Founder of Aura Contemporary Art Foundation, Production Zomia, Kinan Art Week
By Ian Tee

This article is a part of CHECK-IN 2024, our annual publication, which comes in at 313 pages this year. You can buy a limited-edition print copy at SGD38 here.

Yuto Yabumoto, photo taken in Sanbashi, Nanki Shirahama, Wakayama, Japan. Image credit: Fuminari Yoshitsugu.

Yabumoto Yuto is the founder of Aura Contemporary Art Foundation, Production Zomia and Kinan Art Week. Born in 1988 in Japan, he left for Cambodia at the age of 22 after graduating from university and has since been living in Southeast Asia. While developing his law firm One Asia Lawyers, he collected works by artists from the region and has provided grants to cultural workers and organisations. These efforts were formalised in 2019, when he established Aura Contemporary Art Foundation, which promotes contemporary art from countries around the Mekong basin and encourages exchange across the world.

In 2021, Yuto founded Kinan Art Week, a project set in the Kinan area of Wakayama prefecture. In the same year, he also initiated Production Zomia, a network of artists and curators in Asia. Through Production Zomia, Yuto has organised the exhibitions ‘Zomi: Trans Migrants on the Water: Contemporary Art from the Mekong Region’ (2021, Osaka), Anarcho-Animism’ (2022, Miyagi), ‘Zomia in the Cloud’ (2023, Thailand). Currently, he is a PhD candidate at Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts, Akita University of Art, conducting research on Zomia and art in Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese Immigrating Hot Pot Party, 2023, Senba Excel Building, Osaka, Japan. Photo by Kohei Matsumura.

Tuan Mami finding and photographing Vietnamese migrants and plants, a project presented as part of Kinan Art Week 2023 ‘Sensing Mandarin Oranges – an Entangled World’. Photo by Manabu Shimoda.

I would like to start the interview asking about your background and relationship with Southeast Asia. What first brought you to the region? When was this and how was your experience of settling in?

My career may be unique. After graduating from the Faculty of Law at Chuo University in Japan, I went to Cambodia and have been staying in Southeast Asia since 2011, when I was 22 years old. From there, I have been managing a law firm with local lawyers for around 14 years. When I started the firm, I had no prior experience in legal practice and business management, and so I had a difficult time. But since then, the firm has grown steadily and now has more than 300 members in 22 countries, mainly in Asia-Pacific. Now, I live and move between Thailand and India.

Rather than trying to settle in, I live in each place like a foreign parasite and make a living as a migrant labourer. I connect deeply with Vietnamese artist Tuan Mami's practice, particularly his work ‘Immigrated Plants’ (2021) that gathers Vietnamese migrants and plants. It was presented at documenta fifteen (2022). I had the opportunity to collaborate with Mami on projects in Osaka and Kinan, Japan and his practice consistently shakes up the concepts of law and regulation.

Khvay Samnang, ‘Untitled’, 2011, single-channel video, colour, sound, 4:22 mins. Collection of Aura Contemporary Art Foundation. Exhibition view at Orange Mandala exhibition, Kinan Art Week 2022. Photo by Manabu Shimoda.

Special Talk Session ‘Memories of Soil and Roots: from Cambodia and Kinan/Kumano’ with Khvay Samnang and Prof. Toshiaki Ishikura, Kinan, Wakayama. Photo by Manabu Shimoda.

What was your point of entry into the community of art practitioners? Was there a particular artist, curator, art space which first captured your interest?

Cambodia has been undergoing global industrialisation at a tremendous pace since its post-war reconstruction. For better or worse, they are being hit by a wave of homogenisation and standardisation. Our legal work rides this wave. In this sense, I felt conflicted, as if I am partly complicit in a kind of global economic colony. I came across Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang and was so impressed by his artworks. As art critic Boris Groys wrote, when the law triumphs, art becomes impossible.¹ I see that art has the possibility to expose the other, which is not under a legal framework.

In Samnang’s video ‘Untitled’ (2011), Boeung Kak Lake, which is now a commercial complex, including shopping malls, is shown in the context of ongoing development in Phnom Penh. The accelerated land development since 2008 has resulted in Boeung Kak Lake and several other major lake areas being reclaimed by soil brought in from elsewhere. The short video can be seen as an indictment against the problems caused by development's eviction of low-income groups, the resultant flooding and pollution of rivers during the rainy season, as well as excessive consumption of sediment. However, in the eyes of the watermen and construction workers on Lake Bong Kok, Samnang is silent and simply continues to carry a bucket and repeatedly douses himself with muddy water and sand from above his head.

