在西南季风的吹拂下，东南亚区域的丰富地貌、热带雨林和海上航路，让其成为各大陆间多元文化的共生之所。无论是历史上，还是当下，广东与东南亚一直互为邻里，其间的交流与互动都较之中国其他区域更为频繁且复杂，地处广东的广州美术学院美术馆一直着力于从珠三角、南中国延伸到东南亚以至更广泛区域的艺术、文化与历史研究。过去三年，洽遇新冠疫情全球肆虐，本展览顺势将在全球兴盛的大规模三年展策展模式化整为零，结合大学美术馆与教育、研究的联动，转化为围绕东南亚当代艺术专题研究的持续的展览流，通过线上线下不断生成的序列展览项目，配合研讨对话、档案库建设、出版和公共教育项目，旨在以更开放的策展视角和新的美术馆实践推动更深入而长久的当代艺术与文化思想沟通，探讨另一种以问题导向和专题研究为方法的区域艺术对话可能，观察这种方法如何从更深入而具体的知识生产与传播，促动区域艺术的文化自觉、理解与创新。项目中的策展人、艺术家、研究者和参与者们，也像浮家泛宅于这个区域海陆上古老的流动族群，在时代变迁的浪潮起落中互助协作，通过艺术实践来探索如何与充满不确定性的世界共生的智慧。  

榴莲是一种原生于东南亚区域的物种，各地品类众多，甚至同一棵榴莲树都会结出大相径庭的果实。作为东南亚的代表水果，它的生产、消费与流传方式广泛涉及文化、社会、生态等议题，对于榴莲的想象和误读，也象征着外部世界对于东南亚不甚清晰的理解和印象。并且，榴莲对于早已落地生根在东南亚各国的海外华人华侨而言，从“南洋”到“东南亚”的历史称谓转变中，更看到这个与“流连”同音的物种，还构成了离散族群历史中个体命运纠结变迁的隐喻；因此，本展览除了邀请东南亚和中国具有代表性的艺术家，还特别邀请海外华人华侨和离散在世界各地的艺术家们参展，这些作品中普世的人文关怀和精神述求，显示出他们的创作动力和隐藏的思考都不能简单地放置于清晰地理边界中来观察，而是提示从早期全球化到后全球化时代，对于世界艺术的理解，早已超越静态的以区域区分的艺术发展史框架，呈现为更加流动且复杂的跨文化混融状态。由此，也启发所有艺术创作与研究的实践者们，重新思考当代艺术创作与研究的问题立场、思考态度和创造力源泉。

本展览偏重以作品、文献和研究为媒介，将三年以来泛东南亚研究序列成果的阶段性汇聚与再研讨，通过观看、阅读、聆听和参与，构成多声部的讨论与分享场域，借助广州作为有两千多年历史口岸的开放传统，为东南亚区域中多元开放的知识生产与对话搭建交流与研究平台，希望促成更多不同学科、视角、路径与方法的思想交汇，继续推进区域间的彼此了解、自我认知和对本区域当代艺术的主位叙述。        

In the whiffs of southwest monsoon, the Southeast Asian region, with its diverse landforms, tropical rainforests and sea routes, becomes the optimal habitat of the parallel presence of manifold cultures from various continents. Whether in the past or at present, Guangdong has registered more frequent and intricate exchanges and engagements with Southeast Asia, a time-honored neighbor, compared to other parts of China. Consequently, the Art Museum of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA), seated in Guangdong, has long been researching arts, cultures and histories of the Pearl River Delta (PRD), South China, Southeast Asia and beyond. With the past three years wrecked by the world-raging Covid-19 pandemic, the T-SEAsia Triennial readily reworked its curatorial mode from a large-scale triennial, a thriving global practice, to a continuous stream of exhibitions on the thematic researches of Southeast Asian contemporary art in lockstep with the combined efforts of education and research in the GAFA Art Museum. With an exhibition series generated both online and offline, and supported by symposiums, dialogues, archives, publications and public education programs, the project as a whole aspires to support more insightful and lasting intellectual communications in contemporary art and culture, explore the possibilities of problem-oriented, regional dialogues on art using thematic researches, and observe how this methodology produces and disseminates incisive and specific knowledge, ultimately promoting the cultural awareness, understanding and innovation of regional arts with a more open curatorial perspective and new art museum practices. Like the ancient Southeast Asian communities who lived, always in flux, in their floating homes on sea-surrounded lands, curators, artists, researchers and participants in this project work with and back each other in the ebb and flow of changing times, probing into the wisdom of living in and with an uncertain world through art practices.

Durians are native to Southeast Asia with so many local varieties that vastly different fruits could be borne on the same tree. As an iconic Southeast Asian fruit, its production, consumption and circulation are extensively related to issues of culture, society and ecology, whereas the imagination and misinterpretation of durians symbolizes the ambiguous knowledge and impression of Southeast Asia by the world. Moreover, for the ethnic and overseas Chinese who long ago settled in Southeast Asian countries, durians, whose Chinese pronunciation is a homophone to liulian (“unwilling to leave”), stand as a metaphor of the mixed feelings of the Chinese diaspora who, in their changing lives, had witnessed the adoption of “Southeast Asia” to address their formerly known and inhabited Nanyang, a region close to the South China Sea. For that reason, this exhibition, while having representative artists from Southeast Asia and China onboard, has also invited in particular the ethnic and overseas Chinese and diaspora artists around the world, whose universal humanistic care and spiritual pursuit, as shown in their works, deny any convenient observation of their creative drives and underlying thoughts through the naïve lens of clearly demarcated geographical boundries. Instead, they remind us that the comprehension of arts on a global scale, from the early globalization to post-globalization era, has already moved beyond the static framework of art history divided by regions and presented a more fluid, complicated and mixed picture of multiplicity and symbiosis. Hence, they inspire all the art makers and researchers to rethink their stand on issues, intellectual attitude and source of creativity in contemporary art making and research.

Mainly based on the mediums of artworks, archives and researches, this exhibition presents an interim collection and review of the serial research findings on the Trans-Southeast Asian region over the past three years, which are seen, read, heard and engaged with to establish a polyphonic field of discussion and sharing in Guangzhou, where the tradition over two millennia as an open trading port helps form a platform of exchange and research for the pluralistic and open knowledge production and dialogue in Southeast Asia in the hope of fostering the ideological confluence of various disciplines, perspectives, pathways and methods, facilitating mutual understanding between different regions, strengthening self-knowledge and empowering the thematic narrative of contemporary art in their own region.