109 (Jul/Aug 2018)

ArtAsiaPacific

Contemporary Visual Culture

ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Being Within the Change
A saffron-painted merry cow, and the mass-market dairy products it produces—including cheese glowing with golden, technicolor vibrancy—is the centerpiece of Yellow Cow (2006–10), a multi-part installation by the Saudi Arabian artist Ahmed Mater. Util
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Contributors
Fiona Cheng is an arts writer based in Taichung and Chittagong, focusing on modern and contemporary art in East and Southeast Asia. She is the editor and founder of Arts Observer Field Archive—a website reporting on art and culture. In 2017, the jury
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Kacey Wong on Chen Shun-Chu
At the time of writing this article, I was in Taiwan and fond memories of my artist friend, Chen Shun-Chu, had resurfaced. Shun-Chu was soft-spoken, with a gentle smile, squarish face and big, black eyes that are difficult to forget. I had known him
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Taichung
As an art city, Taichung has been on the rise. To rectify the city’s image of violence, perpetuated by a surge in organized-crime-related deaths and broad-daylight kidnappings since the 1980s, the government in recent decades has been investing in an
ArtAsiaPacific6 min readWorld
Furor Over Gaza Protest Posters in Jerusalem
A display of posters memorializing slain Gazans at a Jerusalem art school has stirred controversy over freedom of expression. On May 16, a series of black-and-white posters designed by roughly 25 anonymous Palestinian-Israeli students were put up aro
ArtAsiaPacific3 min readWorld
A Friend
To be honest, I am always reluctant to read any article with the word “identity” in its title, let alone a magazine featuring the theme. Normally, I would throw it into the trash bin for sure. I would also throw all the artists, art critics and theor
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
All-Star Break
In an increasingly dog-eat-dog art world, poaching the best sales talent has become an international sport. The most recent victory was notched by Cologne-duo Spruth Magers, who lured Shi-ne Oh away from reigning German titleholder Esther Schipper. O
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
In With The New
With new art fairs popping up left, right and center, existing brands face the challenge of staying relevant and distinct from the competition. Art Busan and Frieze New York returned this year with refreshed programs and, in the latter case, a revamp
ArtAsiaPacific7 min read
Ups and Downs
Compared with the robust overall sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in March at their local outposts, subsequent modern and contemporary art sales in London and Hong Kong showed less even results, with eye-popping record-breakers combined with surpris
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Around the World
YARAT CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE, BAKU 7/6–10/7 In Shilpa Gupta’s conceptually driven practice, she addresses the social forces that police our private thoughts, and enforce structures of power. For her solo exhibition of new drawings, sculptures and as
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Beneath the Surface
NEW YORK In Farah Al Qasimi’s photography, what isn’t visible is just as important as what is. The Abu Dhabi-born artist, who graduated from Yale University in 2017 with an MFA in photography, often partially obscures her subjects, highlighting the w
ArtAsiaPacific7 min read
Healing Through Movement
The traditional Cambodian myth of Moni Mekhala begins with a contest to see who can collect a glass of morning dew the fastest. As the legend goes, the sage Lok Ta Moni Eysei had set the task for his three best pupils: Ream Eyso, a powerful storm dem
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Makeshift Histories
In my multiple conversations with Hsu Chia-Wei about his film-based practice, the artist elaborated at length on the political histories of Asia. These discussions, however, were devoid of pedantry; Hsu is candid about the accidents and coincidences
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Cultural Treasures
Melbourne is, and always has been, rich financially. You can see the wealth in the city’s surroundings, from the names engraved on various bluestone buildings and elite sandstone universities, to the endowments and bequests to public and private inst
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Wonder Kali
During a panel discussion at the Sharjah Art Foundation’s March Meeting 2018, artist Naeem Mohaiemen unveiled a diagram connecting artists, curators, organizations, publications and even nightclubs that been part of the South Asian arts scene in New
ArtAsiaPacific12 min readReligion & Spirituality
The Edge Becomes The Center Ahmed Mater
Call him naive, but Ahmed Mater sincerely believes art has the power to change the world. He believed it in the 1990s, when he was working as a community physician in the small mountain city of Abha, located in southwestern Saudi Arabia, and toying w
ArtAsiaPacific10 min read
A World Of Her Making
At one point during my tour of Patricia Perez Eustaquio’s studio in April, the artist brought out two rolls of mulberry silk, one white and the other gray, both soft as woven clouds. This was after I held one of her crocheted doilies and a fragment o
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
YOUNG & EMERGING
Pliant fabric limbs and loose skin tangle in a heap in Mari Katayama’s photography series “Bystander” (2016). Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art Gunma in 2017, the photos show the artist herself modeling an eerie, human-esque creature of handmade
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Then And Now
1995 At the time when global art was first taking root, Nalini Malani was fast gaining visibility among curators both at home and throughout Asia. In issue 5 of ArtAsiaPacific, Mumbai-based critic and curator Kamala Kapoor conducted a lengthy intervi
