Pisau Creative Southeast Asian Arts & Culture, Uncut

Pisau Creative

Southeast Asian Arts & Culture, Uncut

Latest Articles

Rot Is a Radical Act: Southeast Asian Fermenters Are Reclaiming the Microbe as a Political Tool
Craft & Tradition

Rot Is a Radical Act: Southeast Asian Fermenters Are Reclaiming the Microbe as a Political Tool

From Indonesian tempeh collectives to Vietnamese fish sauce revivalists, a new generation of Southeast Asian food preservationists is treating fermentation as more than a cooking method — it's a full-on decolonial practice. These practitioners are staking a claim against industrial food systems, one crock at a time. And they want you to understand why letting things rot is actually the most alive thing you can do.
No Microphone Needed: Southeast Asian Deaf Artists Are Redefining What Performance Looks Like
Craft & Tradition

No Microphone Needed: Southeast Asian Deaf Artists Are Redefining What Performance Looks Like

Across Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and beyond, a growing wave of Deaf and hard-of-hearing artists are building a visual performance language that doesn't ask sound for permission. These creators aren't adapting to existing stages — they're building entirely new ones, and the rest of the world is just starting to catch up.
Punch Line, Not Punch Down: How Southeast Asian Comics Are Blowing Up the Model Minority Script
Music & Digital Culture

Punch Line, Not Punch Down: How Southeast Asian Comics Are Blowing Up the Model Minority Script

Southeast Asian diaspora comedians aren't asking for a seat at the table — they're roasting the table itself. From sold-out club sets to TikTok sketches with millions of views, a new generation of satirists is using humor as a precision instrument to dismantle the myths that have kept their communities boxed in for decades.
Nothing Where Something Was: Southeast Asian Paper Cutters Are Making Absence Do All the Work
Craft & Tradition

Nothing Where Something Was: Southeast Asian Paper Cutters Are Making Absence Do All the Work

Across Southeast Asia and its diaspora, a new generation of kirigami and paper-cutting artists is transforming a traditionally ornamental craft into a vehicle for political reckoning. By cutting away rather than adding on, they're asking hard questions about erasure, migration, and who gets to take up space — and American museum walls are finally paying attention.
Press, Pull, Resist: The Southeast Asian Printmakers Turning a Colonial Tool Against the Empire That Built It
Craft & Tradition

Press, Pull, Resist: The Southeast Asian Printmakers Turning a Colonial Tool Against the Empire That Built It

Woodblock, linocut, screen print — colonial administrations used these exact techniques to flood Southeast Asia with propaganda, land seizure notices, and missionary tracts. Now a new generation of printmakers is loading the same press with something entirely different. Call it a hostile takeover.
Mud, Monument, and Meaning: Southeast Asian Ceramicists Are Taking Clay Out of the Gallery and Into the World
Craft & Tradition

Mud, Monument, and Meaning: Southeast Asian Ceramicists Are Taking Clay Out of the Gallery and Into the World

Forget the pristine gallery shelf and the velvet rope. A new generation of Southeast Asian clay artists is hauling their work into public squares, riverbanks, and community lots — firing with ritual, building at scale, and daring you to touch it. This is ceramics as confrontation, not decoration.
They're Not Your Costume Department: Southeast Asian Designers Are Seizing the Wardrobe Room
Craft & Tradition

They're Not Your Costume Department: Southeast Asian Designers Are Seizing the Wardrobe Room

For too long, Hollywood handed Southeast Asian costume designers a needle and told them to embroider someone else's fantasy. Now they're cutting their own patterns — and the studios are finally paying attention, whether they like it or not.
The Needle Is the Pen: Southeast Asian Embroiderers Are Stitching Dissent Into the Fabric of Everything
Craft & Tradition

The Needle Is the Pen: Southeast Asian Embroiderers Are Stitching Dissent Into the Fabric of Everything

Across Southeast Asia, a new generation of embroidery artists is weaponizing the domestic craft their grandmothers were handed as a tool of quiet obedience. From queer love stories sewn in Javanese silk to anti-authoritarian slogans hidden inside traditional Filipino patterns, these artists are proving that the most subversive thing in the room might just be a needle and thread.
Sharp Enough to Cut the Canon: Southeast Asian Metal Artists Are Done Being Called Craftsmen
Craft & Tradition

Sharp Enough to Cut the Canon: Southeast Asian Metal Artists Are Done Being Called Craftsmen

Across Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond, a new generation of metal artists is taking ancestral bladesmithing techniques into gallery spaces — and forcing the Western art world to reckon with the hierarchies it built to keep indigenous makers out. These aren't just beautiful objects. They're arguments forged in steel.
Breath, Sand, and Fire: Southeast Asia's Glass Artisans Are Making Plastic Look Like the Problem It Is
Craft & Tradition

Breath, Sand, and Fire: Southeast Asia's Glass Artisans Are Making Plastic Look Like the Problem It Is

