Moderators

Kathleen Ditzig
Kathleen Ditzig is a researcher and curator based in Singapore. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Nanyang Technological University. She was recently a fellow in Getty Foundation's '“Connecting Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia” organised by Cornell University and Asia Art Archives. Her research interests include exhibitionary histories of Southeast Asia, global histories of capitalism and the enduring legacies and networks of the Cold War in cultural production and contemporary geopolitics.

As a curator and researcher, she is invested in transnational collaborative research frameworks and in advancing art as an exceptional system of speaking to power. Her collaborative independent curatorial projects, such as offshoreart.co (developed with Robin Lynch and Debbie Ding), have been presented on international platforms such as the Berlin Biennale. With Carlos Quijon Jr, she recently developed the long term research and traveling exhibition project Afro-Southeast Asia: Pragmatics and Geopoetics of Art during a Cold War supported by ASEAN KONNECT. With Fang Tse Hsu, she recently co-curated Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home at the Taipei Fine Art Museum.

Her recent exhibitions include Peace Prosperity and Friendship With All Nations (2021), a solo exhibition of Heman Chong at Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Look East, Gone West (2020), a solo exhibition of Ho Rui An, at A+ works of art in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and As The West Slept (2019), a Performa Consortium Project hosted and organised by Silver Art Projects in New York.

Her art historical research and writing has been published by MoMA, Afterall, SOJOURN, Southeast of Now (NUS Press), Artforum, OSMOS magazine, Art Agenda and Art Review Asia, among others

Carlos Quijon, Jr.

Carlos Quijon, Jr. is a critic and curator based in Manila. He is a fellow of the research platform Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia (MAHASSA), convened by the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories project. He writes exhibition reviews for Artforum and Frieze. His essays are part of the books Writing Presently (Manila: Philippine Contemporary Art Network, 2019) and From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making: China and Southeast Asia (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019). He has published or have forthcoming publications in Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art, Afro-Asian Visions, MoMA’s post (US), Queer Southeast Asia, ArtReview Asia (Singapore), Art Monthly (UK), Asia Art Archive's Ideas (HK), and Trans Asia Photography Review (US), among others. He curated Courses of Action in Hong Kong in 2019, a will for prolific disclosures in Manila, co-curated Minor Infelicities in Seoul in 2020 and In Our Best Interests in Singapore in January. He is co-curator of the exhibition Cast But One Shadow: Afro-Southeast Asian Affinities at the UP Vargas Museum.

Speakers

Pio Abad
Pio Abad’s work is concerned with the social and political signification of things. Deeply informed by the modern history of the Philippines, where the artist was born and raised, his work uses strategies of appropriation to mine alternative or repressed historical events, unravel official accounts and draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people.

His solo exhibitions include Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite, Kadist, San Francisco (2019); Splendour, Oakville Galleries, Ontario (2019); Notes on Decomposition, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2016); 1975 – 2015, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney; Some Are Smarter Than Others, Gasworks, London (2014) and The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Manila (2014). In April 2022, he will have a solo exhibition at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila entitled Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts, a survey of Abad’s 10-year project examining the legacy of the Marcos dictatorship.

He has also participated in group exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; the 2nd Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii; the 12th Gwangju Biennial, Korea; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow; Kadist, Paris and Para Site, Hong Kong. Abad’s works are part of a number of important collections including Tate, UK; Hawai’i State Art Museum, Kadist, Paris/San Francisco and Art Jameel, Dubai.



Abad is also a lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University and the curator of the estate of artist Pacita Abad. Robin Peckham
Robin Peckham is a curator and editor currently living in Taiwan, where he is Co-Director of Taipei Dangdai. He previously served as editor-in-chief of LEAP, the international art magazine of contemporary China, and organized exhibitions for Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Fosun Foundation, and K11 Art Foundation. Peckham was named to Apollo Magazine's 40 Under 40 Asia in 2016, and had his show "Art Post-Internet" (curated with Karen Archey) listed by Artnews as one of the 20 most important art exhibitions of the 2010s.