Terminologies of "Modern" and "Contemporary" Art in Southeast Asia's Vernacular Languages: Indonesian, Javanese, Khmer, Lao, Malay, Myanmar/Burmese, Tagalog/Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese

This research report offers introductory accounts of the terminologies of "modern" and "contemporary" "art" in nine Southeast Asian languages. The project asks: What are the words used to refer to "modern", "contemporary" and "art" in Southeast Asia? What do these terms denote and connote? When and how did they historically emerge? How do terminologies align or differ in the region's many vernaculars? How do ideas of modernity, contemporaneity and art itself become mobile and take flight when shifting between languages? There are many dis-crepancies in the nature of these nine languages, as well as in the sources available on them, and the style, tone and scope of each author's contribution. This report is offered as an epistemic and lexical resource for further research. It is anticipated that greater attention to terminological shifts in Southeast Asia's languages may facilitate new perspectives, including new possibilities for comparative work that remains attentive to local and linguistic specificities.