Theme: 5. Knowledge-making: Institutions, Objects, Cultural Ownership

Object Lessons on Possession: Institutional & Individual Case Studies (Vargas Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, National Gallery of Singapore, Sàn Art) + QUÊer-oake Performance

Roundtable Convenor(s)

• VL

  Việt Lê

  SEA sạ Foundation, United States

Roundtable Chair(s)

• VL

  Việt Lê

  SEA sạ Foundation, United States

Roundtable Participant(s)

• VD

  Vicky Do

  Sàn Art | Sài Gòn, Vietnam
• PF

  Patrick Flores

  National Gallery Singapore, Singapore
• 

  Tessa Maria Gauzon

  University of the Philippines - Diliman, Philippines
• VL

  Vivian Li

  Dallas Museum of Art, United States

Roundtable Abstract:

This hybrid Roundtable and Performance deals with indigeneity, (re-)possession/ repatriation, and embodied knowledge through institutional and individual case studies. Together the participants explore relations between indigeneity and cultural spaces, and strategies without exotification, towards meaningful reactivation. This roundtable also serves as an opportunity for transnational institutional network building through time, space and place.

Tessa Maria Guazon (Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines Diliman) is interested in indigeneity and reexamining  the University of the Philippine’s Vargas Museum’s exhibition history. Looking at the intersection between modernism and spirituality as a nodal point, she shares sculptor and UP professor Guillermo Tolentino’s (1890-1976) archive materials, who has been referred to as the “Father of Philippine Arts.” Tolentino published several articles in the 1920’s in the Philippines on spiritism, and reveals interest in the occult, and mediumship.  

Vivian Li (Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art) shares her experience working with collecting museums such the Guggenheim Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art. She is interested in such collecting museums’ major function of art object acquisition, as well as its corollary repatriation; especially against the recent heightened resurgence in United States museums to address diversity by engaging different communities that have not been fully addressed in art historical and contemporary discourse.  

Patrick Flores (Deputy Director [Curatorial & Research] at National Gallery Singapore (NGS) shares insights from his forthcoming essay collection entitled Philippine Figurine: Image, Ornament, Art (National Gallery Singapore, 2025) which reconsiders Philippine and global art history, objecthood, nationhood. Related questions of faith, society, and possession as a reconsideration of the decolonial.

Vicky Do (Sàn Art) discusses her curatorial and creative work on the topic of personal narratives of history. She also shares a current project in progress between the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco) and Sàn Art (Sài Gòn), which reconsiders the 50th anniversary of the Việt Nam War (2025) and how the relationship between the U.S. Southeast Asia have shifted.

Opening Performance by Việt Lê: Rooted in Southeast Asian cosmologies, Lê continues their training and practice as a Vietnamese indigenous shaman-monk through various mediums.

Remixing genres, genies, and Genesis, the artist presents a spiritual drag show (of sorts), rooted in the traditional high-energy, high-stakes, centuries-old hầu bóng Mother Goddess ceremony. Putting the “quê" (country and country bumpkin) in “QUÊERAKOE,”  Việt Lê takes us on a space journey: heARTbreak; revenge body (of Christ); resurrection.



Roundtable supported by: Vargas Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, National Gallery of Singapore, Sàn Art | Sài Gòn