REMINISCENE A Southeast Asian Female Artists Exhibition 17 Mar 2021 - 17 Mar 2022
an official concurrent exhibition for the 2021 conference for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) organized by Soe Yu Nwe.
Soe Yu Nwe a well known artist from Myanmar, invited seven artists from Southeast Asia to be participated in an exhibition she curated and organized. Regarding my artwork for this virtual exhibition, she chose The Raped Love (2016).
Curatorial Statement
Southeast Asian Contemporary Ceramics is an emerging field which is underrepresented in the American cultural landscape, and artistic community. It is my goal as an aspiring curator to share ceramic work by artists of Southeast Asian descent to an international audience.
This exhibition focuses on female artists of Southeast Asian descent. In connection with this year’s themes of “Rivers”, “Reflections” and “Invention”, the artists in the show are chosen not only by the ancestry background but also their diverse practices. From artists who sculpt with clay traditionally such as Suwanee Natewong (Thailand) to Amy Lee Sanford (US/Cambodia) who is a multidisciplinary artist whose performance includes breaking and mending traditional Khmer pots, artists in this show use clay with a different sensibility to bring out diversity in the materiality of clay. Caught between identifying their sense of belonging in two or more countries, many artists in the show seek inspiration from their family history, national trauma, ancestry cultures to explore the sense of self. Others explore female issues such as painful memories of rape and sexual harassment to narrate female resilience. -Soe Yu Nwe
Feminine Pain artwork by Nia Gautama
The Raped Love by Indonesian artist Nia Gautama is a performance and installation inspired by stories of strong women who had experienced emotional pain and trauma because of men. During her performances, Nia interviewed women and listened to their stories ridden with domestic violence, infidelity and abandonment. Stories she had collected ranged from women being abandoned because of extra-marital pregnancies to women who experienced sexual harassment and verbal abuse in the hands of men they loved and trusted. Her installation recorded the collective memories of the female participants to tell a powerful story of female resilience in the Indonesian society. -Soe Yu Nwe
