Bearing Witness. Contemporary Asian art from the NGV Collection

In these works, artists across Asia and its diasporas confront history and social change, transforming the body, language and visual traditions into forms of resistance.

Huang Yan paints a classical shānshuǐ landscape onto skin, merging centuries-old pictorial traditions with contemporary image-making. Qiu Zhijie reinterprets the gestures of Cultural Revolution imagery to reflect on the communal dreams of the era and the realities that followed. Zhang Huan overlays faces with written characters, linking personal identity to rapid urban transformation and the loss of familiar environments.

Others examine how political authority and social pressures shape identity more directly. FX Harsono revisits the forced suppression of Chinese Indonesian names, reasserting his own through the use of ink, brush and photography. Xiao Lu documents public protests in Hong Kong, while Yee I-Lann depicts the displacement of indigenous communities in Sabah due to urbanisation and palm oil plantations. Haris Purnomo commemorates disappeared political activists by inscribing their names as a record of social memory.

These works highlight how individuals negotiate the systems that seek to define, rename or erase them, and how art is used as both a record and resistance.