ROH Projects brings Eko Nugroho’s Everything is YES! BUT… to S.E.A. Focus 2025

ROH has returned to the highly anticipated S.E.A. Focus Focus 2025 with Everything is YES! BUT…, a presentation of works by Eko Nugroho. Featuring  a total of 21 galleries and 40 artists from the Southeast Asian region, the seventh edition of this prominent platform and marketplace for Southeast Asian contemporary art opened on January 17th and will run until January 26th.

Everything is YES! BUT… highlights Eko’s works from the 2011 to 2012, a period when Nugroho’s practice explored tensions between personal autonomy and collective resistance with Indonesia’s relationship to global political currents. His signature masked figures dominate the displayed collection to narrate identities caught between cultural rootedness and global mobilities. A series of birdcages dressed in national flags likewise takes an everyday object of Indonesian domestic life as a humorous metaphor of performing global citizenships.

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A core part of Singapore Art Week (SAW), S.E.A. Focus 2025 is curated by John Tung with the theme of “Disconnected Contemporaries,” explores the complex intersections between traditional and contemporary artistic practices in Southeast Asia. This theme also explores the walking of a tightrope between global influence and local tradition in Southeast Asian art. In an interview with GEN DE ART Le Magazine, John Tung explained, “There is still a very strong focus on local and regional issues,” he says. “What we are doing at S.E.A. Focus is bringing together artists to find common ground and explore what makes us unique as a region.”

Everything is YES! BUT… is open to visits as part of S.E.A. Focus 2025 until January 26, 2025.

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About the Author

Kireina Masri

Kireina Masri has had their nose stuck in a book since they could remember. Majoring in Illustration, they now write of all things visual—pouring their love of the arts into the written word. They aspire to be their neighborhood's quirky cat lady in their later years.