Books by Pamela N Corey
In The City in Time, Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic pra... more In The City in Time, Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists’ engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism.
The City in Time traces the process through which collective memory and aspiration are mapped onto landscape and built space to shed light on how these vibrant Southeast Asian cities shape artistic practices as the art simultaneously consolidates the city as image and imaginary. Featuring a dynamic array of creative productions that include staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds.
Book Review of Pamela N. Corey, The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and ... more Book Review of Pamela N. Corey, The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia, and Viet Le, Return Engagements: Contemporary Art's Traumas of Modernity and History in Sài Gòn and Phnom Penh
Journal of Asian Studies 83, no. 2, 2024
Papers by Pamela N Corey
The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, 2023
This essay provides an overview of the work of British-Singaporean artist Erika Tan, in particula... more This essay provides an overview of the work of British-Singaporean artist Erika Tan, in particular, a series of multimedia projects realized from 2015 to 2019 that focused on the historical figure of Halimah Binti Abdullah, a Malayan weaver who performed her craft at the 1924 Empire Exhibition in Wembley, England. A video presentation featuring the digitally rendered voice of Abdullah served as a threshold into the series, and is the focus of inquiry for my discussion. A Presentation by Proxy (2014) evokes questions about the ways in which the conjunction of speech, text, and voice in the digital medium elides the uncanny, the ventriloquial, and the parodic. The work “materializes” Abdullah as a simultaneously historical and posthuman presence, and I draw attention to the deliberate use of the glitch in this reenactment, arguing that Tan’s crafting of mechanized speech foregrounds irresolution as crucial to sustaining postcolonial address and decolonial work.
“Craft and the Making of ‘Global’ Contemporary Art,” A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework, eds. Jane Chin Davidson and Amelia Jones. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 119-31. , 2023
To approach the broader question of how craft often serves as a constituent element in contempora... more To approach the broader question of how craft often serves as a constituent element in contemporary art, this essay traces the historical developments that catalyzed the ideological differentiation of art, craft, modernism, and the contemporary in colonial and postcolonial contexts. I suggest that this historical mapping, dating back to projects of industrialization and empire in the nineteenth century, is important in terms of tracing the transcultural routes to contemporary art’s desire for globalism today, and the role of craft therein. This also provides necessary context for considering craft as the hinge of an artwork but also as risk for artists from regions like Southeast Asia, whose works become instrumental in the making of a “global” contemporary art.
Don’t Call it Art! Contemporary Art in Vietnam 1993-1999, 2021
Oxford Art Journal, 2020
This article centres on the work of Vong Phaophanit (b. 1961, Laos) and his collaborations with C... more This article centres on the work of Vong Phaophanit (b. 1961, Laos) and his collaborations with Claire Oboussier (b. 1963, UK). It first examines the problematic politics of identification made apparent by the media controversy surrounding Phaophanit’s nomination for the 1993 Turner Prize, when theartist’s ethnicity was targeted in queries surrounding his eligibility for the prize.I further suggest that the historicisation of Phaophanit as a British black artist reveals limitations in the ways that his work has been interpreted within identity-based discourses. A deeper consideration of Phaophanit’s practice and his collaborations undertaken with Claire Oboussier reveals a deliberate and poetic obfuscation of such identificatory processes within the artwork itself, particularly through the artists’ blurring of the boundaries of visual and sonic images at the very level of perception. To that end, I emphasise the role of vocality in their work as it is implicated through various sonic modalities, including ventriloquial exchange, the sounding of things, and horizonal perception. This scrutiny of materials provides a basis from which we might understand the artists’ presentation of a different kind of voice: one suggestively and productively opaque in relation to representation as well as the often contentious metaphorisation of art as voice, too often construed through biography and identity.
Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2019
shared online access through eprint link http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6ata7pjNJwMbcPX3TABp/full
In Arts du Vietnam: Nouvelles Approches, eds. C. Herbelin et al. Rennes, France: Editions Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 135-144. , Jul 2015
Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 12 (2014), pp. 61-94
Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March/April 2014)
Catalogue essays by Pamela N Corey
Sung Tieu: Oath against Minimalism, 2020
Thao Nguyen Phan: Monsoon Melody. Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2019
Essay for the exhibition brochure for Unauthorised Medium (curated by Annie Jael Kwan), Framer Fr... more Essay for the exhibition brochure for Unauthorised Medium (curated by Annie Jael Kwan), Framer Framed, 16 Sep – 18 Nov 2018
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Books by Pamela N Corey
The City in Time traces the process through which collective memory and aspiration are mapped onto landscape and built space to shed light on how these vibrant Southeast Asian cities shape artistic practices as the art simultaneously consolidates the city as image and imaginary. Featuring a dynamic array of creative productions that include staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds.
Papers by Pamela N Corey
Catalogue essays by Pamela N Corey
The City in Time traces the process through which collective memory and aspiration are mapped onto landscape and built space to shed light on how these vibrant Southeast Asian cities shape artistic practices as the art simultaneously consolidates the city as image and imaginary. Featuring a dynamic array of creative productions that include staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds.