ArtAsiaPacific

It feels like it was both a century ago and just yesterday when news of a mysterious coronavirus first started to spread across the globe. In warping our experiences of time, the pandemic has drawn attention to the unstable nature of how we relate pa

In 2021, the Point asks writers about the deep-seated issues that Covid-19 has brought into view, and how they might tackle these problems to create better post-pandemic futures. Below, Eunseon Park, director of the collective Listen to the City, out

I grew up in Rome in the 1990s as a first-generation immigrant—one of the privileged ones who attended an international school. I distinctly recall, though, the injustice that I felt on the playground, where speaking English brought admiration while

Less than two weeks after his 91st birthday, Korean painter Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929–2021), who spent five decades exploring representations of water drops, passed away in Seoul on January 5. On January 8, conceptual and installation artist Adrian Jone

Despite the rollout of vaccines, cases are still on the rise in various parts of the globe, impeding travel and causing further cancellations and delays for art events. Most art fairs have gone virtual while physical events are limited. Art Basel’s i

March 1, 2021 Dear ______________, Let’s get something straight: Michael Findlay is a dealer. Not a gallerist. He loathes that term. No, he’s a dealer. He makes deals on masterpieces, he’s been doing so for decades, and he feels there’s no need to br

With most of the world still contending with Covid-19, the new year feels very much like the previous one. As in 2020, auction houses are relying on digital offerings while remaining cautious about releasing details of their live presentations too fa

MAR 12–JUN 6 UCCA CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, BEIJING Cao Fei’s first midcareer survey in her birth country will bring together videos, photographs, and installations probing China’s mind-bending modernization and social transformations. Seminal pro

Art fairs continue to be challenged by pandemic-impelled travel restrictions, lockdowns, and postponements. Several regional events enjoyed the benefit of in-person interactions, but it remains to be seen if some planned fairs will go ahead in areas

The West has long exoticized Asian women, imposing on us the role of a meek, subservient “other.” This fabricated image relegates us as commodities and status symbols up for grabs, much like coveted fine Chinese ceramics. Rooted in Anne Anlin Cheng’s

In his essay for the 2008 Gwangju Biennale, curator Okwui Enwezor describes our time as the “Asian Century”: “Judging from the shape and turn of events, the clockwork convergence of Asia’s polyglot cultures, the large and still-growing consumer socie

When American composer John Cage disrupted the historical discourse of Western music in the 20th century by challenging basic assumptions of composition and performance, he precipitated a fundamental reconsideration of musical linguistics. One pillar

For Au Sow Yee, what happens in the space of a cinema is just as enthralling as a film itself. She recalls the “magical” childhood experience of seeing a light beam penetrate a projection room’s outer glass pane, illuminate the dust dancing above the

WANG TUO “Madness fascinates because it is knowledge,” observes Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961). In his taxonomy of European sociocultural, juridical, and medical attitudes to lunacy, Fou

HERA BÜYÜKTAŞÇIYAN A marble hand appears on screen and then floats above a grainy, colorless photograph of a city’s rooftops. A woman’s voice speaks, explaining she is trapped inside this marble body, her “pale, petrified fingers exhausted from their

After almost two decades of living in Germany, the Iraqi-Kurdish artist Hiwa K moved back to his birthplace in Kurdistan in early 2020. When we connected over Skype, he had just returned to the mountainous territory from Dubai, where his exhibition “

From 3D simulations of neurosurgical procedures to video-game avatars for gods of pain, Lu Yang’s eye-searing, pop-culture-inflected multimedia projects are products of the artist’s longstanding research into the nexus of the material and the metaphy

Excavators and dump trucks roll over axed trees to pile dirt into a sea. Further out in the water, behemoth trawlers ram into Filipino bangka outrigger boats, leaving capsized fishermen in their wake. All the while, a partially submerged dragon is ey

Yang Fudong is known for his atmospheric painting-like films, which reinterpret classical Chinese art. His latest series, Endless Peaks (2020)—comprising cinematic acrylic canvases, photographs, and videos—marks a shift in media for the artist. Shans

INSIDE BURGER COLLECTION Looking at my to-do list, I see three things: “send out Stadt fur Alle, prepare Russi show, check on parents.” I’m in Berlin, and the “lockdown light” that we’ve been going through for the past weeks has proven not to be the

When looking at Paul Hutchinson’s photographs, I notice that the focus is never on fixed positions, but rather on fragile relations comprising attitudes toward the external reality of a contemporary metropolis. As such, the motifs of his pictures are

In his photographs and texts, Paul Hutchinson addresses issues of equality, urban life, and social mobility. In doing so, he gives his generation a unique voice, and at the same time draws a bittersweet portrait of our time. Sylvia Metz spoke with th

In December 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 snapped a picture of home as they rocketed toward the moon. The Blue Marble has since become the most reproduced image of Earth, the view of our small and distant planet forever etched into our self-imagination

“Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art” was not the retrospective one might expect from an institution designed to house 19th-century European art. Nigel Borell (Pirirākau, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea), ex-curator of Māori art at Au

At 1,200-degrees Celsius, a drop of molten bronze can burn through flesh in seconds. For Lindy Lee, however, working with this dangerous medium holds a meditative power. This sumptuous materiality permeated Lee’s survey at the Museum of Contemporary

High above the central courtyard of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, hundreds of thin strips of cerulean fabric twisted and fluttered in the breeze between the museum’s two main buildings, where they were strung alo

Hydrographic concerns are salient in the contemporary art of Southeast Asia, a region with deep historical and material ties to the water. Recent years, in particular, have witnessed much art-making and conceptual discourse that relates to seas and r

Nineteenth-century breakthroughs in the study of electromagnetism pointed to a vast realm of unseen forces that, with the right technologies, could be manipulated in perceivable ways. It was hardly a leap, then, to infer that science could demystify

It’s no overstatement that Tarek Atoui’s work is literal music to the art world’s ears. Sitting somewhere between art display, performance, and sound lab, Atoui’s solo exhibition “Cycles in 11,” curated by Sharjah Art Foundation director Hoor Al Qasi

The late conceptual artist Chen Zhen described the moment of artistic creation as a “short-circuit” generated by presenting commonplace objects in unexpected combinations and contexts. Named for this idea, the artist’s recent retrospective, curated b

Best known for his unique approach to portraiture, Amir H. Fallah has made a name for himself not by painting incredible likenesses of people but by revealing who they are through the objects that they possess. Exploring issues of family, identity, a

At Centre A, Vancouver-based artist Gu Xiong’s exhibition, “The Remains of a Journey,” told a history of Chinese migrants, predominantly from Guangdong, who traveled to the west coast of Canada over a century ago to prosper from “Golden Mountain.” Wo

Edited by Ezgi Arıduru and Merve Elveren Published by SALT/Garanti Kültür, Istanbul, 2020 After learning that Joseph Beuys had died in January 1986, the 41-year-old Turkish artist Cengiz Çekil sent flowers to the German Cultural Center in İzmir and t

Sitting atop a mattress on the floor of her studio apartment in New York City’s Ditmas Park district, Chitra Ganesh lamented being unable to properly host guests. “It’s so weird,” she said, her voice slightly muffled through her face mask. “I keep wa

The past is messy and so is Candice Lin’s practice. In her 2020–22 touring exhibition “Pigs and Poison,” a trebuchet flings balls of oil, wax, lard, and black pigment across the room, splattering the walls. The installation plays to the rumored origi