RUANG// for thought

RUANG// Journal Issue #1 is now live. Are artists becoming the next scientists, finally producing the kinds of knowledge that might actually confront the climate crisis? At a time when knowledge systems are failing to account for the conditions they produce, this issue turns to artistic practice as a mode of research. Bringing together 8 writers from across Southeast Asia and beyond, the issue explores how artists in the region are engaging new technologies, environmental change, labour conditions, systems of surveillance and more. Across the issue, contributors discuss the work of 25 artists, from environmental fieldwork and archival research to site-based investigations and speculative practices. With contributions by: Yu Ke Dong, Annabelle Tan Kai Lin, Kenneth Wong See Huat, Elena Wise, Jaron Lua Jie Long, Wency Mendes, Chiara Serpani, and Isa Pengskul & Victoria Hertel. The Journal is issued both in print and online. Read the full online issue via the link in bio. Image credits: 1. Robert Zhao Renhui, Thermal image of a herd of deer in the field, still from The Owl, The Travellers and The Cement Drain, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Singapore Art Museum, ShanghART Gallery. 2. ⁠Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Island, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. 3. ⁠Marcos Kueh, in collaboration with Hakan Demir and Vincent Wong, On Time, installation views. Photo by Koen Dijkman. 1 November 2025–16 January 2026. Courtesy of De Fabriek. 4. ⁠Robert Zhao Renhui, A Monitor Lizard Swims, still from Trash Stratum, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Singapore Art Museum. 5. ⁠Isa Pengskul & Victoria Hertel, A Drop in the Ocean, 2026, experimental writing. Courtesy of the artists. 6. ⁠Derek Tumala, A warm orange colored liquid, 2024. Installation. Courtesy of the artist. 7. ⁠Annabelle Tan and Kai McLaughlin (Studio Mess), Tropicalia Vulgaris, 2025. Courtesy of Annabelle Tan, Kai McLaughlin, Finbarr Fallon. 8. ⁠Basia Irland, Ice Book, ephemeral ice sculpture project released into rivers. Courtesy of Basia Irland. 9. ⁠Agan Harahap, Sutirah: The First Woman Animal Tamer, ca. 1885, West Java. Digital photography, 2015. Courtesy of the artist.

“Where, then, does art stand?..” The editorial letter for RUANG// Journal Issue #1 reflects on artists across Southeast Asia as researchers - measuring, mapping, documenting, and imagining from within the environments they inhabit. From technology and ecology to collective memory, labour conditions and de-colonised systems of knowledge, this issue considers artistic practice as a critical mode of inquiry that proposed an alternative to Western-centric scientific thought. Read the full editorial letter in RUANG// Journal Issue #1 via link in bio.

Atul Bhalla is a New Delhi, based visual artist whose practice explores the political, ecological, and emotional dimensions of water, landscape, and public space. Working across photography, video, installation, and performance, Bhalla’s work reflects on how rivers, bodies of water, and urban ecologies shape collective memory, social relations, and environmental consciousness. Born in 1964, Bhalla received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of Art, University of Delhi, and his Master of Fine Arts from Northern Illinois University, USA. He is currently a Professor of Visual Art at Shiv Nadar University in India. His work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Sharjah Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute. A recurring focus in Bhalla’s practice is water as both material presence and conceptual framework - an element through which histories of ecology, urbanisation, and human experience can be re-examined. For RUANG// Journal Issue #1, Wency Mendes’s article “Indigenous-Eco-Futurism: Embodied Ecologies and the Making of Futures” discusses how Bhalla’s work engages water as a site of memory, ecological relation, and future-thinking within South Asian and broader Global South contexts. Read the full article in RUANG// Journal Issue #1 via link in bio Image credits : 1. - Atul Bhalla, Adrift, 2013. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla. - Atul Bhalla, Deliverance, 2013. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 2,3: Atul Bhalla, ADRIFT-II, Archival Pigment Print (Diasec). Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 4. Atul Bhalla, Deliverance, 2013. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 5. Atul Bhalla, Dhani, 2014. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 6. I Was Happy Only for 5 Minutes, 2014. Courtesy Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen is an artist based in Hồ Chí Minh City working across moving image and sculpture to explore memory, history, and political resistance. His research-driven practice engages with communities affected by colonialism, war, and displacement, examining how historical narratives are erased, reconstructed, and carried through collective memory. Often beginning with objects, archival traces, or sites marked by trauma, Nguyen’s works move fluidly across past, present, and speculative futures. His practice approaches memory as something intangible and evolving, frequently drawing on storytelling, incorporating elements of the spectral to reflect on the afterlives of conflict and the possibilities of healing and solidarity. For RUANG// Journal Issue #1, Kenneth Wong See Huat’s article “From Extraction to Kinship: Queer Ecologies and the Relational Technologies of Southeast Asian Art” discusses how Nguyen’s work engages with histories of displacement and reimagines relationships between memory, environment, and community within Southeast Asian contexts. Read the full article in RUANG// Journal #1 via link in bio. Image credits: 1. Portrait of Tuan Andrew Nguyen, 2023. Courtesy of Lee Starnes, James Cohan. 2. Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Plume, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan. 3. ⁠Tuan Andrew Nguyen, When Water Embraces Empty Space, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan 4. Tuan Andrew Nguyen, A Lotus in a Sea of Fire, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan. 5. Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Arrival of The Boat People, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan.

