» Asian cocoa & socially engaged art practices

Talk with Caroline Ha Thuc, Ravi Agarwal, and Jiandyin Collective

Nguyen Art Foundation presents a talk between curator Caroline Ha Thuc and exhibition artists Ravi Agarwal and Jiandyin Collective, focusing on socially engaged art practices and art making processes based on fieldwork. While Ravi embarked on a journey to cacao-growing regions in South India – Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka – with the aim of understanding the alternative model of development implemented by smaller independent cocoa producers, Jiandyin Collective met with Go Niaw, a Thai Buddhist who is now growing cocoa in the Prachuap Khiri Khan province of Thailand, after Typhoon Gay wrecked his crops in 1989. The talk covers the artists’ investigations in cacao production and its usage within different communities, their work methodologies, and the challenges they face on the field. Continuing from the previous curator and artists in conversation, further questions arise: How can artists work with communities and facilitate the expression of their voices without paternalizing them? What is the artist’s position and what are their objectives when they embarked on these types of journeys? What are the ethics involved when it comes to documenting the living conditions of certain groups of people? To what extent have artists had an impact on the communities they chose to approach? In turn, how have these encounters and in-situ research methods influenced their practices and future projects?

Beyond the framework of the exhibition, the artists will share further strategies on how they approach fieldwork. Ravi Agarwal has notably spent several years documenting the lives of migrant workers, especially during his long-term project Down and Out: Labouring under Global Capitalism (1997–2000) presented at Documenta XI (2002). As for Jiandyin Collective, with their series Dialogue: Seeing and Being project (2010–2017), they have been drawing portraits of various people from very different communities across the world, establishing intimate and unique relations with them.

This event is part of a series of public and education programs in association with In Stranger Lands: Cocoa’s Journeys to Asia, an exhibition organized by Nguyen Art Foundation.