DIASPORA: EXIT, EXILE, EXODUS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

Curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani, the ambitious survey “Diaspora: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia” featured works by 18 artists and artist collectives, and was centered on three facets of displacement: “exit,” which implies economically motivated emigration; “exile,” the removal and disempowerment of a person; and “exodus,” suggesting a group or common experience of leaving one’s home.

Aside from a few artworks referencing conflicts of the 20th (2015) by Ho Tzu Nyen, which narrates the peregrinations of a communist triple agent during the Second World War, most of the works were related to existing diasporas, of which there is no shortage. In particular, since 1948, Myanmar has been facing a massive and protracted humanitarian crisis, giving rise to a series of brightly colored tapestries by Jakkai Siributr, which depict the organized persecution of ethnic minorities such as the Kachin, Chin and Rohingya peoples. Heartbreaking for their matter-of-fact scenes of massacres, the images are nevertheless uplifting in a sense, having been hand-embroidered in Bangkok by the very same refugee survivors whose stories they show.