"Chinatowns of Southeast Asia"
karya Zhuang Wubin (Singapura)

18 Januari – 5 Februari 2011
Galeri CCCL, Jl. Darmokali 10 Surabaya

Pembukaan & Peluncuran Buku “Chinese Muslims in Indonesia”:
Selasa, 18 Januari pk. 18.30 di CCCL


Selamat Tahun Baru 2011.    
Centre Culturel et de Coopération Lingusitique atau dikenal sebagai Pusat Kebudayaan Prancis Surabaya kembali menyiapkan rangkaian kegiatan seni budaya di tahun 2011. CCCL menyajikan seni fotografi pada bulan Januari untuk mengawali acara di tahun 2011, dengan mengadakan 2 pameran, di CCCL dan di AJBS Gallery, mitra baru kami. Mengenai acara di Gallery AJBS akan diinformasikan dalam press release mendatang.

Pameran “Chinatowns of Southeast Asia”
Tahun yang baru berarti dimulainya lembaran baru bagi CCCL. Kami menyiapkan acara pertama pada tahun ini : pameran fotografi “Chinatowns of Southeast Asia” karya Zhuang Wubin (baca: chuang ubing), yang sekaligus untuk menyambut tahun Baru China (Imlek) pada bulan Februari mendatang.
Project pameran ini berawal dari undangan dari Chinese Heritage Centre Singapura kepada Zhuang Wubin, untuk memotret chinatowns di Asia Tenggara di era globalisasi. Untuk mewujudkan project tersebut,  Zhuang Wubin, fotografer-penulis asal Singapura, berkeliling ke sejumlah negara di Asia Tenggara dan menjelajahi berbagai chinatown di wilayah tersebut.
Fotografer yang aktif menulis artikel pada berbagai media internasional telah memamerkan  “Chinatowns of Southeast Asia” di Galeri Jurnalistik Antara pada tahun 2010. Surabaya adalah kota kedua yang dikunjungi pameran ini.

Pameran akan berlangsung mulai 18 Januari hingga 5 Februari 2011. Pembukaan pameran digelar pada Selasa, 18 Januari pk. 18.30 di CCCL dan akan dimeriahkan oleh pertunjukan barongsai dan musik tradisional Tionghoa asuhan Chandra Wurianto Woo.
Sebelumnya, di CCCL Surabaya, Wubin telah berpameran pada tahun 2007 bertema “Fighting for the rights of sex workers in Calcutta” dan pada 2008 dengan tema “Chinese Muslims in Indonesia” (yang dikembangkan & dibukukan, dengan keterangan lebih lengkap di bawah).

Peluncuran Buku “Chinese Muslims in Indonesia”
Selain berpameran, pada malam pembukaan pameran, Zhuang Wubin juga akan mengenalkan buku barunya kepada publik, “Chinese Muslims in Indonesia”.
Ia akan mempresentasikan bukunya tentang subjek yang amat memancing keingintahuannya : komunitas Tionghoa di Asia Tenggara. Ia mengawali project tersebut dengan komunitas Muslim Tionghoa di yang berada di Indonesia. Bedah buku ini digelar pertamakali di Surabaya, selanjutnya direncanakan akan diadakan di Jakarta.

Workshop “Exploring Surabaya Chinatown”, 18 – 22 Januari
Selama berada di Surabaya, Zhuang Wubin menawarkan workshop selama 5 hari di Surabaya bertema “Exploring Surabaya Chinatown”, pada 18 - 22 Januari 2011 di CCCL dan wilayah chinatown Surabaya. Workshop ditujukan bagi profesional di bidang fotografi, maupun para amatir yang serius berkarya. Seleksi dibantu oleh komunitas pecinta fotografi, Matanesia. Hasil peserta workshop akan diputar pada malam presentasi pada Sabtu, 22 Januari pk. 17.00 di CCCL.

Ucapan terima kasih kami sampaikan kepada sponsor pameran “Chinatowns of Southeast Asia”, China Airlines.


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“Chinatowns of Southeast Asia”
by Zhuang Wubin
( http://zhuangwubin.wordpress.com, www.last-harbour.com)

Even though I’m not a Chinatown boy, I spend a fair bit of time in this historical district of Singapore, drawn in part by the offer of good and cheap food. It is also less contrived – more freewheeling – than some of the newer estates. You can still sense the contestations and accommodations made between an older way-of-life with the promises of urbanization.
Into the mix you add the arrival of new Chinese migrants and the story of Singapore’s Chinatown becomes immensely fascinating. In a way, this seems to be the common narrative of the Chinatowns in Southeast Asia.

Towards the end of 2007, I was invited by the Chinese Heritage Centre to photograph the Chinatowns of Southeast Asia in the age of globalization. This is in line with my long-term interest in the Chinese communities of the region. Honestly, photography is not the most ideal medium for this commission, because the topic is of great complexity, and that the historical scars of these Chinatowns differ  amongst themselves. My greatest fear is that, without contextual info, the work will be reduced into an overview of strange rituals and exotic food. However, the human stories that emerged during the work quickly became the entry-points of the project.
I remember Madam Lim, a second-generation Jakarta resident and an avid fan of the Beijing Olympics, who talked of her anger with the China government for not doing anything when the Indonesian Chinese were targeted during the ’98 riots. The justification was that people like Lim are “indigenous”, and not Chinese.

In Phnom Penh, local-born Chinese journalist Huang Ping told me stories of Cambodian Chinese who gave up everything to fight for the Vietcong during the American War. Ironically, they were the first to be purged after reunification. These encounters became the highlights of the project.

As I travelled through the region, I felt like a sojourner engaged in a roleplaying game first started by my grandfather. Obviously, he left home for very different reasons. If not for the Japanese blockage of Xiamen, my grandfather would have gone to Manila, home to an old community of Quanzhou migrants from Fujian Province. I would have been brought up as a Tsinoy – speaking Tagalog, English and possibly very little Mandarin. Instead, my grandfather found himself in Singapore a few months before the start of World War II. It was then one of the cheapest places to go as a migrant. As such, it became a haven for the prosecuted. It was in no way comparable to Manila, which was then under American rule. But he didn’t have a choice. Neither did he have the benefit of hindsight. More often than not, the lives of the Chinese in Southeast Asia have been determined by circumstances beyond their control.

November 2009, Singapore