Report from the Field: The Current State of Contemporary Art in Asia

Lecture by Gridthiya Gaweewong, 14 October 2025

This lecture offers a field report on the shifting landscape of contemporary art in Asia, drawn from over three decades of curatorial practice across the region. Rather than a comprehensive survey, it reflects lived experiences and encounters with artists, institutions, and movements shaped by the forces of globalization, political change, and ecological crisis.

Since the 1990s, Asia’s art world has moved from the margins to the center of global attention. Yet visibility does not guarantee stability. The rapid rise of biennales, art fairs, and private museums has brought vitality but also fragility, as state support wanes and alternative spaces struggle to survive.

Grounded in observation and participation, this lecture traces these transformations and asks how art ecosystems across Asia can sustain creative and critical practices amid shifting political and environmental conditions, reclaiming agency and imagining new forms of solidarity for the future.

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 14, 2025, 18:00–20:30
Venue: Lecture Room 1, Central Building, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts
Capacity: 180 participants/first-come, first-served; (no registration required; free admission)
Speaker: Gridthiya Gaweewong (Artistic Director and Curator, Jim Thompson Art Center)
Language: English with Japanese interpretation
Interpreter: Takuro Mizuta Lippit

Organized by: Global Art Practice(GAP), Tokyo University of the Arts
Co-organized by: Graduate School of Global Arts (GA) and Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) Tokyo University of the Arts

Gridthiya Gaweewong

Gridthiya Gaweewong is the Artistic Director and Curator of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, Thailand. She participated in the Under Construction program organized by the Japan Foundation between 2000 and 2004. Her curatorial projects include The Open World (Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai, 2023), Imagined Borders (12th Gwangju Biennale, 2018), Between Utopia and Dystopia (Mexico City, 2011), Unreal Asia (International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2009), and Under Construction (Tokyo, 2000–2002), among many others across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

In 2018, she was selected as a fellow at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Curatorial Leadership Center in New York. Since 2020, she has served as a member of the Acquisition Committee of the Singapore Art Museum, and more recently, as a member of the Artistic Director Selection Committee for documenta 16.

Under Construction was a collaborative project involving nine young curators in their 20s and 30s from seven Asian countries — China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand — who conducted field research and discussions to co-create a series of exhibitions.

“Under Construction program“: A collaborative project in which nine young curators in their 20s and 30s from seven Asian countries – China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand – conduct local art research and hold extensive discussions to create an exhibition.