nd March 2014.

For the last two decades Southeast Asian contemporary art has travelled the world generating universal excitement. Though diverse in its forms and in the cultural and political environments that have spawned it, Southeast Asian art of today is testament to Southeast Asia’s shared regional history and 21st century solidarity. In a spirit of unity, and anticipating ASEAN integration commencing in 2015, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre is proudly presenting a new and specially BACC-commissioned exhibition of regional contemporary visual art, the biggest ever Southeast Asian contemporary art show produced in Thailand Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia Curated in close collaboration with BACC by three respected Southeast Asia specialists and curators from Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand, Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia, is visually stimulating for the public at large, while also offering art historical insights into our own regional visual culture of today. Through the works of artists from Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Cambodia, the show charts one of regional contemporary art’s most important threads, locally-rooted conceptual thinking used to engage in ideas about and for the collective. It investigates the close connection between conceptual approaches and social ideologies in Southeast Asian contemporary art of the last four decades. With nearly 50 artworks by over 40 celebrated and internationally-known Southeast Asian artists of three generations, the exhibition defends the idea that conceptual approaches used in contemporary art of Southeast Asia are not necessarily imported but rather can find their source in home culture. Exhibition runs: 12 December 2013 - 2 March 2014