“Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia, 1980s to Now”

AT “SUNSHOWER,” pomp and circumstance matter. Organized to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the exhibition brings together some 190 works by eighty-six artists, spread across the Mori Art Museum and the National Art Center in Tokyo. Advertised as the “largest-ever” show of contemporary Southeast Asian art, “Sunshower” announces Japan’s commitment to Southeast Asia, if not its centrality to the region’s artistic fortunes—and fraught histories.

A state-backed project of this scale—and its celebratory rhetoric—is

print October 2016

The Propeller Group

FOR THE PROPELLER GROUP, contemporary Vietnam pulses with an exhilarating energy; their videos show graffiti artists and street dancers taking over cities by day, and motorbike gangs ruling the streets under the cover of night. Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Phunam, who hail from the younger generation of Vietnamese artists that has played a crucial role in revitalizing Ho Chi Minh City’s art scene, cofounded the group in 2006 amid the metropolis’s rapid economic transformation. The pair were joined by artist Matt Lucero in 2009, and the trio expanded into a full-service commercial video-production