TIKAR/MEJA (2018-2023) is a collaborative work by Yee I-Lann, created with Bajau Sama Dilaut weavers from Pulau Omadal, Semporna, Sabah. Comprising sixty handwoven mats, each piece features the image of a table - a symbol of administrative power associated with colonial, patriarchal, and state authority. In contrast, the tikar represents a communal, non-hierarchical space rooted in everyday life, traditionally woven by women as custodians of cultural knowledge. By embedding the image of the table within the mat, the work stages a subtle inversion: structures of control are contained within a living, community-based practice. Through this gesture, TIKAR/MEJA reflects on histories of power while foregrounding the resilience of indigenous knowledge, collective labour, and cultural continuity. Kenneth Wong See Huat features this work in his article “From Extraction to Kinship: Queer Ecologies and the Relational Technologies of Southeast Asian Art,” published in RUANG// Journal Issue #1. Read the full online issue via the link in bio. Image credits: 1. - Yee I-Lann, TIKAR/MEJA 52, 2018-2019, Bajau Sama DiLaut Pandanus weave with commercial chemical dye and matt sealant. Courtesy the artist and Silverlens Gallery. - Yee I-Lann, TIKAR/MEJA, 2018–2023, Installation view. Courtesy the artist and Silverlens Gallery. 2. Yee I-Lann, TIKAR/MEJA, 2018, Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens. 3. Yee I-Lann, TIKAR/MEJA, 2019-2020. Courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Helen Nicolay, and NGV Foundation, 2022. 4. Yee I-Lann, TIKAR/MEJA, 2020, Bajau Sama DiLaut Pandanus weave with commercial chemical dye, variable sizes. Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens. 5. Yee I-Lann, TIKAR/MEJA #14, Bajau Sama Di Laut, 2018-2019. Courtesy of the artist and MONSOON SEA 6. Yee I-Lann and ‘TIKAR/MEJA’ weavers from Omadal. Photo by Mohd Asraffirdaus Bin Abdullah. Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens.

Yee I-Lann works across photography, installation, and collaborative textile practices. Born in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, her work often engages the layered histories of colonialism, maritime exchange, and cultural circulation that have shaped Southeast Asia. In recent years, she has developed a series of tikar weaving projects in collaboration with Indigenous communities in Sabah, transforming pandan mats - traditionally used in domestic and ceremonial contexts - into large-scale contemporary artworks produced collectively with local weavers. These woven works draw upon vernacular patterns, regional textile traditions, and shared knowledge embedded within community craft practices. Through the material language of pandan weaving, the works foreground forms of labour, authorship, and ecological knowledge that are often overlooked within dominant art historical narratives. By bringing these practices into contemporary art contexts, Yee I-Lann’s projects challenge conventional distinctions between craft and fine art while highlighting the social and cultural histories woven into everyday materials. In RUANG// Journal Issue #1, the essay “From Extraction to Kinship: Queer Ecologies and the Relational Technologies of Southeast Asian Art” by Kenneth Wong See Huat situates these collaborative weaving practices within broader ecological and social histories in Southeast Asia. The essay describes mat-making as a relational technology - one that connects communities, labour, land, and tidal environments, while opening new ways of thinking about kinship, collaboration, and artistic production in the region. Read the full online issue via the link in bio. Image credits: 1. Portrait of Yee I-Lann. Courtesy of Wee Seng, Silverlens. 2. Yee I-Lann, Billboard, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens. 3. Yee I-Lann, Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I’ve been here a long time), 2020. Courtesy of the artist, QAGOMA Foundation. 4. Yee I-Lann, PANGKIS, 2021. Courtesy of Silverlens. 5. Yee I-Lann, Tikar Reben, 2020. Photo by Andy Chia Chee Shiong. 6. Yee I-Lann, The Orang Besar series: Kain Panjang with Petulant Kepala, 2010. Courtesy of Silverlens.

The Island (2017) is a short film by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, shot on Pulau Bidong, a former refugee camp off the coast of Malaysia that once housed over 250,000 displaced people following the Vietnam War. Now overgrown with jungle and scattered with remnants of its past, the island becomes both setting and subject - holding layers of memory, absence, and historical residue. Blending archival material with speculative fiction, the film imagines a dystopian future in which the last man on earth encounters a United Nations scientist after a final nuclear war. Moving between past and future, the work reflects on displacement, trauma, and the unstable constructions of nationhood, while questioning how histories are remembered, erased, and reactivated through place. Read more about this artwork in Kenneth Wong See Huat’s article “From Extraction to Kinship: Queer Ecologies and the Relational Technologies of Southeast Asian Art,” published in RUANG// Journal Issue #1. Read the full online issue via the link in bio. Image credits: 1,2,3,4,5,6 : Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Island, 2017. Single-channel video, color, 5.1 surround sound; 42:00 minutes, shot on Pulau Bidong, Malaysia. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Purchase through the Asian Pacific American Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, 2022.51. Courtesy of the artist and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

