Tropical Modernism(s), Miscegenated Art and Modernity

Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America opened on 18 November 2023 and ran at the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) until 24 March 2024. NGS’s website states that the exhibition is “the first large-scale museum exhibition to take a comparative approach across two regions united by their shared struggles against colonialism”, comprising over 200 paintings, sculptures, prints and installations. The exhibition proceeds not always via direct formal or informal engagements between artists but by “an alchemy of shared narratives” (Teo Hui Min). Tropical endeavours to complicate the essential link between modernism and modernity by reflecting on how the “accursed European and American influence” is “absorbed” (Hélio Oiticica) into the local and indigenous, resulting in what might be called miscegenated art .