Visual Representations of the Cold War and Postcolonial Struggles Art in East and Southeast Asia

The essays and artworks gathered in this volume examine the visual manifestations of postcolonial struggles in art in East and Southeast Asia, as the world transitioned from the communist/capitalist ideological divide into the new global power structure under neoliberalism that started taking shape during the Cold War. The contributors to this volume investigate the visual art that emerged in Australia, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Korea, Okinawa, and the Philippines. With their critical views and new approaches, the scholars and curators examine how visual art from postcolonial countries deviated from the communist/capitalist dichotomy to explore issues of identity, environment, rapid commercialization of art, and independence. These foci offer windows into some lesser-known aspects of the Cold War, including humanistic responses to the neo-imperial exploitations of people and resources as capitalism transformed into its most aggressive form. Given its unique approach, this seminal study will be of great value to scholars of 20th-century East Asian and Southeast Asian art history and visual and cultural studies.

Part I. Joining the Game: Trauma and Regionalism 1. “The New Chinese Landscape” in the Cold War Era 2. Before and Beyond the Cold War: Visual Accounts of the “Secret War” in Laos (Pha Khamfan’s Collection of Photographs and Terry Wofford’s Paintings of Planes) 3. Affects, Trauma and Experimental Art in New Order Indonesia, 1970-1977 4. Asia’s Cold War and Environmental Devastation: Kidlat Tahimik and Roberto Villanueva’s Neo-Indigenous Response in the Philippines and Beyond 5. Australian Exhibitionary Turns to Asia in the late Cold War Part II. Visual Gallery and Primary Documents 6. From Okinawa with Love 7. Works and Primary Documents 8. Reconfiguring History 9. Voyage into the COLD SEA 10. From Cities into the Mountains and the Fields: An Archaeology of Lives in Dark Ruins Part III. The Continuous Cold War 11. Survival Tactics within Cold War Ideologies: Post-Mao Artists on the Tides of Globalization 12. Performance, Memory and Affect in Yamashiro Chikako’s Mud Man 13. Undoing Cold War Temporality: Transnational Adoption in Agnès Dherbeys’s Omone and Retired

Midori Yamamura is an Assistant Professor at CUNY Kingsborough. Yu-Chieh Li is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Studies, Lingnan University.