130 (Sep/Oct 2022)

ArtAsiaPacific

Contemporary Visual Culture

ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
ArtAsiaPacific
EDITOR & PUBLISHER Elaine W. Ng DEPUTY EDITOR & DEPUTY PUBLISHER HG Masters MANAGING EDITOR Chloe Chu SENIOR EDITOR Don J. Cohn ASSOCIATE EDITORS Tiffany Luk, Pamela Wong ASSISTANT EDITOR Nicole M. Nepomuceno EDITORIAL INTERNS Jenna Chan, Beata Li, A
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Contributors
Kurt Chan is a retired professor who taught fine arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for 27 years. From 2019 to 2022, he served as the deputy director for the Hong Kong Art School. Chan is currently a full-time artist. His research interests
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Taking a Break
If there is one thing that the world isn’t short of, it is crises. From the threats of rapidly disintegrating ecologies and resource shortages, to the deterioration of democracies and broader sociopolitical inequities, there are issues aplenty. Many
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Jakkai Siributr on Gee’s Bend Quilters
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. It felt almost like a gift from heaven when a dear friend presented me with a copy of The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (2002). Published by Tinwood Books in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Ho
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Colombo
On July 15, Gotabaya Rajapaksa officially stepped down from his position as President of Sri Lanka. Five days later, parliament elected Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as his replacement. Mass protests have continued, demanding that Wickremesingh
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Documenta Artists Resist Censorship
Artist kate-hers RHEE won the 2022 Korea Arts Foundation of America Award on June 22. RHEE received a cash prize of USD 20,000 and the opportunity for a solo exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles in 2023. On July 6, Abbas Zahedi cli
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Youthful Energy
Few things can compete with Hong Kong’s sweltering summer heat, but for this season’s auction affair, fresh offerings by young artists were hot for the taking. Phillips Hong Kong’s biannual 20th Century and Contemporary Art and Design Sales (June 21–
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Next Stop
Returning to Messe Basel with its routine June schedule, Art Basel 2022 (June 13–19) attracted 70,000 visitors throughout the week. As remarked by David Zwirner, “the atmosphere in the opening hours was just like the good old pre-pandemic days. Decis
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Rebalancing Acts
This year’s low season—June, July, and August—has turned out to be high season for the art world in many corners of the globe. In Jakarta, collectors—young and old, hoarders of NFTs and old master paintings alike—came out in full force to support Tom
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Crisis and Opportunity: Hong Kong Art Education in Recent Years
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. In the years since 2019, Hong Kong has found itself in the depths of a pandemic and in the wake of a major social movement. Besides the economy, these events have most heavily impacted educatio
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Sites Of Exchange
SEP 11–FEB 19, 2023 LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART (LACMA), LOS ANGELES Co-organized with South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, LACMA’s “The Space Between” will showcase around 140 works, spanning oil paintings, photography,
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Present Specters
TAIPEI In Tseng Chien-Ying’s delicately rendered paintings, Buddhas and mortals alike are distorted and caught in absurd scenarios. Capturing the essential characteristics and charisma of the deities, Tseng is skillful in the traditional techniques u
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Kiri Dalena
Kiri Dalena and I share a struggle: navigating the art world as a mother. The disruptions of a child jumping on the bed and sounds of tinkling laughter came from both ends of our Zoom interview. This was perhaps an apt background for our discussion,
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Elia Nurvista
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. When we eat, we often ingest our conversations as our bodies do our meal, digesting simultaneously both flavors and ideas, aromas and speculations, textures and debates. Yogyakarta-born artist
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Poetic Thinking
Children are carefree and innocent, but in Thao Nguyen Phan’s fantastical and dark depictions, their naivety and forgetfulness perpetuate collective violence. Often illustrated as headless figures, these children participate in cruel, bizarre activit
ArtAsiaPacific10 min read
The Act Of Remembering
Widely recognized as a leading figure of moving-image art, Nalini Malani is best known for her layered video-and-shadow installations, experimental animations, and multipanel reverse paintings on Mylar. While her practice continues to evolve as she e
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Boo sze Yang
Boo Sze Yang’s oil-on-linen painting We Didn’t Start the Fire (2021) recomposes a news-report photo of Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protest. By repeating the figure of the depicted protestor as if they were one in a line of dancers performing synch
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Serene Hui sze Lok
In English medical history, gossips were the women who supported birthing mothers. To the men on the other side of the door, a gossip was associated with screaming, grunting, wailing, and panting, until the term became synonymous with the crude utter
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Heidi lau
Visible through a narrow stone archway, a pair of ceramic vessels stand as tall as human figures. Ghostly faces, as if trapped in limbo, peer out from the twisted, porous structures, which stretch upward like stalagmites or underwater coral. These hy