While confronting the pressing issues of development and refugees, Samnang's strange and humorous expressions leave me feeling shaken, but in a good way. The marginality of the film, which allows the laughter of people living on the water, and Samnang’s playfulness, as if he were playing in the sand, has the potential to transform the rigid world of a huge order from within.

In Cambodia, which has a one-party system, where critics and resistors of the state are gradually being erased, I see contemporary artists as the last resistors who, through their polysemic expressions, tactically slip past censorship and restrictions in the existing system and can potentially transform governance by state or global capitalism. I am also interested in the ecology behind Sa Sa Art Projects, of which Samnang is one of the founders. The art collective suddenly, and unfortunately closed down in May 2024.

Meeting with artists Khvay Samnang, Chum Veasna in Phnom Penh. Image courtesy of Chie Izumi.

‘Silence is Golden’ (2019) exhibition with Aung Myat Htay in Yangon. Image courtesy of Yuto Yabumoto.

How would you describe your collecting journey? Are there specific themes, regions and mediums you focus on?

Our foundation’s collection is based around the places where I reside and operate my business. I work during the weekdays, so on weekends I have been going to exhibitions and meeting artists for interviews. In this sense, I collect works by artists I have met and talked to in person. I collect based on my intuition, and enjoy interacting with and learning from the artists. Video works account for about 80% of our collection, but I am not particular about the medium. It happens that many contemporary artists in Southeast Asia work in video.

Recently, I have been directing and curating exhibitions in Asia, particularly Japan, so I have collected more works produced from these places. As Boris Groys states, curators are “artists who have lost their artist’s aura”² or “radically secularised artists”³, who strip the work of its native place and re-gift it with an aura. I believe this kind of play with aura is a form of “art-making” through collecting, curating, and making exhibitions. This play is also my way of recovering the conflict of my mind in relation to my legal business.

‘Zomi - Trans-local Migrants on the Water: the Contemporary Art from the Mekong region’, 2021, exhibition view at Senba Excel Building, Osaka. Photo by Manabu Shimoda.

You established Aura Contemporary Art Foundation in 2019, to promote contemporary art from countries around the Mekong basin such as Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. The foundation’s activities include holding a collection of works from the region, supporting artists and curators, as well as promoting international exchanges among the region, Japan, and other parts of the world.

Could you tell us more about the operations behind Aura. Is there a team or consultant you work with to run the foundation? What are the considerations when deciding the types of projects or initiatives to support?

The main activities of our foundation are carried out by myself and a few administrative staff. Sometimes, we receive advice from external experts from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Japan, and other countries. In some cases, we implement projects proposed by them. For example, Myanmar artist and curator Aung Myat Htay has been working on a series of documentation projects: ‘Silence of Golden’ (2020), ‘Abstraction of Breathing’ (2021) and ‘Phenomena’ (2023-ongoing). In each project, about 10 artists are selected and a publication of their work and record interviews is produced. This may be preferable for Myanmar art histories, as it is difficult to organise exhibitions in the country now. I am not particular about the exhibition format, as I will explain later regarding ‘Zomia in the Cloud’, and I believe that the exhibition format can be difficult depending on the local situation, such as in Myanmar.

Some key Japanese curators and advisors are involved in Production Zomia, which is made up of members who are with us on a project basis. When a project or exhibition is commissioned, we call on members from different countries and backgrounds to help us with it, depending on the nature of the request from organisers. There are no clear rules on how to proceed in Production Zomia, and we often build the project with only the schedule in mind, while enjoying the processes and coincidences. In this sense, I feel that Production Zomia has potential and, as the name Production implies, we would like to produce art works in future.

What is the most significant shift in the art ecosystem you observed since you started living in the region?

I am surprised at the rapid acceptance of contemporary art in Thailand. For example, the Bangkok Art Biennale and the Thailand Biennale have created a lot of momentum. In terms of the market, the exchange rate has had a big impact on the Japanese, but above all, the prices of artworks in Thailand have comparatively risen. I feel that collecting has become more difficult in the last few years. Also, the situation in Cambodia worries me. I see that the effects of economic and political homogenisation under developmental dictatorship may have a significant and negative impact on culture and art. The closure of Sa Sa Art Projects was deeply shocking for me, and I will hear about the background when I visit in June 2024.

