Sangha as art public? Questions on Buddhist monks engaging with art in Theravada Southeast Asia

Abstract

This essay explores whether Theravada Buddhist monks – collectively called the sangha – might constitute an ‘art public’ in Southeast Asia. Publics for art have been under-studied in this region, and rarely discussed in more nuanced terms than as being a ‘general public’ or ‘ordinary people.’ The essay argues for the need for an alternate vocabulary and terms of reference for thinking and speaking about the reception of art: one that is theoretically informed by and engaged with the multiplicity of discourses and publics in this part of the world. The essay provides a brief survey of the sangha's role in the development of modern art in Southeast Asia, as a constitutive agent in the articulation of modernity since the mid-nineteenth century, and then concentrates on the engagement of monks with contemporary art, since the 1990s. Key examples discussed include activities organised by Sa Sa Art Projects in Phnom Penh since 2010; the collection and programming of the Buddhist Archive of Photography in Luang Prabang; the practice of artist Orawan Arunrak since 2015; and the historiography of the Chiang Mai Social Installation and related festivals held during the 1990s.

Keywords:

• Contemporary art
• modern art
• Southeast Asia
• Theravada Buddhism
• art historiography
• reception

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editors for their kind invitation to contribute to this special issue, and also to the many artists, colleagues and friends who have contributed to my ideas here, in conversations over many years, and more recently in numerous follow-up conversations to clarify details. Those involved with Sa Sa Art Projects in Phnom Penh deserve special thanks and recognition. I also thank all those who kindly granted permission for their images to be reproduced here. Finally, I am indebted to the editors, anonymous peer reviewers, and Simon Soon for their improving insights on earlier drafts. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own.

Notes on contributor

Roger Nelson is an art historian working on modern and contemporary arts of Southeast Asia, and a curator at National Gallery Singapore. He was previously Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University. He is author of Modern Art of Southeast Asia: Introductions from A to Z (National Gallery Singapore, 2019) and translator of Suon Sorin’s 1961 Khmer novel, A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land (NUS Press, 2019). He is also co-founding co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, a scholarly journal published by NUS Press.