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Monique yim
In a cramped, dark room, a white spotlight flicked on. There laid Monique Yim, back pressed onto the floor, laboring under the weight of a rectangular glass sheet larger than her body. What do we do when we see others struggle? We watch. Yim twisted,
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This Too Shall Pass
“Bourgeoisified Proletariat” is the type of exhibition that Shanghai has seen far too little of in recent years, but back in 2009 this kind of spontaneous show sprouted fairly frequently. In the coastal city’s suburban Songjiang, in an old industrial
ArtAsiaPacific9 min read
Art Directory
www.nyuad-artgallery.org nyuad.artgallery@nyu.edu New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi T +97126288000 Mon–Sat 12am–8pm An academic museum-gallery presenting exhibitions by internationally-established artists, curators, and schola
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Documenta Fifteen
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. In their December 2018 proposal for Documenta, ruangrupa started with the question of how they—an artists’ collective from Jakarta—might further the mission of Gudskul, their new educational in
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda
“Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda” featured 12 prominent Pasifika artists whose works are influenced by intersectional feminist concerns, such as climate resilience, social justice, sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, and human rights. The exhi
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Ultra Unreal
Taking novelist Ning Ken’s concept of chaohuan (which literally translates to “surpassing the imaginary”) as a loose point of departure, “Ultra Unreal” chimed in on recent conversations at major Australian arts institutions exploring myth-making, and
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Kazuna Taguchi A Quiet Sun
Kazuna Taguchi’s image-based works result from a multistep process: she paints portraits of figures based on collages of facial features and bodies sourced from mass media, such as magazines and the internet, and then photographs these photo-realisti
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Tsuyoshi Maekawa Selected Works 1958–2018
Mannaka Tate no Blue (A18), a quiet but bold 1964 work near the entry of Hong Kong’s Axel Vervoordt Gallery, presented to the visitor the Tsuyoshi Maekawa that most are familiar with. A burlap sack painted in earthy tones is ripped apart and pasted o
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Illuminated Curiosities
Featuring 26 Vietnamese and international artists from across generations, the exhibition “Illuminated Curiosities” occupied two spaces inside international schools owned by collectors and the directors of the Nguyen Art Foundation, Quynh and Tuyen N
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Isaac Chong Wai If We Keep Crying, We Will Go Blind
In a mild interpretation of power, authoritarian heads of state might be compared to strict theater directors. In turn, the populaces over which they preside become troupes who act out passion plays according to their leaders’ whims. The cult of the
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Mire Lee Look, I’m A Fountain Of Filth Raving Mad With Love
You don’t expect what’s coming when you walk up the brick stairs at the Zollamt space of Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst into a large open room. Cement mixers, positioned around the windows, switched on and off automatically, their spinning drum
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Hiraki Sawa flown
Hiraki Sawa’s latest exhibition at Parafin was informed, according to the gallery’s press release, by two recent events in the artist’s life marked by dislocation and loss. In 2017, Sawa’s parents sold and moved out of his childhood home in Kanazawa,
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Joeun Kim Aatchim Homed
“Homed,” Joeun Kim Aatchim’s solo exhibition at François Ghebaly, was composed of 18 works and two restaurant ticket rails that ran along opposing walls at waist height, bearing ephemera as varied as sketches, writings, desiccated butterflies, packag
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Carlos Villa Worlds in Collision
How can one open up White-and male-dominated art historical narratives, and, more importantly, hold that space for others? This challenge requires the input of whole communities but also dedicated leaders—one good teacher can make a big difference. A
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Christopher K. Ho CX 889
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. Christopher K. Ho’s site-specific installation CX 889 (2022) is a composite of architectural elements and surfaces recalled from Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport, which was razed in July 1998. Seen
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Ongoing
APR 23–NOV 27 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams Multiple locations Venice APR 23–NOV 27 Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined Palazzo Contarini Polignac Venice APR 23–NOV 27 Uncombed, Unforeseen, Unconstrained Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Ma
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
To Guide And To Desert
By Elly Kent Published by National University of Singapore (NUS) Press, Singapore, 2022 With the Indonesian collective ruangrupa leading documenta fifteen, the international art world was plunged into methods of creative production that are more hori
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Mai-thu Perret
Geneva is not generally thought of as a creative hothouse. Most people associate the French-speaking Swiss city as a center for private banking, luxury watches, and international diplomacy. But as I traveled from the Lake Geneva village of Cologny to
ArtAsiaPacific1 min read
Pacita Abad
Trapunto, “to embroider” in Italian, is a way of quilting in which cloth and cotton sheets are layered to create a cushioned effect. The late Filipino artist Pacita Abad applied this method to her paintings, where cotton batting, cloth, shells, mirro

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