The early history of the Malaysian National Art Gallery has been thoroughly elucidated through many different sources but its role as promoter of Malaysia’s art in the first ten years of its early formation have never been critically examined. This paper will trace the transnational relationship of the National Art Gallery through its exhibitions co-organised with the Commonwealth Institute in London within the larger context of the post-World War II period and the British decolonisation in Malaya. This paper will situate and contextualise its research on Malaya’s early exhibition history on multiculturalism and the Malayan identity framework, and later draw the link and connection between the Commonwealth Institute and the context of its establishment in Britain and the establishment of the National Art Gallery in Malaya. Subsequently, this paper will trace and demonstrate the importance of these early exhibitions to be understood in the larger context of (a) the need to exert international visibility during the period of Confrontation and (b) the exhibition as a platform that mooted the Malayan identity that aligns with the core values and principles of the Commonwealth. As such, this paper demonstrates that the transnational relations between the National Art Gallery and the Commonwealth Institute in the realm of Malaysia’s exhibition history must be analysed in tandem with the issues that are faced by a new British Commonwealth country, i.e., Malaysia during the immediate post-war period.

Within an art exhibition, the disposition of space is fundamental in experiencing artworks. A study of the exhibition space as discourse enmeshes art within a framework of relationship and processes instead of viewing art as an isolated and autonomous object. This paper features the case study of Art ‘76, the inaugural exhibition of Singapore's first large-scale institution of art, the National Museum Art Gallery (NMAG). The NMAG's opening in 1976 had been much anticipated by artists and the art audience since the 1960s, it was also an important milestone in the National Museum of Singapore's process of modernisation and revitalisation. During Singapore's post-independent period, the National Museum began to redefine itself as a civic museum focussing on Singapore's history and culture, shifting away from its previous incarnation of a research-focused colonial institution, the Raffles Library and Museum. Singapore was not alone in exploring the role of modern art in nation-building, as neighbouring Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand also began to moot for their own institution of modern art around the same period of time. Art ‘76 and the NMAG represent a case of distinct spatial typology that arose out of unique institutional and socio-political dynamic in post-independent Singapore. In analysing the legacy as well as the relationships and contentions that shaped the spatial articulation of Art ‘76, this paper studies existing visual and oral archive, as well as critically evaluating the concepts of space as a subject of historical study.

The mosque connotes a place of prostration towards Allah. As a sacred space, mosque designs use great detail to respect specific ceremonial functions and some requirements outlined in the Quran, but accommodate diverse styles and construction materials that several traditional and cultural factors determine. As early as the seventh century, as Islam spread across the Mediterranean, North Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, the mosque remained a quintessential Islamic building for local Muslim communities. Consequently, mosque architecture presents diverse styles and forms. It does not follow a normative design form besides having an essential hall to accommodate the congregation and visibly indicating the qibla. This paper explores mosque architecture designs in Brunei Darussalam to analyse expressions of cultural identity and constructions of a collective identity. Since the 1950s, mosque architecture in Brunei has distinguished itself by amalgamating designs that culturally significant historical exchanges within and beyond the Malay world dictated. The paper argues that specific governmental, social, cultural and economic contexts necessarily inform the built environment and, particularly, that of religious architecture, resulting in the development of autochthon styles.

This article examines the works of three photographers, Kim Hak (b. 1981), Khvay Samnang (b. 1982), and Neak Sophal (b. 1989), all born in the post-Khmer Rouge era and all established relatively early in their careers. These third-generation Cambodian photographers construct portraitures that steer away from identity to address the larger issues of individuals and local communities in present-day Cambodia, which still lives in the shadow of the trauma of the Khmer Rouge. Kim's photography avoids a direct representation of people who suffered through the Khmer Rouge regime and instead presents small, ordinary objects that were kept secretly in their household; Khvay documents the hardship of local communities in Phnom Penh and their questioned identity by portraying masked faces; Neak questions the hardship of the youth, women, and townspeople through the erasure of face in her series of photographs depicting various community groups in Cambodia. This subtle avoidance of portraying individuals in a direct, straightforward way signifies a multi-faceted interpretation of the traumatic past, its resilience, and the newly added social problems of contemporary Cambodia, which struggles in the aftermath of the genocide and more recent economic growth.

British literary history routinely associated women with reading fiction, especially the novel. This association seemingly threatened male hegemony and cultural authority. It led, therefore, to the portrayal of the woman reader as a female quixote who was prone to misreading and being misled by what she read. This representation became popular during the rise of the novel in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the New Woman's emergence at the fin-de-siècle. Similar developments took place in Siam/Thailand where the birth of fiction, the advent of the woman reader, and the New Woman's rise roughly coincided in the late 1910s and early 1920s. By examining San Thewarak's novel Bandai haeng khwam rak [Stairways to Love] (1932), this paper demonstrates the trope of the female quixote's invocation to describe the emerging Thai (New) Woman reader and the threat that she embodied that had to be managed and controlled.

This article presents an account of Faduma, a Somali woman currently living in Jakarta, Indonesia, in order to illustrate the creativity, resilience and adaptability required to make do as a refugee with little to no formal support in a rather hostile environment. For Faduma, Indonesia presents such an environment. As it offers no formal protection for asylum seekers and refugees and only tolerates their temporary presence without guaranteeing them any fundamental rights, such as the right to work, it can be characterised as a ‘deviant destination’ for refugees in search of durable and effective solutions. This article analyses Faduma's strategies, embedded in the macro-political context of forced migration, the Global North's externalised border policies, the absence of safe pathways, and the lack of proper refugee protection in Southeast Asia, for finding informal employment, attaining new skills and education, and forming strategic friendships with Indonesians and expatriates as a means of dealing with racism, exploitation and multifaceted precarity. We selected Faduma's case from amongst a number of encounters that we had with Somali refugees in Indonesia because of her extraordinary involvement with the Somali community. While the current toleration of refugee activities by Indonesian authorities enables refugees to survive in transit, we argue that such unintentional and informal protection is not a durable approach for larger groups of refugees enduring prolonged periods of waiting.

This article explores recent waves of Chinese mobility demonstrated by new Chinese emigrants working for private Chinese companies conducting transnational business in Thailand in general and Chiang Mai Province in particular. We use two case studies of international education centres and real estate for senior care businesses in Chiang Mai to discuss the flexibility of Chinese capitalism and argue that deploying intrapreneurs and cultivating entrepreneurial value for employees, professionals and co-partners in pursuit of transnational business are some of the more flexible strategies that China's private companies have employed in response to their new business lines and emerging market demand from both China and other parts of the globe. However, while the Chinese and Thai states have played an important role in facilitating and regulating business conducted in Thailand, transnational business is in an early stage, as demonstrated by the two case studies explored, and may not always proceed as expected.