Being a contemporary artist in Southeast Asia holds obvious challenges. Such artists work from the margins of a wide, busy contemporary art world, somewhere near the edge of a "tradition" of international modernism and perhaps even an international postmodernism. They also work from within the context of their own local cultural references, societies, histories, aesthetics, and art discourses. Coming from the developing world but generally wellversed in the wider "conversation" of modern and contemporary art, these artists stand on a border, thriving on the tension between what is expected and what it is possible for them to achieve, having to overcome their own exoticism without being accused of jumping on a larger bandwagon of existing ideas.

This section looks at the new strategists, mostly young emerging artists, whose primary concerns are artistic, engaging first with the material, formal, conceptual aspects of their practice.

The first four artists featured here have already become leaders among their generation, mid-career artists who are also key educators or mentors. Sakarin Krue-On, Jakapan Vilasineekul, Tran Luong and Jalaini Abu Hassan are four very different artists who have each harnessed the potential of culturally "local" processes,

materials and forms, creating in each case a distinctive aesthetic.

There is a wealth of new ideas, and also a precocious sophistication and sense of irony in the current generation of emerging artists. Painting remains a dominant practice in the region, and a number of artists address the problematics of painting, especially in the Philippines, which has the longest and most passionate history of formal art discourse.

Natee Utarit from Thailand takes the Western bull by its horns, consistently grappling with the readings of classicism, the iconic, and the beautiful, and their emotional as well as socio-political subtext.

In Indonesia, the dominance of socio-political art and its influence on style and aesthetics is beginning to make room for a new quieter revolution, led by the Jendela group and their exploration of the possibilities of visual language and new imagery in paintings and objects.