Tokyo | Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s exhibition

Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s - 1990s. As the culmination of a 5-year joint project by three national museums in Japan, Korea and Singapore, and the Japan Foundation Asia Center, the exhibition opens at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (MOMAT) from October 10 - December 24, 2018. The exhibition then travels to Korea and Singapore in 2018 and 2019.

This is the first exhibition focusing on the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, the transitional period from modern art to contemporary art in the broad area including East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

140 works by more than ninety artists and groups are brought together in Tokyo from more than ten areas including Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and India. The show introduces, all at once, diverse avant-garde art including paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, videos, performances and installations.

The years saw major events in Asian societies because of independence from colonial rule, rapid modernization, the ideological confrontation during the Cold War, the Vietnam War, racial conflicts, and the surge of the pro-democracy movements. This exhibition presents provocative, experimental works produced in the period by artists who asked what was “art” in the local realities surrounding them, and explored innovative ways of artistic expression beyond existing genres.

The objective of this exhibition is to discover unexpected resonances by transcending national frameworks and comparing arts in different times and places. In recent years, the rapid increase of Asian tourists to Japan is bringing cultural exchange between Japan and other Asian countries to a new level. Under the circumstances, experiences gained at this exhibition will change the way we view art and the world, and offer hints on building new relationships with other Asian nations.

For further information download exhibition flyer

Image: ② Vasan Sittiket, Top Boot on My Head, 1993, Collection of the Artist, Photograph by Manit Sriwanichpoom