Circumambulating Objects: on Paradigms of Restitution of Southeast Asian Art (CO-OP) assembles individuals across the arts, culture and heritage fields to question entrenched systems of valuation, ownership, collecting and power as these are brought into relief through restitution processes today. Exploring Southeast Asian epistemologies and needs at the intersection of these processes, we ask to whom or to where ‘art’ belongs—within state-building agendas, colonial ideations, collective memories…?  

The name CO-OP signals both the cooperation and co-optation of parties active in the displacement of art throughout history. As a programme, we acknowledge our own role within networks of dispersal and return ‘home’. This website comprises an exploration of pathways upon which things and people continuously travel and the waypoints at which they make historical impact. The online environment of CO-OP also seeks to envision trajectories which are nuanced and equitable.