Hong Kong (CNN)Not to be outdone by North Asia, which hosts major events like Art Basel every year, Southeast Asia is rapidly growing its own art fair line-up.
The inaugurating edition of Art Stage Jakarta attracted 15,000 people last month and pulled in collectors and curators to visit not just the city but the adjacent art hub of Yogyakarta, a thriving center for alternative art spaces in the region.
While Western institutions are actively exhibiting works from Southeast Asia, Asian institutions are not leaving it to the West to take the narrative on what defines Southeast Asia art.
The newly-opened National Gallery Singapore, led by director Eugene Tan, is taking back the storytelling by giving works and artists from the region some much-needed spotlight. Its Southeast Asian collection is second to none, and there is no better place to see it than its new home, which used to be the magnificent old Supreme Court and City Hall of Singapore.
The Gallery"s recent programs include focal shows on Southeast Asia as well as ambitious collaborations, like "Reframing Modernism" with Centre Pompidou, which placed works from the region against those by Picasso, Matisse and more.
Certainlythe art "ecosystem" will not be complete without collectors and patrons, and Southeast Asia is very much present in this scene.
Uber-collectors like Indonesian Budi Tek are building art spaces to display their collections not just in Southeast Asia but in art hubs like China (via his Yuz Museum in Shanghai) to fuel the regional dialogue.
It will more likely be such exchanges across regions -- by nomadic artists, borderless curators, global citizen-collectors -- rather than a strict definition of "Southeast Asian art" that will shape what we can expect from the region in the years to come.
Read more: <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/arts/alan-lau-se-asian-art/index.html">http://edition.cnn.com/</a>
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