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.
This is especially true for queer and trans artists, whose bodies, stories, and performances often challenge the boundaries that states, religious authorities, and conservative movements seek to impose. When they are surveilled or attacked, or their work is censored, the consequences touch the foundations of civic space: the right to speak, gather, remember, imagine, and contest power.
ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Artistic Freedom RADAR Database documents this reality across Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
