Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America brings together more than 200 artworks and primary documents by over 100 artists across the 20th century, tracing the cultural and conceptual conditions under which claims of vanguardism first emerged in the Global South. By attending to the manners in which words and images are organised on canvas, paper, film and wood, to sensations artists presented vis-à-vis histories of colonial subjugation, this exhibition catalogue offers insights into how even the most restrictive of conditions may experience the simultaneity of magic and realism, revolution and subversion. The so-called Tropical is a geographically expansive term that has always resisted precise definitions; its ability to entangle with all sorts of political and cultural desires has made it permanently plural and contradictory. The polyphonic nature of “stories” is adopted to enable both fiction and non-fiction, as well as philosophical, technological and mythical narratives. Beyond clime, this richly illustrated book ventures the tropical as a palpable, material, strategic, relational and radical space.
