Seminar Series | Roger Nelson

Curious Reincarnations: Counter-Histories of Diem Phung Thi

Howdo artists and curators contribute to (and complicate) the making of art histories (in Southeast Asia)? In this talk, Roger will discuss the extraordinary recent rediscovery of an under-studied modernist artist: a renewal of interest initiated by contemporary artists and curators, and now being followed by museums and collectors.

Beginning in 2017 and intensifying since 2023, there has been a striking resurgence of attention to the modular artworks of the modernist sculptor, Diem Phung Thi (1920-2002). Projects presented in Saigon, Milan, Paris, and elsewhere by the internationally acclaimed artist Thao Nguyen Phan (1987-) as well as presentations in Hanoi by the curator Lê Thuận Uyên (1991-) have led to Diem being considered (in Lê’s words) “one of the pioneering figures in Vietnam’s art of the 20th century.”

Yet Diem had previously been little-known outside of specialist circles in Vietnam, and is absent from canonical national, regional, and continental accounts of modern art in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and Asia. What has drawn contemporary practitioners to Diem’s idiosyncratic and modular artworks? Roger will theorise recent moving-image projects by Phan and Lê as “counter-histories” which contribute to ongoing efforts towards decolonising Southeast Asia’s art histories using discrepant, heterochronic methods

Roger Nelson is an art historian and curator, and Assistant Professor of Art History in the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He researches modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia, with a focus on questions of historiography and method. His current book project on “artistic art histories”is forthcoming with Cornell University Press; it examines how artists contribute to the ongoing decolonising of art-historical work by engaging with Southeast Asia’s modernist art, within their practices. Roger was previously a curator at National Gallery Singapore. He was the 2022 recipient of the A.L. Becker Southeast Asian Literature in Translation Prize, presented by the Association for Asian Studies. He is co-founding co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by NUS Press at the National University of Singapore.

This event will be held both on-campus and online via Zoom (a link to the online stream will be sent to registered attendees).

The School of Art & Design Seminar series will continue weekly on Tuesdays from 1-2pm, between 17 February and 21 October 2025, co-convened by Dr Alex Burchmore and Alia Parker.