For every Anthony a Rishi
The longer Artreview Asia keeps on truckin’, the longer it feels as if it’s going round in circles. Always ending up at the starting line. Again. No, it’s not talking about every Sri Lankan’s duty to repeatedly review the work of Lionel Wendt (although… if you turn to page 84…); rather about trying to work out what the tag ‘Asia’ might mean. An existential problem. Although if you’re into Indic religions, perhaps it’s not. Perhaps that’s just the nature of being. Not that that’s of any help to Artreview Asia right now. Imagine having a name that you’re constantly having to explain, constantly define… What? That’s the experience of many people born in Asia when they end up on some other continent? Oh… Errr… What? And a bit like the sentiment behind the title of a work by Korakrit Arunanondchai? Something about funny names? Look, Artreview Asia doesn’t have time to be funny. Or maybe the joke is what Artreview Asia encounters, not what it creates. Yeah. Like the time the other week when someone tried to tell it that Australia was part of Asia, and then Artreview Asia tried to tell them that there was a continent called Australia (which used to be called, less confusingly, Oceania, although Artreview Asia is gradually accepting that confusion is a necessary component of contemporary geopolitics) and it was pretty sure Australia was part of it. And then they started saying that Australia had more in common with Asia than it had with Europe. To which Artreview Asia pointed them towards the colonial history section of the local library and a photograph of Anthony Albanese that it keeps upon itself for just these types of educational moments (nervously awaiting, always, for the Rishi Sunak countermove, although that never seems to happen, probably because people don’t prepare for anything these days). Although it’s not that they didn’t have a point when it comes to deeper histories of trade and migration, and that’s before we even need to go back to when everything was joined up and there was only one continent, Pangaea. But we’d better stop there. Otherwise you might start to think that Artreview Asia is making everything up. Which it isn’t. Obviously. Artreview Asia