Mekong Voices: Transnational River Justice in Mainland Southeast Asia

About the Exhibition

How do rivers speak? 

The Mekong River is revered as the “Mother River” across Mainland Southeast Asia. Our planet’s most productive freshwater fishery and the second most biodiverse river in the world, the Mekong has nourished astonishing ecological abundance and beauty, vast socio-cultural, agricultural and ecological diversity, and unique and renowned culinary traditions for thousands of years. While parts of the Mekong are imagined and policed as a border between nation-states, it is nevertheless a vast and complex ecosystem that has entangled and connected both humans and non-humans across thousands of miles. Today, more than 65 million people who are members of over 70 different ethno-linguistic communities across Southern China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam depend on the Mekong for their livelihoods and futures. Hundreds of millions more across the region depend on the Mekong River, its numerous tributaries, and its rich delta for their drinking water, vegetables, and rice. Indeed, through global food exports, the Mother River now nourishes communities across the world, including here in Michigan. Yet, like so many rivers, lakes and watersheds here and worldwide, the vitality of the Mekong River and its chorus of myriad voices, both human and non-human, are critically imperiled by damming, development schemes and climate change.  

This exhibition was born out of the Mekong Culture WELL project, an internationally collaborative and multilingual initiative at Michigan State University that foregrounds cultural and interdisciplinary dimensions of Water, Ecologies, Land, and Livelihoods (WELL) transformations across Mainland Southeast Asia. Inspired by Professor Kanokwan Manoram’s 2023 Thai-language essay “Siang Maenamkhong” (Mekong Voices), this exhibition asks how the Mekong speaks. How can we listen? And what futures are lost when the voices of our rivers are silenced? 

Mekong Voices celebrates the necessary and innovative work of traditional craft and art in translating the river’s voices, both human and more-than-human, across national and linguistic boundaries. The work of Southeast Asian artists from across the region and global diaspora echoes themes of environmentalism, Indigeneity, identity, community, knowledge, and culture. In learning to listen to the world’s rivers both near and far, we will also learn how to better care for them, ourselves, and future generations in the process. 

Mekong Voices: Transnational River Justice in Mainland Southeast Asia is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and co-curated by Marina Pok, Chairwoman, Anicca Foundation; Kelsey Merreck Wagner, Ph.D. graduate, MSU Department of Anthropology; Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez, Assistant Curator; Dr. Amanda Flaim, Associate Professor, MSU James Madison College and Department of Sociology; and Steven L. Bridges, Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs; with support from Mekong Culture WELL Project Postdoctoral Fellows Wisa Wisesjindawat-Fink and Sopheak Chann, and from student research assistants Savitri Ashalata Anantharaman, Leo Baldiga, Katherine Chamberlin, Madison Kennedy-Kequom, Maddie Morrison, Thanh Tran and Apichaya Thaneerat. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Eli and Edythe Broad Endowed Exhibitions Fund. The Mekong Culture WELL Project (2020–2025) is generously funded by a Henry Luce Foundation LuceSEA grant.