Chiara Serpani is a philosopher and writer who engages with visual culture and contemporary art as a site of embodied and situated inquiry. Through her work, she explores how relationships between the living body and its surrounding human and non-human agents challenge representational frameworks in contemporary thought. She is particularly interested in approaching contemporary art as a field of meaning-making, where aesthetic practices emerge through ongoing negotiations with social, political, and cultural conditions. Chiara holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Milan. For RUANG// Journal Issue #1, Chiara contributes the article “Decolonising Technology: Three Lessons from Southeast Asian Artists – Bagus Pandega, Derek Tumala, and Priyageetha Dia.” The article examines how these three artists from the region engage technological systems to reflect on ecological relations, colonial histories, and the environmental conditions shaping contemporary Southeast Asia. Read the full online issue via the link in bio.

A Drop in the Ocean is an experimental writing by Singapore-based artists Isa Pengskul and Victoria Hertel that follows the journey of a single water droplet. Written from a more-than-human perspective, the narrative traces how water moves through nature and human technologies. The writing is acompanies by a series of images created collaboratively by the artists, layering analog and polaroid photos into a near-abstract imagery. Read the full piece in RUANG// Journal #1 via link in bio. Image credits: 1,2,3: Isa Pengskul & Victoria Hertel, “A Drop in the Ocean”, 2026 experimental writing, polaroid collage, fragment. Courtesy of the artists

Agan Harahap is an Indonesian artist born in 1980 in Jakarta. He is widely known for his digitally manipulated photographs that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. Working with photo editing, staged imagery, and internet visual culture, Harahap often inserts fictional or speculative elements into historical and contemporary photographs, challenging the perceived authority of photographic images. His practice frequently addresses questions of media credibility, political spectacle, and the ways images shape collective memory and public narratives. By appropriating and altering familiar visual formats, including news imagery, archival photographs, and popular culture, Harahap exposes how photographic images can construct, distort, and circulate historical narratives. For RUANG// Journal writer and researcher Jaron Lua Jie Long offers a look into Agan Harahap’s work within an article “Against the Colonial Camera: Counter-Archives and Posthumous Agency in Southeast Asian Contemporary Art,” which explores how contemporary artists engage photography and digital technologies to challenge colonial visual regimes and rethink historical narratives across Southeast Asia. Read the full article in RUANG// Journal #1 via link in bio. Image credits: 1. Portrait of Agan Harahap. Photo by Yolanda Vista. Source: detikHOT. 2. Agan Harahap, Andy & Ali, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery. 3. ⁠Agan Harahap, Childhood Memories #2, 2018, archival pigment on paper, total of 14 pieces, installation view: Arts in Common: common|space, ART|JOG MMXIX , Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery. 4. Agan Harahap , Potret Diri , 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery. 5. Agan Harahap, Two Goldfish, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery. 6. Agan Harahap, Mentjari Kutu Rambut, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery. 7. Agan Harahap, Membidik Sejarah (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Bung Karno), 2013. Courtesy of the artist and art contemporary.

Jaron Lua Jie Long is a researcher and writer whose work explores Southeast Asian contemporary art through alternative approaches to historiography and visual criticism. His research examines how artists challenge colonial image regimes and dominant Western frameworks of art history, particularly through archives, counter-histories, and experimental image-making practices. His interests span modern and contemporary Asian art, with a focus on experimental new media and performance practices across the Global South. Through these fields, Jaron investigates how artistic practices reframe the relationship between images, power, and historical memory. Alongside his research, Jaron works at iPRECIATION, a Singapore-based gallery dedicated to contemporary Asian art, where he contributes to curatorial development and supports artwork acquisitions for private and institutional collections. For RUANG// Journal, Jaron contributes the article “Against the Colonial Camera: Counter-Archives and Posthumous Agency in Southeast Asian Contemporary Art,” which examines how contemporary artists mobilise counter-archival practices to challenge colonial visual regimes and rethink agency in Southeast Asian image-making. Read the full article in RUANG// Journal #1 via link in bio.

Hyperpnea Green (2024) is an installation by Bagus Pandega that explores the relationship between natural systems and technological infrastructures. The work brings together plants, light machines, and other mechanical components within a kinetic environment where organic and electronic elements interact and circulate energy through a shared system. By allowing plants, minerals, and machines to operate together within the installation, the work challenges the idea of technology as a tool that dominates nature. Instead, Hyperpnea Green proposes a speculative environment in which technological and ecological processes coexist, suggesting new possibilities for cooperation between living organisms and artificial systems. Read more about this artwork in Chiara Serpani’s article “Decolonising Technology: Three Lessons from Southeast Asian Artists – Bagus Pandega, Derek Tumala, and Priyageetha Dia,” published in RUANG// Journal Issue #1. Read the full online issue via link in bio. Image credits: 1,2,3,4: Bagus Pandega, Hyperpnea Green, 2024. Exhibition view: Daya Benda, Swiss Institute, New York (30 September 2025–4 January 2026). Photo: Daniel Pérez. Courtesy of Swiss Institute.