The Victoria and Albert Museum's new exhibition, Rising Voices, attempts to condense three decades of contemporary art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific into just three rooms. The show draws from the Queensland Art Gallery's Asia Pacific Triennial, a vast survey of the region's artistic output. While the exhibition features remarkable works, its cramped presentation leaves much to be desired.
Indigenous and First Nations artists form the heart of the show. Highlights include bark cloth paintings by Lila Warrimou and Pennyrose Sosa from Papua New Guinea, featuring complex geometric designs that convey clan affiliations and tattoos. Tahitian artist Aline Amaru's quilt narrates her husband's dynastic lineage. However, many works carry the weight of colonialism, such as Elisabet Kauage's depiction of figures in Melanesian headdresses aboard Captain Cook's ship, and Pala Pothupitiye's painted-over colonial maps critiquing British rule in Sri Lanka.
Political oppression also features prominently. Svay Ken painted quietly during Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, while Heri Dono's cubist works were created under Indonesia's Suharto dictatorship. Maryam Ayeen and Abbas Shahsavar's painting shows a couple using drugs to cope with life in contemporary Iran. The exhibition concludes with spiritual works from Mongolia and Japan, but the overarching theme remains art as resistance against tyranny and injustice.
The exhibition design has been criticised for its dull, grey lighting and a looping, mournful piano ballad that discourages lingering. More fundamentally, the show feels insufficient, offering only a glimpse into a vast and diverse artistic landscape. Each section—from Pakistani miniature painting to Indigenous Australian photography—could warrant its own exhibition. Without a cohesive narrative, the display of single works from disparate countries fails to tell a meaningful story.