My personal view of contemporary art has changed considerably. Until last year, I used to go to art festivals in Japan and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, documenta and the Gwangju Biennale as I wrote the essays for the aforementioned events, but I got a bit tired. Partly because I am writing my doctoral thesis, but the themes presented there are dominated by de-Western centralisation, de-anthropocentrism and de-colonialism in the transformation of world history known as the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. However, are these exhibitions, so to speak, sites of atonement by the Western world?

The same state of affairs exists in Japan, which is a place on the periphery of the West, where the above three keywords continue to be touted, albeit belatedly. As a result, they further complement and consolidate Western privilege and existing systems of governance. I feel that this is exactly the same kind of structure as the governance system of global legal compliance originating in the West, which our legal work is subordinated to. This is also the theme of my dissertation, but as a Japanese who has lived in the Mekong River Basin for a long time and earns my living here, I am thinking deeply about what I can say and do in between colonisation and decolonisation, and capitalism and de-capitalism. I would like to propose a project concerned with this in the future. What I am feeling is that we can try to recognise an artwork is like a plant, as Mami’s and our practice are doing.

Zomia Pavilion at the Thailand Biennale Chiang Rai, 2023. Photo by Yuto Yabumoto.

I would like to delve deeper into Production Zomia, which was formed in 2021 as a network of artists, curators, researchers, and other arts professionals in Asia. A long-term project organised by Production Zomia is ‘Zomia in the Cloud’ (2023-ongoing), a platform that grants participating organisations access to artworks for exhibition free of charge. Could you briefly explain how the platform functions?

Production Zomia was appointed by Thailand Biennale 2023 Chiang Rai (TBC) to be in charge of the 'Zomia Pavilion' within the biennale. Production Zomia proposed a fluid project at TBC that de-territorialised under the post-existing exhibition format. In particular, the people living in the mountainous region of Chiang Rai, bordering Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, have over a long period of time formed a unique ecosystem. Production Zomia has established the ‘Zomia in the Cloud’, an internet cloud platform to enable exhibitions in places near Chiang Rai and in parts of Asia. The project title was inspired by the accessibility brought about by the internet cloud, its fluidity as well as the real clouds seen from the mountains in Chiang Rai. In particular, our focus is to work with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that do not receive state support, as well as groups that distance themselves from the government to provide assistance to refugees and ethnic minorities, educational support, welfare activities, etc. We promoted the project based on the idea that art should not only be for tourists, art-world and wealthy audiences, but should also be close to people in difficult situations.

Production Zomia has established the ‘Zomia in the Cloud’, an internet cloud platform to enable exhibitions in places near Chiang Rai and in parts of Asia. The project title was inspired by the accessibility brought about by the internet cloud, its fluidity as well as the real clouds seen from the mountains in Chiang Rai. In particular, our focus is to work with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that do not receive state support, as well as groups that distance themselves from the government to provide assistance to refugees and ethnic minorities, educational support, welfare activities, etc. We promoted the project based on the idea that art should not only be for tourists, art-world and wealthy audiences, but should also be close to people in difficult situations.

Could you say more about the process of working with these partners?

We drew up a list of more than 300 candidate organisations, and individual emails were sent to each of them to explore possibilities for cooperation and collaboration. In the end, nine organisations were invited to organise exhibitions and screenings. No specific gallery or dedicated exhibition facility was required. NGOs were asked to find suitable locations, such as schools, libraries, hospitals, or meeting places, where they could install, screen or place the artwork. I wanted to ensure that at TBC, these works would meet a different audience than the usual gallery visitors.

For example, Camillian Social Center Chiangrai, established in 1992, is a Christian NGO that provides boarding and education for Akha, Lahu and other hill tribes. For more than 30 years, it has been supporting stateless children, especially those with physical or mental disabilities, who have migrated to Thailand from neighbouring countries and are considered difficult to support by the government. It was almost impossible for these children to come to the TBC exhibition site to view the exhibition due to their disabilities and the distance involved. Therefore, we should deliver the artworks and exhibitions to them.

During the process of this project, the most frequent requests from partner organisations was that they wanted Production Zomia to decide on all exhibition methods and locations, as they did not know anything about art. However, Production Zomia politely declined the curatorial directions and support requested by the organisations, and decided to leave the selection of artworks, exhibition locations and other curatorial matters entirely to their own initiative. We wanted them to construct the exhibition after having seen as much of the works as possible themselves. There seems to be an assumption that art is esoteric and extravagant, and that the format and methods of exhibition are standardised. Production Zomia and organisations set up a number of opportunities for dialogue on this point, and continuously communicated that art is free, equal and unfinished. There is no right answer, and we would obtain consent from the artist for any exhibition method.

