Australia's art scene and its place in the Asia-Pacific region

Asian artists are being shown in the country's institutions, but its audiences have yet to embrace diverse views

- Clement Yong

SYDNEY - Step through the double doors of Sydney's Art Gallery of New South Wales' modern wing, and you are confronted with a geographical whiplash.

Meditating serenely to the left is a garlanded statuette of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha.

Violet banners advertise Chinese contemporary artist Cao Fei's latest video art exhibition. Occupying a whopping 1,300 sq m, the show, including recreations of the front porch of a famous cinema and a now-defunct Chinese restaurant, is quietly historic as the first solo of a Chinese artist at the 150-year-old cornerstone institution.

Ms Yin Cao, curator of Chinese art at the Art Gallery, says this belated recognition of Chinese artists in Sydney has been hard-fought. She had put up many names in the past, but this is the first time a proposed artist has been accepted.

My City Is Yours, Your City Is Mine, a bright-neon sign proclaims. The message of cross-cultural solidarity also reads as a veiled allusion to the recent surge of Chinese immigration to the city.

"It's part of the city's memory with so much Asian immigration from China and South-east Asia," Ms Yin says. "Australia is a very multicultural country. Cao Fei should appeal to old and new immigrants, as well as youth."

Her omission of white, more middle-aged visitors is notable.

While visitorship numbers remain to be seen - the exhibition runs till April 13, 2025 - there is some worry that it might not have sufficient cultural cachet to attract a mainstream Australian audience.

According to the 2021 census, there are now some 1.4 million people with Chinese ancestry living in Australia, the only group to have grown since the previous census in 2016. They are the fifth largest ethnic group in a predominantly white - and white-coded - society.

Australia's turn to the Asia-Pacific region, and Asia, has been fraught.