Name: Sabrina Yin Fung Hung
Thesis Title: From Mansau-Ansau to Gotong Royong: The collaborative practice of Yee I-Lann and Pangrok Sulap
Thesis abstract
This thesis critically examines the work of Sabahan artist Yee I-Lann and collective Pangrok Sulap’s in order to address the question of how frameworks for understanding collaboration can be more attuned to the specificities of context.

It will demonstrate that though existing frameworks for collaboration as conceptualised by thinkers like Claire Bishop, Nicolas Bourriaud and Grant Kester have their merits, they do not adequately capture the ways in which collaborative practices derive from and are shaped by the sociopolitical and cultural nuances of the context of Sabah, Malaysia. Sabah is a region with a complex history of colonisation, and the artists who practice here today draw upon the postcolonial conditions of this context in their collaborative practices.

This thesis argues that engagement with this postcoloniality is critical for understanding how Yee I-Lann and Pangrok Sulap approach collaboration, in particular their focus on community and indigenous forms of knowledge. It will demonstrate how this focus on the local is in actuality enacting a decolonising project, and to adequately understand how collaboration functions in this region, there is a need to decolonise art historical knowledge, its vocabulary in particular.

Yee’s practice has for a long time engaged with these ideas and has enacted a decolonising project through actively deconstructing legacies of colonial power and recentring local knowledge over that of the foreign. It is through the privileging of indigenous knowledge that her collaborative practice develops its own vocabulary and new forms of knowledge rooted in the local such as mansau-ansau (to walk and walk, not knowing where you are headed).

The case study of Pangrok Sulap’s collaborative work will illustrate how drawing upon local vernacular traditions like gotong royong (mutual aid) in our analyses allows for cultural nuances of locality to be captured more attentively. In sum, this thesis argues for the decolonisation of art historical knowledge when addressing the Southeast Asian context, one that highlights the ways in which contemporary practices emerge from the traditional in this region and are reflections of the contexts they operate within.

Name: Pham Nguyen Anh Thu (Anne)
Thesis Title: Materialisation, enchantment and imagination: Lacquer as a contemporary art method in Vietnam
Thesis abstract
This thesis repositions Vietnamese lacquer as a conceptual and critically engaged medium, tracing its transformation from craft and modern painting to a site of contemporary inquiry. Focusing on early 21st century works by Lê Thừa Tiến and Phi Phi Oanh, it argues that lacquer has been reimagined not merely as a technique but as a method of thinking—where sensory appeal, process and meaning co-emerge through the material’s physical, historical and symbolic dimensions.

While Lê Thừa Tiến turns to sơn mài as a meditative ground for spiritual orientation and embodied perception, Phi Phi Oanh harnesses its allure and cultural authority to explore the textures of everyday life. Their materially grounded yet divergent approaches exemplify how lacquer can support reflective, participatory and culturally situated modes of engagement—echoing broader Southeast Asian strategies that rework local materials, traditions and aesthetics to construct contemporary vocabularies.

Addressing the omission of lacquer in early contemporary art discourse in Vietnam, the thesis situates its delayed emergence around 2006–2007 within a context of academic orthodoxy, institutional legacy and elite connoisseurship. It argues that lacquer’s recent turn was the outcome of evolving inquiry shaped by its long entanglement with artistic, cultural and ideological histories, starting with its institutionalisation at the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine. Rather than a return to tradition, contemporary lacquer reconfigures it—offering a multivalent language attuned to the personal, ethical and social conditions of the present.

Name: Cai Jingxuan
Thesis Title: Fragments of memory: Chinese Scar Art and the revival of humanism
Thesis abstract
This thesis examines Chinese Scar Art (1978–1985) as a critical visual response to the Cultural Revolution, focusing on its dual function in reconstructing historical memory and reviving humanism in post-Mao China.

It situates Scar Art within a shifting political and artistic context after 1976, tracing how the lessening of state controls enabled a brief but profound period of creative reflection before official discourse moved towards intentional forgetting. While some works were welcomed and others were censored, this tension reveals the contested nature of memory in contemporary China.

Drawing on the theories of cultural memory and cultural trauma, this thesis analyses how artists transformed personal and collective experiences of political violence into symbolic and enduring images. Through close iconological analysis of portrait-based artworks by Gao Xiaohua, He Duoling, Luo Zhongli and other artists of the same period, the study identifies visual strategies that resist propagandist aesthetics and re-centre the human subject.

