Art, Surveillance, and the Politics of Memory in Southeast Asia

In recent years, the region has seen a worrying rise of moral policing and restrictions on cultural expression. Across Southeast Asia, artists and cultural rights defenders are increasingly being cast as threats – to public morality, political order and dominant narratives about gender, sexuality, identity, and belonging. ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Artistic Freedom RADAR Database documents this reality across Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. While navigating the RADAR database, I came across “moral policing” as a category of violations faced by artists and cultural rights workers. In practice, moral policing punishes artists and communities whose work challenges artificial boundaries around gender, sexuality, faith, tradition, or national identity.