Official Artist
O H M Photography
Director
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, Photographer
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CUT09: Figure (New Photography from Southeast Asia)
04 Feb – 21 Jan 2009
press release
CUT began in 2008 as a groundbreaking survey of new photography from Southeast Asia. It marks a watershed in photography exhibition in Southeast Asia by giving an insight into the tremendous possibilities of an important medium so far overlooked in the local mainstream. In February 2009, CUT returns to Valentine Willie Fine Art Kuala Lumpur to explore the photographic figure.
Figurative representation in photography is often performative. It enacts a narrative or an identity in front of the camera. Often it is more than a mere cipher for personality of the sitter, the figure is the ground on which questions of identities are debated upon.The earliest photographs of the region and its people served an imperial appetite for ethnological knowledge. Many of its subjects were often dressed in native attires, made to act out a local identity in front of the colonialist camera that fixed its subject as unchanging and one-dimensional. This essentialist approach later made way for different types of studio portraiture, which marked the life passages of an emerging class of local bourgeoisie, commemorating their integration into modern life. In more recent times, figuration in photography expanded to conform to the demands of mass-produced pop culture, serving the spectacle of commercial advertising.Artists featured in this year's CUT are on the forefront of highlighting the problematics of representation in photography. Instead of subscribing to the belief identity is a fixed and stable given, their subjects often defy easy catergorisation. These usages of the figure in photography stand defiant against the cookie-cutter images of our contemporary environment, offering a window into and mirror of alternative reinvestments of bodies as sites where notions of selfhood (both individual or collective) are contested.CUT09 highlights a sophisticated range of responses by artist photographers in the region who seek to complicate what we know of ourselves and our society, proving that photography, no longer a tool for mere documentation, has become an increasingly important and relevant medium to provoke thought and action on our contemporary world.CUT will travel to Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore in May 2009 and Manila Contemporary in July 2009.Participating PhotographersAzril K. Ismail (Malaysia), Diana Lui (Malaysia), Yee I-Lann (Malaysia), Genevieve Chua (Singapore), Gina Osterloh (the Philippines), MM Yu (the Philippines), Wawi Navarozza (the Philippines), Agan Harahap (Indonesia), Davy Linggar (Indonesia), Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia), Timur Angin (Indonesia), Maitree Siriboon (Thailand), Manit Sriwanichpoom (Thailand), Ohm Phanphiroj (Thailand).
My name is Ohm. I am an artist. I am here to share my vision to the world. I believe that without art, life is never fully lived. And I also believe in
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