Scar Art’s ethical orientation is rooted in empathy, dignity and the acknowledgement of suffering, constituting an enduring legacy that influenced later artistic movements, even as direct representations of the Cultural Revolution gradually receded from public review. By integrating visual analysis with historical and theoretical perspectives together, this research positions Scar Art as a significant site of cultural negotiation, humanism revival and memory collection in modern Chinese art history.

Name: Chin Yuqin
Thesis Title: Monstrous mediations: Asian contemporary art through the lens of monster theory
Thesis abstract
This paper presents an examination of Asian contemporary art through the lens of monster theory. Monster theory identifies key characteristics of how monsters—non-normative entities not known to exist in reality—function as cultural constructs, including an underlying notion that monsters embody dialectic Otherness.

Using this lens, this study explores how monsters have been used in Asian contemporary art as embodiments as Otherness, particularly focusing on how artists have harnessed them to express marginalised identities and present social commentary.

Research was conducted through formal analysis of two bodies of artwork, Ex Nilalang by Club Ate and The New Shanhai Jing by Qiu Anxiong. These works were examined under the lens of monster theory; a lens notably applied only in conjunction with cultural and contextual information grounding it in localised Asian perspectives. Interdisciplinary sources were also consulted, including information and concepts from the fields of queer studies, Asian mythology, localised histories, anthropology, and decolonial studies.

Through such means, this study affirms that monsters perform important roles in Asian art, particularly when used in tandem with localised Asian mythologies and cultural specificities. Through the monstrous, numerous conceptual threads are synthesised, mediated and articulated while maintaining localised Asian perspectives, and ushering mythological pasts into contemporaneity. The importance of consulting localised contexts during the application of monster theory was also established, to consistently centre discussions of monsters on their cultural points of origins.

Thus, this paper also demonstrates the generative potential of monsters to crystallise, create, communicate and mediate relevant ideas, suggesting their continued importance and relevance in Asian cultures.

Name: Agnes Tan Ee Boon
Thesis Title: Xu Beihong’s art and nationalism in context: A study of four Singapore exhibitions (1939–2008)
Thesis abstract
This thesis examines how Xu Beihong’s artistic nationalism was reframed through four major exhibitions in Singapore between 1939 and 2008.

While Xu (1895–1953) is celebrated in China for fusing Western realism with Chinese ink traditions, his legacy in Southeast Asia—particularly Singapore—invites further exploration. Through visual analysis of five key works (Fishing in the Cold River, Tian Heng and His Five Hundred Followers, The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains, Running Horse, and Put Down Your Whip), alongside curatorial, archival and press materials, this study traces how exhibitions shaped evolving narratives of nationalism, diaspora, and identity.

The 1939 Victoria Memorial Hall exhibition, staged during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), cast Xu as a patriotic realist and diasporic mobiliser. In 1954, a posthumous memorial positioned him as a cultural ancestor and educator, reinforcing diasporic continuity. The 1998 Sojourn in Nanyang exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum highlighted hybridity and multiculturalism, aligning him with postcolonial nation-building. The 2008 Xu Beihong in Nanyang retrospective at the Singapore Art Museum situated him within global modernism, framing Singapore as a cultural mediator between East and West.

Drawing on Tony Bennett’s “exhibitionary complex” and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s “performing identity,” the thesis argues that exhibitions actively produce memory and identity than merely preserve heritage. It extends critical museology into Chinese diasporic contexts, showing how Xu’s oeuvre has been strategically mobilised to reflect shifting cultural politics. His art becomes a dynamic site of negotiation—between nationalism and diaspora, heritage and modernism—affirming the exhibition’s role in shaping collective memory and cultural diplomacy.

Name: Kristy Kong
Thesis Title: No Place Like Home: The reimagining of home in the works of Kimsooja, Simryn Gill, and Rina Banerjee
Thesis abstract
This thesis examines how Xu Beihong’s artistic nationalism was reframed through four major exhibitions in Singapore between 1939 and 2008.

This thesis examines how three transnational women artists, Kimsooja (South Korea/France/USA), Simryn Gill (Singapore/Malaysia/Australia), and Rina Banerjee (India/UK/USA) use materials to reconstruct concepts of home across geographic and cultural boundaries, challenging traditional notions of home as a fixed location. Through careful analysis of their use of textiles, found objects, and cultural artefacts, this study reveals how these artists create affective experiences of home. The study also analyses how scale influences embodied experiences of home-making through Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad and phenomenological approaches. The findings contribute to shaping contemporary perspectives of how transnational identities navigate displacement and negotiate forms of belonging across different cultural contexts. This research is significant as it contributes to the ongoing dialogue of how contemporary art engages with migration, belonging, and cultural identity in an increasingly globalised world.