Almine Rech Shanghai is pleased to present The archipelagic imagination: seaport, the first chapter of a two-part group exhibition curated by Zong Han, featuring works by Kawayan de Guia, Davy Linggar, Tia-Thuy Nguyen, Sylvia Ong, Citra Sasmita, and Jakkai Siributr. The exhibition convenes contemporary artistic positions rooted in Southeast Asia and its global dispersals.

The unity is not that of a single root, but that of a network of branches.

(Édouard Glissant)

Departing from Glissant’s notion of archipelagic thinking—which privileges relation over root, opacity over transparency, and networks over hierarchies—this exhibition reimagines Southeast Asia not as a fixed region, but as an unfolding matrix of routes, fragments, and entangled affiliations. In this vision, the archipelago is not merely a metaphor, but a historical infrastructure: a living network of seaports, river deltas, and inland uplands that have long shaped the movement of people, images, and ideas across what is often reductively called 'the South.'

Shanghai, as both a historic and symbolic node in this geography, becomes a point of departure. Located on the Bund—once a treaty port linking China to Southeast Asia through maritime trade, migration, and imperial encounters—Almine Rech’s gallery space serves as the staging ground for Seaport. This chapter centers outward-facing works charged with formal clarity, visual urgency, and mythic reconstruction.

This first chapter unfolds through a choreography of suspension: paintings, textiles, and sculptural installations hover within the gallery like signals across water—each work a point of encounter, constellation, or crossing. What follows is a closer look at the artists and works that anchor Seaport.

(Text by Citra Sasmita, b. 1990, Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia)