ArtAsiaPacific

ArtAsiaPacific Foundation is an educational platform committed to spreading awareness and understanding of modern and contemporary art through publishing projects and public activities. Art plays a vital role in creating and maintaining a tolerant an

Some 30 years after they first met as Hungarians who had moved to New York, the painter Rita Ackermann and the author András Szántó reconvened in 2021, reflecting on Ackermann’s trajectory as an artist. Their conversation touches upon the experience

Art institutions around the world found themselves caught in controversies and political crossfire that tapped into many of today’s pressing social issues. In Hong Kong, M+, the first international museum devoted to postwar art, design, and visual cu

Cities value spectacular art projects and new museums for their ability to draw visitors and attention. For those reasons, in South Korea, the fate of the late Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee’s art collection was closely watched. On July 7, South

The 2021 report released by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that 70 percent of the world’s population lives in countries that are either backsliding on benchmarks of civil liberties and democra

Gears shifted in the cultural sector as high-profile museums recruited new leadership teams. Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor and chief curator Rachel Kent left their posts to return to the United Kingdom an

Along with the world’s gradual reopening in 2021, new institutions debuted and established spaces resumed operations. In Hong Kong, M+, the first international museum of modern and contemporary art and visual culture from Asia, opened to the public o

Will 2022 be the year that the international art world reconvenes for major events? Many are counting on it, especially in Europe and North America. The first headline event will be the 59th Venice Biennale—delayed by one year, “The Milk of Dreams” i

A fuse was lit on March 11 with Christie’s USD 69.3 million sale of the NFT for Beeple’s digital collage Everydays: The First 5000 Days (2021). This led to the astronomical art-market boom of NFT sales, accompanied by talk of how the unique tokens, w

After a yearlong hiatus, international art fairs attempted to bounce back into action in 2021 by adopting new operational models and boosting collaborations. Though attendance remained invitation-only or restricted to the vaccinated in many locales,

Amid a global health crisis and rocky economic circumstances, collectors were emboldened to make riskier purchases, favoring the new and unfamiliar over the tried and true. This was seen in the extraordinary rebound by global contemporary art auction

How are our bodies impacted by sudden changes in the built environment around us? This question animates Yu Ji’s sculptural and installation-based practice, which draws equally on performance art as it does her surroundings where she scavenges for di

For as long as she has been an artist, Yee I-Lann has been a social and environmental activist attuned to community dynamics. In the cacophonous lead-up to Malaysia’s 2018 general elections, she found herself unable to think clearly, and decided to r

In October 2021, Park Seo-Bo was bestowed the Geumgwan Order of Cultural Merit, South Korea’s highest cultural honor, for his contributions to Korean art, most notably as the pioneer of Dansaekhwa. The 90-year-old artist joked, “It’s an award that I

Before the 20th-century discovery of oil, the Arabian Gulf traded another coveted resource extracted from beneath the surface: pearls. Though it defined the region for more than a millennium, pearl diving has been quickly severed from contemporary Ar

Using irony and humor, Bani Abidi takes aim at the self-seriousness of patriarchal tyrants and the flimsy pageantry of militaristic nationalism. In the newly created photo installation The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men (2021

The multimedia works of Sung Tieu bring viewers face-to-face with the forces that insidiously condition our lives, making specific and articulable that which is often structurally dispersed, anonymous, fatalistic in appearance, or evasive. Her past i

Unlike much of the world, Auckland welcomed 2021 with New Year’s Eve celebrations in the thousands, and many traveled across the country or retreated to beach-front locations. There was a celebratory air, like we had come out the other side of a pand

What changes have you noticed in the Tokyo art scene since the pandemic began? Since museums were closed for a good chunk of time in the last two years, artists and curators launched their own platforms, experimenting in smaller venues, especially ar

Yet another year with the pandemic passed. Despite major events—the Tokyo Olympics in the summer, a change of the prime minister in October followed by a national election at the end of the month—it felt as if 2021 was a very undramatic year. As the

Koreans of all ages and backgrounds had art on their mind in 2021, when the entire country became fixated on the prodigious art collection amassed by late Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, who passed away in late 2020. As Korea’s wealthiest man, Le

How would you summarize life in Manila in 2021? It was a rollercoaster, to say the least. Everyone faced their fears every day. There’s a collective anxiety, which is not so different from any other part of the world, but specific to the Philippines

