Art schools adapt to COVID-19
By Sara Lau

As the Covid-19 pandemic persists, art spaces, museums and artists have turned to the digital space to continue engaging with their audiences. With social distancing and lockdown measures still in place, physical gallery spaces have had to close, with exhibitions cancelled, postponed, or moved online. The same applies to graduation shows, which are often platforms for art students to showcase the results of their education as a rite of passage and hopefully kickstart their journeys as full-fledged artists.

Within Southeast Asia, information on these graduation shows can be hard to locate. The varying pandemic responses of each country also means that some graduation shows have already been staged with little fanfare or notice to the public. We explore some of the online graduation shows happening in Southeast Asia to understand the different perspectives behind each one, and the challenges faced in staging them.

Uttapon Chaisomparn, ‘Remembrance’ series. Image courtesy of the artist and Ray Thesis Exhibition.

Ray Thesis Exhibition
Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
The graduating students from Chiang Mai University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts programme in Creative Photography already had plans to hold their exhibition at the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre (BACC) in the middle of May. When these plans fell through due to the pandemic, they decided to move the show to social media platforms. Although their artistic mediums, from photography and film, suits the digital space well, the difficulty of staging the show was in the communication among the students. The organising team shared that the hardest part for them was working without meeting one another in person.

With the help of their advisor, they held an online exhibition that ran from 20 April to 2 May, with dedicated posts published every day that showcased each student’s photo or video works. The media albums are now archived on Facebook, remaining accessible well beyond the exhibition dates.

View all the works from Ray Thesis Exhibition here.

Questions Art Exhibition
Prince of Songkla University, Pattani, Thailand
’Questions: Art Thesis Exhibition’ utilises Facebook to showcase the works of graduating students. With a smaller cohort, the show gives due attention to each art student and their processes without presenting an overwhelming amount of information. It is organised with the help of alumni Anuwat Apimukmongkon, who is the teaching assistant for the Fine Arts programme.

Screenshot of the 'Questions Art Exhibition' Facebook page.

The virtual exhibition cannot replicate the experience of viewing an installation or sculpture in real life but Anuwat worked on approximating it with supplementary content. “There are many reasons to hold an online exhibition,” he says. “But for it to succeed, the experience has to be comparable in value to an actual exhibition. It is not just taking pictures of the artworks and posting them online. You have to include other kinds of information.” The exhibition does just that, including details such as artistic and academic references, conceptual underpinnings as well as material analysis of the works.

View all the artworks from the exhibition here.

RUPARONA: Life and Corona Effect
Institut Seni Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Rather than stage a strict graduates-only show, the graduating students from the Arts Management programme of Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta have organised an exhibition that directly addresses the effects of the pandemic. The show aims to illustrate what daily life is like in the middle of the pandemic, and allow artists to share their hopes for a post-pandemic future.

The show features a total of 45 artists, including its students and alumni, presenting a range of works that include visual arts, as well as music and design. The exhibition is held only on Instagram, capitalising on features such as the IG Live and IGTV functions.

The show opened on 1 May and runs until 1 June.

The LASALLE Show
LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore

An annual affair that has cemented itself as a go-to event in Singapore’s art calendar, The LASALLE Show is one of the largest graduation shows with works from the Diploma, Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Master of Arts programmes. While it has always had an accompanying website, this year’s digital showcase proved especially challenging in its construction, with over 800 works to present purely online from 13 different disciplines. Some schools have chosen to extend their showcase by leveraging on specialised platforms. For the McNally School of Fine Arts, virtual gallery spaces were created for a more immersive experience.

When asked about the choice to stage the show online rather than postponing the event, Professor Steve Dixon, President of LASALLE College of the Arts, believes that it is more important than ever to uplift people’s spirits with the arts. He says, “We believe it is vital that our students’ work joins the global conversation on the role of art in a time of physical isolation and digital connection, asking what art can do during this period and how we find common ground in our humanity.”

The LASALLE Show goes live on 2 June.

The eGrad Expectations 2020
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore

The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts is also staging a large-scale digital showcase, with over 600 works created by graduating Diploma and Degree students from their School of Art & Design. The show opens with a live ceremony on 7 July, featuring speeches from key management staff and various awards presentations, among others. Besides hosting students’ works online, the showcase will feature fresh daily releases of graduate highlights videos, and a series of live chat sessions with industry partners, staff and students.

Online showcases may become a permanent fixture in future graduation shows. “As long as the digital capabilities are ready, we can strengthen the narrative of digital showcases and programming to reach out to a wider audience unlimited by physical distance,” says Sabrina Long, Dean of the School of Art & Design and Centre for Lifelong Education. “Be it a physical or digital showcase, the key is having the sensibility to harness the appropriate platform to suit the purpose and intended experience.”

The eGrad Expectations runs from 8 to 16 July 2020.

These online graduation shows have been borne of necessity, but from the multifarious formats they are presented, show the potential benefits of being continued beyond the pandemic as an accompaniment or even an alternative to exhibitions in physical spaces. They serve as an archive of the graduating class’ works, and have the added advantage of increasing their audiences, if marketed well. The large-scale migration of the art world’s activities to the digital realm will fuel an expansion of its capabilities to show more art to more people in progressively interesting ways.