This article looks at the East Timor crisis and the attempted boycott of the APT 3 at the Queensland Art Gallery subsequent to Indonesian artists participating in the event. Marianto examines this in relation to the shifting powers in Indonesia at the time from the ruling of President Habibie to the fourth leader Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) and presents a list of what could be considered seven strands of artistic concern within Indonesia: The critical group, alternative art, art for art's sake, conventional art, marginalised individuals, media-influenced art and feminist artists.
Japanese culture at the end of the twentieth century was at an intersection of past, present and future. Exhibitions including Against Nature at the Grey Art Gallery in New York (1989), Japanese Ways, Western Means at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane (1989), A cabinet of Signs at the Tate Gallery Liverpool (1991) and Zones of Love at the MCA Sydney (1991) showed for the first time the complex and urban basis of Japanese art in the 1980s, a time of considerable transition in Japanese art practice. Featured artists included Shigeo Toya, Kimio Tsuchiya, Yasamasa Morimura, Takashi Murakami, Emiko Kasahara, Masato Nakamura, Yukinori Yanagi, Katsushige Nakahashi and Tatsuo Miyajima.
Post-revolutionary China was a time of testing boundaries of official tolerance and experimentation with the newly accessible Western art ideas. The first art exhibitions were held and groups formed, as artists started to realise they were not, as Mao said, just the hair on the skin of socialism. Resistance to the old political order and a deliberate courting of Western buyers with post-Mao imagery has to give way to finding an original voice.
Korean art in the nineties experienced an era of unprecedented freedom and a remarkable upsurge in visual expression. Ahn looks at the progression of Korean art and politics during the later years of the 20th century and at a few of the central art figures: Kim Myung-hye, Choi Jeong-hwa, Kim Jun, Kim Soo-ja, Han Myung-Ok, Choi Jae-eun, Kim Young-jin and Lee Bul.