After two years, since the political unrest and then the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the quieted art world in Hong Kong steadily began to regain its former velocity. It has not been easy for artists and makers, as many of them are looking anxious

How have events of the last couple years impacted your practice? I realized the pandemic really changed my priorities. I started asking myself what really matters to me. I wanted to create a new Chinese character that replaces third-person pronouns,

As we discuss social movements and civic solidarity during periods of emergency in countries around the world, we should recognize that Indonesians are among strongest to react in order to support each other. Indonesian society closely adheres to the

The present intervenes in, penetrates, and (re)constructs memory. Its presence—textured, textual; bodily, incorporeal; fleeting, mortared, or excised—inscribes personal narratives and collective history whose lessons, we hope, inform the future. The

After trundling along listlessly for months in 2020, battered from the effects of a Covid-19 circuit breaker, a faltering economy, and the recent loss of a number of institutions and spaces, the Year of the Ox started off with a bang for Singapore’s

What happened in the art scene in New Delhi in 2021? The pandemic’s second wave was quite devastating. It’s been a hard time for many artists, photographers, writers, as well as freelancers, so there have been lots of grants and support groups. Artis

As the global events of 2020 barreled through the United Arab Emirates, state-mandated regulations and travel bans caused the UAE to shrink to their actual geographical scale in a way that I haven’t experienced here in the last decade. This was espec

There are organizational “nuts-and-bolts” questions, and there are artistic ones. Let’s start with the practicalities of functioning in 2021. Unlike their Dutch and German neighbors, Belgian museums kept their doors open the whole year, including the

How did people navigate the second year of the pandemic in New York? As the pandemic is still happening, I can only speak to what I saw. Many of us are still less active in the usual ways. My gallery in New York, 47 Canal, hasn’t had any opening rece

On the day when I began to reflect on 2021, news poured in: Kyle Rittenhouse, a then 17-year-old White teenager who openly carried a loaded semiautomatic rifle during civil unrest in Wisconsin, where he fatally shot two men and wounded a third in Aug

NOV 10, 2020 JUN 25 With a curatorial team led by Andrés Jaque and comprising You Mi, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, and Filipa Ramos, the 13th Shanghai Biennale unfolded over nearly nine months at the Power Station of Art and other venues

The pandemic sent every biennial into crisis, whether with scheduling, funding, participant travel, logistics, or public health guidelines. At the same time, every biennial seems to be increasingly focused on the many crises of our world, from the en

APR 1 MAY 9 Artistic directors Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala assembled works by 69 artists from 40 countries under the theme of “Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning” to follow different ideas of intelligence and consciousness into realms of spirituality, t

MAY 22 NOV 21 Helmed by architect Hashim Sarkis, the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale invited participants to address “widening political divides and growing economic inequalities” by imagining a “new spatial contract” that brings people together. A

In “One Escape at a Time,” artistic director Yung Ma looked at the many creative potentials, and problems, with the idea of getting away from it all. The event included projects by 41 artists spanning video, sound, and other electronic media. A mural

OCT 6 NOV 14 More than 100 artists and collectives joined the Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6, which, like the previous five editions, linked Indonesia with another equatorial country or region, here Oceania. The main exhibition, “Roots < > Routes,” at

Asian Futurism is perennially relevant in a region where, for better and for worse, much of the world’s digital infrastructure is assembled and advances in technology are racing ahead. Naming the 8th Asian Art Biennial “Phantasmapolis,” a neologism c

DEC 11 MAR 11, 2022 The first edition of the Diriyah Biennale, curated by Philip Tinari, director and chief executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in China, took place in the industrial Jax district of Diriyah, outside of Riyadh. Titled “Feeli

DEC 4 APR 25,2022 The tenth edition of the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT10) featured 69 projects by artists and collectives from 30 countries, and foregrounded community-oriented projects and narratives. Jumaadi’s newly produced cloth banners derive fr

In his remarkable book The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (2021), Amitav Ghosh roots anthropogenic climate change in colonial conceptions of nature, wherein the organic world is sterilized as an inanimate resource, to be taken and co

Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen JAN 12–MAY 16 In Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s practice, the slipperiness of language is central. “Reflection Paper” featured several works that toy with para-fiction, starring Wang and artists who have influence

On November 2, Sydney-based artist Thea-Mai Baumann found herself blocked from the Instagram account she had used for nine years, @metaverse. Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, had renamed itself Meta just five days prior as part of its plan to ex