Rising Voices Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific at the V&A

One of the most insidious aspects of Institutional Eurocentrism is its quiet ubiquity. Western Aesthetic Hegemony is not only pervasive but inconspicuous as the accepted default. Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific at the V&A is a landmark partnership with the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, featuring more than 40 artists from 25 countries across the Asia Pacific region. The exhibition confronts the traditional Western process of canon-making—who, what and where has been excluded from mainstream art history and the contemporary landscape.

I attend the exhibition on a Saturday morning. For the first 15 minutes I am there, I am the sole visitor in the space. Perhaps the demand has decreased since it opened in May, but it is difficult not to compare its attendance to the persistently sold-out Schiaparelli exhibition just down the hall, which opened in March. The assumed budget and subsequent production level mirror the discrepancy. It is worth noting that the Schiaparelli ticket is about 10 quid more.

The exhibition is split into three thematic sections: Re-Visioning History, Enduring Knowledge and Evolving Faith. The sound of Dr Christian Thompson’s voice singing in Bidjara, an endangered Australian Aboriginal language, fills the first room. The work, titled Refuge (2015), is a film and musical collaboration with British musician James Edward Young. The song, which Dr Christian Thompson composed in Bidjara, remains intentionally untranslated.

In her work, Kalutara Fort (2020–21), Pala Pothupitiye manipulates historical maps created during the colonisation of Sri Lanka to highlight the ethnic divisions created that instigated the Sri Lankan Civil War. The violence of familiar motifs, such as white sails and cannons, suddenly is a lot more blatant. Judy Watson’s painting memory bones (2007) is a beautiful tribute to Mulrunji Doomadgee, who tragically died while in Queensland police custody. Painted on canvas, she represents the violence inflicted on his body through abstracted white marks that resemble broken ribs. His unnecessary and premature death led to a lengthy legal battle and a landmark discrimination ruling that found the police guilty of systematic racial discrimination in 2016.

The second section of the exhibition, Enduring Knowledge, showcases work inspired by and preserving heritage craft practices. Sofia Tekela-Smith’s gorgeous jewellery practice draws upon her own ancestry and employs traditional Rotuman, Futunan, Uvean and Scottish aesthetics. She utilises Hawaiian lei-making techniques and reimagines Fijian breastplates using ribbon, shells and embroidery. The necklaces are from her Lovely Hula Hands series (2002), yet are timeless. Their unique design is hard to place in a specific place or time—a 2012 Marni runway show or a precious heirloom handed down through the generations.

Baskets made by Shirley Macnamara are a personal highlight, specifically Erkel (2010) and Guutu (2001). Adorned in galah and emu feathers, the woven vessels remind me of craft’s agility and the need for preservation and the revitalisation of historical techniques. Another highlight was the two watercolour paintings on display from Khadim Ali’s Rustam-e-pardar series (2006). After fleeing from Afghanistan during Taliban rule, Ali studied miniature painting in Lahore. Despite their tiny size, the paintings contain an epic (in length) tale of political tyranny and the manipulation of Persian mythology.

In the final section of the exhibition, Evolving Faith, artists such as Nomin Bold and Montien Boonma interrogate the ever-shifting relationship between the sacred and the secular. Boonma’s expansive installation Lotus sound (1992) evokes the sensory experience of being in a Buddhist temple, altering the atmosphere of the space. In what ways does a museum enable and hinder contemplation?

Scholars such as Walter Mignolo and Françoise Vergès are at the forefront of conversations about the ways in which imperialism has informed the metric scales we hold up art to and the very architecture and management structure of gallery spaces which house it. Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific aids in the expansion of the contemporary art canon and offers us different directions for our attention. It is a brilliant reminder that there is so much more to see.

Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific until 10 January 2027. 

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