The Empathic Lens: Art, Animism, and Ecology in Contemporary Southeast Asia

How lens-based art from Southeast Asia offers alternative visions for ecological sustainabilityA new paradigm of ecologically minded artistic practices is taking shape in Southeast Asia - one that at once tracks ecological destruction and works specifically to cultivate deeper feelings of empathy toward the environment.Examining a range of photography and video work, The Empathic Lens explores how these lens-based projects respond to increasingly urgent concerns related to climate disaster and capitalist acceleration. In this analysis of work produced across Cambodia, Vietnam, and Singapore, Brianne Cohen highlights artists for whom rampant urban development, resource extraction, and environmental toxicity are close at hand.As each artist takes their lens to these realities, Cohen shows, they draw on Indigenous knowledge and local traditions that have long recognized the kinship of humans and nonhumans.Engaging often-censored discourses of Indigenous land relations and environmental ju