Performance art was first documented in pockets of Southeast Asia four decades ago. Where did performance emerge from, and how was it adopted in unconnected locales around the region?
In this presentation, Dr Iola Lenzi retraces performance to performative works of the 1970s and 1980s, uncovering the roots of these pluridisciplinary expressions in our region.
Iola Lenzi is a Singapore art historian and curator of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art. Holding an LLB and a PhD in modern Asian art history, with interdisciplinary methods she studies visual art grappling critically with history and society, analysed comparatively within Asian cultural frameworks.
Her exhaustive research on the emergence of contemporary art in 1990s Vietnam underpins her claim for Southeast Asian contemporary art’s distinctive voice in global contemporary art historiography. She has curated numerous exhibitions of Southeast Asian contemporary art in Asia and Europe.
Image: Lee Wen, Strange Fruit, 2003, performance documentation.
