Colonial Posterities: Portraiture and the Face of the Modern

Abstract

The paper dwells on the practice of portraiture or portrait making in Southeast Asia, reconsidering it as a political gesture of representation. In this reflection, it explores the concept of intimation and intimacy in the broader effort to understand the aesthetic of appearance and appearing, and how this materialization supplements the discourse of self-consciousness, modernity, and post-colonial art history. Examples from Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines are foregrounded to sustain the argument.