We asked ourselves if we wanted to leave the so-called professional exhibitions to the main TBC exhibition and to create informal exhibitions based on the specific locality of each organisation, which the main TBC exhibition would not be able to do.

At the same time, we wanted to put curating back in the hands of non-professionals and the general public. At the same time, Production Zomia also asked artists to cooperate by preparing a document specifying the concept, duration of implementation, artist fees and handling of copyright. As a result, 24 artists eventually participated and provided messages, posters, photographs and video works. Yet, some artists in this project questioned why the artists were not allowed to give instructions on the format, installation methods and so on. The question is whether there is really no problem with letting non-specialist make arrangements regarding the size of prints, textures and other mediums, and the placement of artworks. While this is certainly true, we decided not to accept any instructions from the artists, partly because of space and budget constraints and, partly out of respect for the autonomy of the NGO.

This kind of violence is due to the fact that Production Zomia and the organisations take on the curatorial role of “desecration and secularisation of art” as described by Boris Groys, abusing the works of art created to be sacred images, forcibly stripping them of their aura and attempting to destroy them. Naturally, there is friction here. For example, some artists made requests regarding the size and method of exhibition, to which my question to the artist was: “In the first place, for whom are artists now creating works of art? Are they making work for museums or collectors?"

It is our position that, as Groys states, art should be restored to a free and equal form of imagery. There is something to be said about how an artist from Southeast Asia might receive a degree of success if their artworks take on forms favoured by the Western art world. Consequently, the forms of art may be centralised under such an art world. Therefore, we wanted to question artists once more, and to have a space for thinking and dialogue with them about this topic. For example, when I spoke with Khvay Samnang who has a strong international reputation, he thankfully showed interest and understood the aims of this project.

Could you talk about reception towards exhibitions realised through ‘Zomia in the Cloud’?

Yes, many exhibitions have been organised in different areas and counties such as at the Sakura Project and Hill Area and Community Development Foundation. We will share more details of the shows in our catalogue of this project, which will be published in this year.

Jirasak Phongkasem, manager of the Camillian Social Centre Chiang Rai, also produced a well-rounded exhibition in keeping with the aims of ‘Zomia in the Cloud’. As I entered the entrance of the centre, a handmade sign from TBC, downloaded from their website, leapt into view. This was probably not authorised by TBC, but given TBC's 'Open World' concept, no one could blame them for the unauthorised use of such a logo and key visuals. Also in the room, downloaded photographs selected by Jirasak were printed and displayed against a green background of trees. I felt his unique interpretation of the work and the ingenuity of the exhibition. Of particular interest to me was the exhibition approach to Mami's work. At documenta fifteen, Mami, together with Vietnamese immigrants, planted Vietnamese plants on barren land in Germany, creating ‘Vietnamese Immigrating Garden’.

For ‘Zomia in the Cloud’, Mami offered a ten-photograph work, a collage of lush Vietnamese plants growing after the garden was established, in a photograph of a garden before planting in the German winter. Jirasak interpreted this work in his own way and installed the photographic works on bamboo, utilising the bamboo that hill tribes regularly use in their daily lives. Jirasak stated that "no matter how difficult the situation is, as long as you can grow plants, you can survive'' and tried to juxtapose the concept of the work, in which marginalised and discriminated Vietnamese migrants gather, grow Vietnamese plants and show the future to come, with the current situation in which the hill tribes are living. As I mentioned above, art is like a real plant there, which can be grown anywhere, even if not in museums and galleries, even in remote Zomia.

Orange Collective with artist Satoshi Hirose at Suzuki Farm. Photo by Manabu Shimoda.

In your essay "Why Kinan Art Week" (2021), you wrote that the intention of this project is to maintain the locality of the region while realising “true globalisation”. The essay was written within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and borders have since reopened. Could you talk about how Kinan Art Week has developed in the last three years and how this vision is realised through its programmes?

To be honest, my own thinking has changed substantially since then. At the time I wrote this essay, I was a complete businessman in my head, focusing on the result, rather than the process. However, I left the essay published anyway because such an economic perspective is still important. However, when I started the PhD programme, and I went into the Akha villages of Chiang Rai and the mountainous areas of Kinan, and interacted with artists, I discovered that there is a world that operates on a different dimension from politics and economics. I now enjoy art projects that are in progress and whose purpose is not set and left open-ended from the beginning. Anthropologist Anna Tsing states that the possibilities of latent commons that are not yet recognised as commons, such as mycelium lurking in the soil, is important.

