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Organized by: SEA Junction  

Selected by: Special project’s BACC pop⋅up

Principle supporter: Seacon Development Co., Ltd.

Media Partner: GroundControl

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In mainland Southeast Asia, the pandemic´s human toll initially was limited compared to that in peninsular Southeast Asia and to global figures. However, the image of a region largely unscathed by COVID-19 began to change by the end of 2020, when new strains of the virus emerged. By the middle of 2021, the Delta variant had turned Southeast Asia into a global center of the pandemic. The health and socioeconomic damage which COVID-19 inflicted on the countries of this region, together with the containment measures which they began to apply more strictly—and at times coercively—have had huge and unfair consequences.

 

Overall, the regional economy contracted and registered the largest drop since the 1997 Asia financial crisis, resulting in increased precarity of informal workers, women and marginalized groups. Taken aback by the scale of the crisis, societies were challenged to protect the most vulnerable in their midst. This largely because of inadequate or non-existent assistance schemes for informal workers and migrants and those officially considered outside of the labor market, including people with disabilities and the elderly. As government support was far from sufficient and often inequitably distributed, individuals, communities and non-governmental and non-profit organizations stepped in to try to fill these gaps by distributing food and aid as well as providing health services, family care and funeral services to those most in need.

 

Photographers from six countries—Edy Susanto for Indonesia, Hasnoor Hussain for Malaysia, Ta Mwe for Myanmar, Kimberly dela Cruz for the Philippines, Grace Baey for Singapore, and Sayan Chuenudomsavad for Thailand—highlight the pandemic’s disproportionate health and economic impacts on disadvantaged people, which still can be felt to this day. The entrenched wealth and welfare inequities laid bare by the pandemic demand structural reforms if we are to foster more just societies. 

 

The exhibition, curated by Sayan Chuenudomsavad and Rosalia Sciortino  for SEA Junction, was first exhibited at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on 17 October to 5 November attracting wide public attention. With the exception of Myanmar, selected photos from the countries’ documentation also served to illustrate the book, “Who Cares? COVID-19 Social Protection Response in Southeast Asia”, edited by Rosalia Sciortino and published by Silkworm Books. The exhibition as well as the book´s production (both in English and Thai) and respective launches, are part of a regional research project carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021-2022. This was conducted by the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) of Mahidol University in collaboration with SEA Junction and funded by the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) under the Integrated Strategic Research Program on Social Sciences: Khon Thai 4.0.