Speaker Bios | Interpreting Modern Concrete | July 25, 2015

Roger Nelson is an independent curator based in Phnom Penh, and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, supervised by both the school of Asian Studies and the school of Art History, and supported by an Australian Government Postgraduate Award scholarship. His doctoral research examines ideas of “modern” and “contemporary” in Cambodian arts, comparing the arts of the Sangkum Reastr Niyum era and the twenty-first century, and including visual art, architecture, literature and performance. Roger publishes internationally on Southeast Asian contemporary art, including in ArtAsiaPacific, and in academic journals Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, and Udaya: Journal of Khmer Studies. In 2015-16 Roger joins the cross-regional research program titled “Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art” funded by the Getty Foundation. Roger is also a co-founding co-editor of a new scholarly journal titled Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art.

Thanavi Chotpradit is lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Thai art history at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Archaeology at Silapkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. She received the Royal Thai Government Scholarship in 2010 for her PhD at the Department of History of Art and Screen Media, Birkbeck, University of London in 2011. Her research entitled ‘Revolution versus Counter-Revolution: The People’s Party and the Royalist in Visual Dialogue’ interrogates the role of visual culture in the royalist and anti-royalist debates in Thailand from 1932 to the present. In 2015-16 Thanavi joins a cross-regional research program titled “Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art” funded by the Getty Foundation. Thanavi has contributed essays for the Thai journals, Aan Journal and Fah Diew Kan. She is also a co-founding co-editor of a new scholarly journal titled Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art.

Simon Soon is based in Kuala Lumpur, and recently submitted his PhD in Art History at the University of Sydney under an Australian Government Postgraduate Award scholarship. His thesis “What is Left of Art?” investigates the intersection between left-leaning political art movements and modern urban formations in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines from 1950s–1970s. Simon’s broader areas of interest include comparative modernities in art, Malaysian art history, spatio-visual practices, and histories of photography. He has contributed essays to a number of journals including Yishu and Modern Art Asia. He is also co-editor of Narratives of Malaysian Art Vol. 4. In 2015-16 Simon joins the cross-regional research program titled “Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art” funded by the Getty Foundation. He is also a co-founding co-editor of a new scholarly journal titled Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art.