Sketch of Satoshi Hirose’s ‘Common’s Firm’. Image courtesy of the artist.

Satoshi Hirose's ongoing long-term art project, Commons Farm, operating in Kinan engages with the meaning of the word “commons,” by naming and positioning itself in contrast to the idea of capitalism. According to him, he had to dispose of some of the fruits and plants, such as lemons, he used as art material in past exhibitions. Those experiences made him rethink his focus of creating art using such materials, to rather focus on growing the materials for his artwork themselves. So, he wanted to start the Commons Farm differently.

To begin, from October 2022, Hirose has begun distributing varied kinds of citrus saplings to local people as a sub-art project called 'A Journey of Citrus Sapling'. This work is still ongoing, with 40 saplings being given to various people, including local farmers. The citrus saplings travelled to their foster parents volunteers, where they are nurtured until a Commons Farm is found in the region. Once the farmland is set, those traveling saplings will be transferred to the new site. This is a local community project in which people engage with people from different fields of work they would otherwise not have met, in spite of living in the same area. Those saplings have been traveling since they were given out by Hirose, to local people’s own private house gardens, local stores, and to an airport to be taken care of until they come back to their forever house. The Commons Farm is owned by anyone and everyone. It seems that Hirose’s practice connects to Mami's practice.

And it is about growing and harvesting oranges, conducting various programmes on the farm and exchanges with participants, questioning the meaning of life and finding new values and commons that cannot be institutionalised like ownership. At the ‘Sensing Mandarin Oranges’ exhibition, Hirose distributed a booklet on the ‘Commons Farm’ art project to local people, showing a roadmap up to 2028. We have no idea what will happen in the future. But I feel that we can find joy in life in projects like this that are not predetermined.

On a personal level, you are conducting research on hill tribe people and Southeast Asian art for your PhD course at the Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts, Akita University of Art. What sustains your interest in this particular topic?

The biggest thing to answer is that I have my roots in the mountainous region of Kinan. I believe that our grandparents and ancestors came to the Japanese archipelago from the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia via the sea, because they did not want to be governed by the monoculturising world of the continent. Talking to the Akha elders reminded me of my great-grandfather.

I believe the concept of “Zomia” presented by anthropologist James C. Scott can be applied anywhere in the world, not just in the mountains of Southeast Asia. Their desire to self-govern and resist assimilation is probably as innate and primordial a human desire as the desire to form order and to include other beings. So what exactly is the “art” of creating an ungoverned Zomian space? Scott wrote about the art of not being governed, and I am trying to work out what are the concrete possible conditions for this.

My day job is related to law and regulation, so I treat and bind others. I am bound by clients and employees, and I am in the “web of power” as Michel Foucault described.4 In this context, I want to think about how we can live without being governed. I hope to submit my dissertation by the end of this year and publish it afterwards, so please wait a little longer to find out what it is about.

The Minakata Mandala. Collection of Minakata Kumagusu Archives, Tanabe City, Wakayama, Japan.

Are the upcoming projects you wish to share?

Kinan Art Week 2024 will be happening this September and it will be an exhibition on the theme of Zomia and slime mould. Slime mould is an organism studied by Kumagusu Minakata, who is one of the most famous ethnologists and biologists in Japan from Kinan. Like the people of Zomia, slime mould survives by becoming spores and changing location when the place they live in becomes inhabitable and too dry. I hope to create an exhibition based on the analogy between Zomia and slime mould.

We are planning to invite four to five artists from Asia and four to five more specifically from Japan to participate in the exhibition, and will share the details soon. Also, a Dutch artist named Geert Mul will start a residency in Kumano mountains from July 2024, and plans to research Kumagusu’s philosophy and Minakata Mandala.

I plan to visit Central Asia next year, and to have an art project there in the mountains and nomadic grasslands. I feel I can find some clues there on how we can produce non-governed Zomian spaces in our current world.

This interview is edited.

This article is a part of CHECK-IN 2024, our annual publication, which comes in at 313 pages this year. You can buy a limited-edition print copy at SGD38 here.

Kinan Art Week 2024 'Igoku Tamaru: Lives without boudaries’ is slated to happen from 20 to 29 September 2024, at venues across Kinan, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan.

¹Boris Groys, Art Power, (Massachussetts, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 35.
²The term was used by Walter Benjamin in his influential essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935). Benjamin argued that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” He referred to this unique cultural context i.e. “its presence in time and space” as its “aura”.
³Groys.
⁴Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. trans. Robert Huxley (New York: Vintage, 1990), 96.