ArtAsiaPacific11 min read
Aesthetic Experience, Ownership, And Post-truth
It has always been possible for artists, at least at some stage in their career, to become benefactors and ideological patrons of the prevailing social and economic order. Instances of this are Pablo Picasso’s return to classicism entre-deux-guerres,
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Haegue Yang
The year 2006 marked a major transition in Haegue Yang’s career. For her solo exhibition at Basis voor Actuele Kunst (BAK) in Utrecht, Netherlands, she created her first installation with venetian blinds and indoor appliances such as standing fans, a
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini’s art is a feverish dream of silicone flesh, gaping orifices and mutant beasts. The Melbourne-based hyperrealist sculptor seems to take pleasure in pressing buttons. Her works engender creeping nausea as much they pull you in with
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Fondation Cartier Pour L’art Contemporain, A Beautiful Elsewhere
Since its inception in 1984, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain has served as a pioneering model for arts patronage in the corporate sphere. With a permanent collection comprised of primarily commission-based works by more than 350 artists
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Zhang Yue
Based on examinations of war, violence, nationhood and governance across the globe, the artworks in Zhang Yue’s “If I Could” can feel more like pieces of broad-based investigative research than traditional art objects. The parts of the show that stoo
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Ni Youyu
In planetary terms, the world we inhabit is but a minuscule speck. But that doesn’t stop Ni Youyu from affirming humanity’s centrality in the universe through his creations, as showcased in his solo exhibition at Perrotin, Hong Kong. While some works
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters Of Photography
As a rule, histories of photography reference the Western canon: the iconographies of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen or Henri Cartier-Bresson are typically cited as fundamental orthodoxy. It was while teaching a course on photography, however, tha
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Ahmad Fuad Osman
Multimedia artist Ahmad Fuad Osman timed his first exhibition in Malaysia in more than a decade to coincide with the run-up to the country’s 14th general elections. As one of many citizens hoping for reform in a nation that had never seen change in g
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
1918
The group show “1918” took as its starting point the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic 100 years ago, and the country’s complex history, from the takeover of the Bolsheviks and its being annexed into the Soviet Union in 1920, to the
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Aydan Murtezaoğlu And Bulent Şangar
I grew up in Istanbul in the 1990s. My family did not regularly discuss politics, so what I remember from that period are mostly big gatherings with family friends and a feeling of community. The first major survey of Aydan Murtezaoğlu and Bülent Şan
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Latiff Mohidin
German expressionist, great late colonial painter, modernist pioneer. Latiff Mohidin has been framed as all these things, due, in part, to the artist’s attitude toward his identity. He readily admits: “The critics gave me numerous personifications: i
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Seung-taek Lee
In a painted canvas or sculpted form, visual balance is achieved in its most basic terms by the consonance of shapes and colors. The differences between these components may create tension and, hence, meaning, but one way or another, they are ultimat
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Hiwa K
In Hiwa K’s “Blind as the Mother Tongue” at New York’s New Museum, the artist escorts viewers through the political upheavals and social fabric of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he was born. Titled after the 2017 video Pre-Image (Blind as the
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Marwan
The Damascus-born, Berlin-based artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi (1934–2016)—commonly known as Marwan—is renowned for bridging Arabic and Western artistic styles. Galerie Michael Haas’s showcase celebrated the pioneering painter, spotlighting a series of h
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Mel Chin
It looked like a vending machine. Behind the glass, cut-outs from an American flag, cooked according to various cultural tastes, such as Ramen Noodle Oriental Flavor Soup or taco spices, replaced the usual selection of snacks. Patrons at the cafe of
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Tang Chang
Chills ran down my spine as I peered into the vitrine positioned toward the end of the late Tang Chang’s solo exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art, so beautifully and adeptly curated by Orianna Cacchione. On a faded sheet of paper was the word “gunm
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
In The Fields Of Empty Days
A catalog essay accompanying the exhibition “In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art” cites Edmund Burke’s oft-repeated aphorism: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” But, if the 125 works i
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Looking Anew
It wasn’t until I came to the penultimate page in Michael Findlay’s book Seeing Slowly that I understood why reading it made me uncomfortable. Featuring a photograph of James Rosenquist’s massive painting, Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Emre Huner
The area around Emre Huner’s Istanbul studio is a sea of electrical hardware and lighting stores, occupying dilapidated, exhaust-stained buildings that surround islands of the city’s stalled gentrification, like the nearby mixed-used venue Suma Han.

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