Floor is Rising - Southeast Asian artists podcasts compilation
Primer: Southeast Asian artists usually take the backseat compared to artists from the US, UK or Europe. Hence today, we shine the spotlight on three such artists, Diela Maharanie and Hariprast from Indonesia, as well as Bjorn Calleja from the Phillippines, as we cover three podcasts from the Floor is Rising.
Diela Maharanie
Self-taught artist
She is from Indonesia
A self-taught artist
A lot of artists in non-traditional art countries don't have the opportunity to be trained in some of the more prestigious institutions
Self-taught artists also mean that the artists do not have the help of galleries to market their works, so they have to do the branding and marketing themselves
However, art school can only take you so far, an artist will still need the social, network and marketing skills to navigate the market
There are many avenues out there that are not tied to the traditional gallery system
Illustrator vs artist
Technically an illustrator, not an artist
Illustrator has a connotation that they only do commercial works, while artist means galleries, museums and things like that
The division between illustrator and artist is now collapsing
Style of art
Very prolific based on the number of pieces she puts out from the time that she is active
Very unique casual friendly style
Her style is very pop - and she managed to arrive at a formula that is cute
Reminds Kizu of early Japanese pop artist who plays with similar colours
Wide formats of art
Diela also do art and craft hybrid practice where she makes carpets, embroidered pieces, tapestries etc with very similar aesthetics that will brighten up a room
Done murals and public art for Uniqlo
Has wide appeal with a wide number of formats both online and offline
Some of her pieces are more aimed at the collector crowd that is less casual friendly, but overall seems to balance this quite well across her spectrum of audiences
NFT is another format of her work
Diela the brand
Diela is literally a brand
Doing all sorts of her art on different objects
Running campaigns with other commercial brands in shopping malls
An aspiration for a lot of artists, especially now that she is moving towards the NFT space
Was initially an illustrator then she expanded the reach of her work to decorate all sorts of objects
Indonesia is a huge growing consumer market so there is a need for branding for all sorts of products and industries
Diela's works are very well received commercially
Merging of the worlds of music, art and fashion
Artists that have a more traditional art world validation tend to be more careful about the projects they collaborate with to keep the image of their practice consistent
But times are changing and there are many top fashion brands wanting to merge haute couture with streetwear, street culture and the hip hop culture
Also collaborating with rappers or K-pop groups like BTS
There is this collision of the worlds of music, art and fashion now that when compared to 15 years ago was treated by some with suspicion
The gatekeepers of high fashion were shocked that pop artists were slapping their motifs on leather goods, which is something unheard of at that time
Hariprast
Art style
Hariprast (Twitter) or Harimerdeka (Instagram) is another Indonesian artist
His art style is also casual friendly but different from Diela
Kizu said it is the work of someone trained primarily as an illustrator
Have a strong sense of a comic based style that reminds Kizu of North American, American Canadian and French comic styles from the 1990s to early 2000s
A flat 2D feel with lines that are quite streamlined
Artists working in this style tend to take it further with deeper meanings or add some social commentary or narrative to it
Comic artists work in the format of a comic, which is a continuous stream of images accompanied by text and a story, so it's hard to get a sense of the artist's practice through single images
The mixed art style of the NFT world
In the NFT world, there is an even playing field with painters, illustrators, animators and programmers all on the same market
Interesting to let all these different creatives from independent disparate fields and throw them into the free NFT market to see how the market will value them
In a way, this is similar to the UFC/MMA where competitors of different styles of martial artists come together in the same ring to fight
Hariprast's works are selling better than a lot of other artists in this competitive arena
An artist's style taking on an emergent quality
Hariprast's works include some simple animations and will likely involve more complex animations
This is the direct effect of mingling with the NFT community where the artist is not only selling his works but is also an active participant in collecting other artists' works as well
The artists will learn from each other, changing their own style to fit in new ideas that work in the market
It will be interesting to see the evolutionary path that an artist will take after interacting with the community and slowly being influenced by other artists in the NFT space
It will be exactly like how all the competitors in the UFC/MMA learnt a variety of fighting styles that are suitable for that particular arena with its own set of rules
There is going to be a lot of people, who don't even necessarily call themselves artists but are interested in the tokenisation mechanism to distribute their work in a different format or to reach a different audience
They may be dabbling in this as a hobby or as a professional artist
There are many possibilities for engaging with the platform and therein lies the beauty of it
Interesting to see what happens after throwing all these practitioners into the same ring to see what kind of art will emerge out of it
Bjorn Calleja
Brief introduction
From the Philippines
His artwork is very hot
He has a number of gallery shows and is selling traditional art
Arrived at NFT through that traditional route
Art style
Generally, the visual style of a lot of contemporary artists in the Philippines is skewed slightly towards grotesque, macabre and dark
Combines animation with oil painting
Simple but effective frame by frame animation of figures that he had drawn or painted
A function of the kind of colonial history of the Philippines
Was occupied in succession by the Spanish, American then Japanese
Also has very strong religious Catholic influence in terms of the imagery
The population is English speaking, hence there is direct first-hand access to global pop culture from the US and UK
Grassroots-led private Initiatives
In Philippines, there is a small but very interesting contemporary art scene
There is a very supportive private collector base because there is a relative lack of state-led government-funded art infrastructure
This is unlike Singapore or Hongkong where the government is taking a strong interest in developing Arts
In Indonesia, there are very wealthy collectors that want to support local artists and they even open private museums or start art fairs as a private initiative
Similarly, you see that in the Philippines as well
A lot of interesting initiatives that do not have the branding of Sotheby's or Christie's or the National Gallery of Singapore
It is the grassroots movements that ended up supporting the art scene in a way that can make NFT take off in places like the Philippines
Reasons for higher adoption rate for NFT
Gabby Dizon's story in how he started Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a good start
YGG lent out Axies to people who cannot afford the upfront costs to buy the NFT assets before they can play to earn
Filipinos are playing Axie Infinity as a means to support themselves and there are hundreds of thousands of Filipinos playing this game because it earns more than the minimum wage
It will be interesting to see how this will lead to both NFT and crypto adoption in the Philippines
Blockchain games like Axie Infinity prime the ground for mainstream adoption because of more familiarity with the technology and the format
There is also a very large population of young people who take to this more naturally than other countries like Japan or China where the average age is much higher
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