Across Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, a quiet revolution is happening inside glowing furnaces. Traditional glass-blowing artisans are resurrecting techniques that colonialism nearly buried, and eco-conscious American consumers are paying attention. This is what happens when ancient craft becomes the sharpest possible argument against disposable culture.
The Body Remembers What Colonialism Tried to Erase: Southeast Asian Choreographers Are Taking It Back
Craft & Tradition

The Body Remembers What Colonialism Tried to Erase: Southeast Asian Choreographers Are Taking It Back

A new wave of Southeast Asian choreographers is refusing to let colonial erasure have the last word on how their bodies move. By digging into suppressed indigenous gestural vocabularies and smashing them against experimental contemporary forms, they're building performance languages that don't owe Western dance canon a single thing.
Every Groove Tells a Ghost: How Southeast Asian Woodcarvers Are Turning Endangered Folklore Into Permanent Form
Craft & Tradition

Every Groove Tells a Ghost: How Southeast Asian Woodcarvers Are Turning Endangered Folklore Into Permanent Form

Across Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, a new generation of woodcarvers is doing something radical with ancient tools: turning oral traditions that are one generation away from disappearing into sculptural archives that can outlast any hard drive. These aren't decorative objects. They're three-dimensional libraries, and the diaspora is paying attention.
Forged in Ancestry: The Southeast Asian Bladesmiths Demanding Their Tools Get the Respect They Deserve
Craft & Tradition

Forged in Ancestry: The Southeast Asian Bladesmiths Demanding Their Tools Get the Respect They Deserve

From the bolo makers of Batangas to the knifesmith collectives quietly operating out of Chiang Mai, Southeast Asian blade artisans are done being an afterthought. They're crashing the global craft tool conversation — and they're bringing centuries of metallurgical knowledge with them.
Turn Off the Algorithm: Southeast Asian Sound Artists Are Rewriting What Listening Actually Means
Music & Digital Culture

Turn Off the Algorithm: Southeast Asian Sound Artists Are Rewriting What Listening Actually Means

Forget what you think ambient music sounds like. A new wave of experimental sound creators from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and across the region are building sonic worlds from rice paddies, temple bells, and street noise — and they're not asking Western gatekeepers for permission. This is what happens when the listening experience gets decolonized.
Fifteen Seconds of Shadow: The Puppet Artists Smuggling Wayang Into Your For You Page
Music & Digital Culture

Fifteen Seconds of Shadow: The Puppet Artists Smuggling Wayang Into Your For You Page

A new wave of Southeast Asian shadow puppet creators is doing something their grandparents never had to consider: making Ramayana feel urgent in under a minute. They're not dumbing it down — they're cutting it sharp. And TikTok, of all places, is eating it up.
Beyond the Bowl: Southeast Asian Chefs Are Rewriting the Rules of American Fine Dining on Their Own Terms
Craft & Tradition

Beyond the Bowl: Southeast Asian Chefs Are Rewriting the Rules of American Fine Dining on Their Own Terms

A new generation of Southeast Asian chefs isn't chasing Michelin stars by watering down their culinary roots — they're building temples to technique, ritual, and ingredient philosophy that Western kitchens have never seen before. This is food as cultural argument, plated and served.
Skin Deep, Roots Deeper: The Tattoo Artists Stitching Pre-Colonial Identity Back Into Living Flesh
Craft & Tradition

Skin Deep, Roots Deeper: The Tattoo Artists Stitching Pre-Colonial Identity Back Into Living Flesh

Across Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, a generation of tattoo artists is doing serious archival homework — and then putting that research under skin. They're pulling indigenous symbols out of colonial museums and back into the bodies of the communities those symbols always belonged to.
Bottled Memory: The Southeast Asian Perfumers Turning Cultural History Into Scent
Music & Digital Culture

Bottled Memory: The Southeast Asian Perfumers Turning Cultural History Into Scent

A new wave of independent perfumers from Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and beyond are doing something the big fragrance houses never could: making scents that actually mean something. They're not selling a lifestyle fantasy — they're selling a specific memory, a particular place, a story that belongs to them. And Western consumers are paying attention.
Photocopied and Proud: Southeast Asia's Zine Scene Is Thriving Precisely Because It Refuses to Scale
Craft & Tradition

Photocopied and Proud: Southeast Asia's Zine Scene Is Thriving Precisely Because It Refuses to Scale

From Jakarta's back-alley print shops to Manila's community art spaces, a new generation of zine makers is choosing smudged ink and stapled spines over polished content feeds. They're not anti-internet — they're using it on their own terms. And the result is one of the most genuinely punk creative movements happening in Southeast Asia right now.
The Puppet Masters Fighting Back: Wayang Kulit's New Life as Political Theater
Craft & Tradition

The Puppet Masters Fighting Back: Wayang Kulit's New Life as Political Theater

Indonesia's ancient shadow puppet tradition is getting a radical makeover — and the dalang behind it aren't waiting for anyone's approval. From climate grief to queer visibility, a new generation of wayang artists is using leather, light, and centuries of storytelling muscle to say the things mainstream media won't.