<p>Ambassador, advocate, patron &mdash; how a Singapore-based American fell in love with Southeast Asian art</p>

As told to Skye Sherwin

Why I Collect: Jim Amberson 

<p>
	‘I began collecting art after I moved to Singapore in 1998. My professional life meant working with clients across Southeast Asia and I wanted to know more about the culture and history of the region than what I’d read in Lonely Planet guidebooks. My first trip to Singapore coincided with the opening of the Singapore Art Museum in 1996, and I clearly remember thinking to myself, “What is Southeast Asian art?” Little did I know how profoundly that question would resonate with me over the following decades.
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<p>
	‘When I was growing up in Minneapolis, in America’s Midwest, we didn’t cover much Asian history in school. I grew up during a time when the Vietnam War wasn’t history, it was current events. In 2008, I completed a master’s degree in Southeast Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. It covered anthropology, sociology, literature, and history, which allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the background and context of the works I collect.
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<p>
	‘I’m extremely passionate about the work of the Cambodian artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9842/Sopheap-Pich">Sopheap Pich</a>, which deals with the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge, among other themes. And the artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/31745/Moe-Satt">Moe Satt</a>, who lives and works in Myanmar, and whose work responds to the political climate there, including addressing the aftermath of the 2021 military coup, during which hundreds of demonstrators were killed by the Tatmadaw armed forces.
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<p>
	‘Because of the pandemic, I’ve tried to bring more work out of storage and into my house. During Singapore’s main lockdown, I installed 60 works by myself, precariously perched on a ladder, drill in hand, burning through two drill bits. You spend so much of your energy, time, and money on building a collection. If you’re working very hard, as almost everybody is, and you’re stuck in your office 40-plus hours a week, you don’t have a lot of time to live with the art you’ve collected. An unexpected blessing of the pandemic has been to spend more time living with the art that I’ve collected. Now, still working from home, if I’m on a very long conference call, I can turn around and see these works.
</p>
<p>
	‘Though much of my collection touches on political themes, that’s not the unifying red thread. The works need to grab me, emotionally and intellectually. Often these are works that make me a bit uncomfortable, partly because I think it’s important to recognize that there are other points of view. In my office is <em>Untitled </em>[2009], a 30-photograph installation by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/31648/Dinh-Q-L%C3%AA">Dinh Q. Lê</a>, the first Vietnamese artist to have a solo show at New York’s MoMA. The work challenges the way stories about the Vietnam War are told, which is always from the perspective of Americans. It features contemporary and historic photographs of Vietnam intertwined with images using a palm-frond-mat weaving technique that Lê learned from his grandmother and aunties. One piece uses Nick Ut’s 1972, Pulitzer prize-winning shot of a girl following a napalm attack woven with [an image of] a Vietnamese temple in the background. In the temple, incense is burning because smoke is a way to communicate with the gods.
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<p>
	‘The works on the first floor in my home have a tactile quality – a strong sense of physicality, material, texture, form, and presence. These include works by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11546/Handiwirman-Saputra">Handiwirman Saputra</a>, from Indonesia,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15475/Ronald-Ventura">Ronald Ventura</a>, from the Philippines, and Jane Lee and Suzann Victor, both from Singapore. Due to difficulties in visiting galleries and art fairs, I’ve been engaging more with video art, including works by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17301/Ho-Tzu-Nyen">Ho Tzu Nyen</a>, an incredibly gifted Singaporean artist, and Kawita Vatanajyankur, from Thailand.
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<p>
	‘I think I inherited the collecting gene from my grandmother. She was a passionate collector of Depression-era glassware, bottles, stamps, and coins. Like many people, I initially collected antiques. In the mid-1990s I lived in Cologne, Germany, where I spent a lot of time at the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln. It’s typical of Asian art museums in the West, in that classic Buddhas and ceramics cover visual culture up until the 19th century. Living with contemporary art, though, is very different – it’s a powerful experience that challenges you to think differently.
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<p>
	‘Part of the cycle of being a collector is becoming an ambassador, advocate, and patron. I like to help introduce the wonderful Southeast Asian practices to North American and European communities. Where does contemporary Asian art find its place in encyclopedic museums? Is it marked by its geography or by its time? Works I’ve loaned to museums in the West have sometimes been in this contested space. It’s important that I help cultural institutions with their messaging. Recently I have focused my support on institutions such as the Tate Modern, Walker Art Center [in Minneapolis], Singapore Art Museum, and the National Gallery Singapore.
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<p>
	‘I’ve seen many changes in the local art scene since I first moved here almost 25 years ago. Back then, the auction houses were very powerful. Living in Singapore, the only way you could buy works by artists from Indonesia, the Philippines, or Thailand, for example, was through the secondary market. Obviously, in an auction, the relationship between collectors was competitive and quite adversarial. Rather than becoming friends, you’d look at each other and worry about who was going to bid against you! For me, that started to change around 2013, when I participated in my first collectors’ exhibition and became more active in sharing my collection. The Singapore Tyler Print Institute started the Friends patron program in 2015, which led to more collaboration, knowledge exchange, and friendship. That’s one of the biggest blessings in terms of my collecting journey. There are innumerable works on my walls that are direct results of conversations with other collectors.
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<p>
	‘I think every single art collector has exactly the same best work of art in their collection – “the next one.” That’s what drives me. It’s all about that movement toward the next idea, the next find. To me, that’s what the collecting journey is about. It keeps things going – optimism, passion, curiosity, desire. There’s a sense of excitement in going to events like Art Basel, visiting new galleries, or meeting with new artists. At an art fair, two works of art from very different regions or in different media, because they happen to be across the aisle from each other, can trigger this “Aha!” connection in your mind. I remember seeing a work at Art Basel in Basel by the South African artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/13609/Zanele-Muholi">Zanele Muholi</a> opposite a beautiful meditative brick painting by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9105/Maria-Taniguchi">Maria Taniguchi</a> of the Philippines, whose work I adore, and a light bulb went off.
</p>

<p>
	‘My interest is predominantly in Southeast Asian art, but I’ve long had a passion for photography, and have followed the practices of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11570/I-Lann-Yee">Yee I-Lann</a>, from Sabah, Malaysia, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/34942/Wawi-Navarroza">Wawi Navarroza</a>, from the Philippines, for many years. I have works by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7733/Robert-Mapplethorpe">Robert Mapplethorpe</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/47553/Paul-Mpagi-Sepuya">Paul Mpagi Sepuya</a>, both from the US, as well as Muholi. Their work discusses representation, power, and presence, which resonates in other works in the collection.
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<p>
	‘I get the sense that people think, as a collector, you need to have a theme, a direction, some dictate to limit yourself. Some collectors do and that’s fine, but we’re not curators – we’re people who fall in love with the artworks that speak to us, and over time we build a collection that speaks about the collector.’
</p><p>Skye Sherwin is an art writer based in Rochester, UK. She contributes regularly to <em>The Guardian</em> and numerous art publications.</p><p>Top image:&nbsp;Jim Amberson surrounded by works by&nbsp;Ronald Ventura and Rikrit&nbsp;Tiravanija. Photo by Colin Wan.</p>

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Ambassador, advocate, patron — how a Singapore-based American fell in love with Southeast Asian art

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