The Great Game is a cruel one. This famous yet frivolous term originally referred to the nineteenth-century military and diplomatic rivalry between the British and Russian empires for hegemony over Central Asia—an imperial contest that left the region in turmoil and decline. In recent years, the phrase has been repurposed to describe other playgrounds of empires, from the struggle among Russia, China, and Japan for dominance over the Korean Peninsula in Sheila Miyoshi Jager’s latest book The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (2023), to the US and USSR’s polarizing influence over Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The latter formed the historical backdrop of “The Shattered Worlds: Micro Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe,” an ambitious exhibition co-organized by the Jim Thompson Art Center and the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in Thailand, and curated by the Art Center’s artistic director, Gridthiya Gaweewong, and her team. The exhibition revisited the struggles of smaller nations caught in the clashes of superpowers, and the unresolved issues left by the opposing ideological blocs. It ultimately held a mirror to the present, with countries along the Indochinese Peninsula and the South China Sea once again being pulled into opposing spheres as a new contest unfolds across the Indo-Pacific.
