132 (Mar/Apr 2023)

ArtAsiaPacific

Contemporary Visual Culture

ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Sharjah Biennial 15
Conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah Biennial 15 (SB15), titled Thinking Historically in the Present, builds on Enwezor’s proposal to critically centre the past within the cont
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Forces for Change
Recovery, healing, transformation—collectively and individually we are undergoing these interconnected processes in the post-pandemic era. Artists too are reframing their practices in light of recent experiences and reconsidering their relationships
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Sriwhana Spong On Hildegard Of Bingen
As a child, the 12th-century German mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was enclosed at the monastery Disibodenberg. The site of her confinement, a hill about an hour by car from Frankfurt am Main, is today lush with vegetation and filled with bir
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Singapore
With pandemic restrictions relaxed, making international travel and events possible again, Singapore’s art scene is returning in fine form. The post-pandemic phase was marked in October 2022 with the opening of the seventh Singapore Biennale, cryptic
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Ashley Bickerton
Ashley Bickerton’s passing has initiated a period of subdued reflection as I mourn the loss of an artist and friend who understood deeply the artist’s life. His friendship provided me and so many others a bulwark against the vagaries of the art world
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Cultural Sector Rallies for Earthquake Relief
On December 19, Minnesota-based artist Pao Houa Her won the 2023–24 Next Step Award. Her series of works expound on the collective memory of Hmong-American people through photographs of intimate moments, revolving around themes of longing and geograp
ArtAsiaPacific5 min readWorld
Back In The Groove
The first month of 2023 belonged to Singapore, which kick-started the year with the launch of the new Art SG fair, the return of S.E.A. Focus, as well as the ongoing Singapore Biennale across the island-state. Other locations across Asia, such as Hon
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Bold Moves, Big Plays
Buyers and dealers beware, especially when in Korea. Seoul is all abuzz with the latest art world indiscretion. The word on the street is that Gladstone Gallery’s Seoul director Heejin Park was fired instantly and banned from the gallery in early 202
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
The Museum of Without
In July 2022, The New York Times published an article by Franz Lidz titled “The Robot Guerrilla Campaign to Recreate the Elgin Marbles.” The text outlined a project of the Institute of Digital Archaeology, a University of Oxford-based research group.
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
March–april, 2023
APR 7–JUL 9 Buoyed by the Taoist principle of harmony amid contradiction, the 14th Gwangju Biennale proposes the transformative-restorative potential of water as a metaphor for alternative modes of power and change. Artistic interventions by nearly 8
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Data Driven Dream
Our perceived reality is constantly shaped by the language we use. To become more aware of her own thought patterns, Singaporean artist and curator Berny Tan employs data visualization to translate emotions and relationships into a rational, systemat
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Active Spirits Of Return
The construction of Charoen Krung Road left a significant footprint in Bangkok’s forward march toward modernization. Completed in 1864, it mirrored the flow of the Chao Phraya River, shifting the infrastructure of the city away from an elaborate latt
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
NIKHIL CHOPRA Recomposing the Live
At the Dutch Warehouse in Kochi, the performance artist Nikhil Chopra was busy gearing up to launch a live art program titled “Where Do We Stand Now?” Slated for the opening week of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022 from December 13 to 17, the string o
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
CLUB ATE Mythologies of Movement
Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. The artists occasionally appear together in the work—dancing across a dusky shoreline or sharing a candlelit kamayan feast with collaborators who recount superstitions and stories around a Buwaya sculpted from ri
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Precious Wounds
In late 2022, for the first time since the pandemic began, I was able to fly the 15 hours from the United States to Hong Kong with my mother to visit our family. We had been planning the reunion with my relatives for more than one year. Still, I coul
ArtAsiaPacific10 min read
A Better Tomorrow For Art Museums In Hong Kong
In December 1991, Crossover, the leading independent art magazine in Hong Kong at the time, published a statement written and signed by a group of 22 Hong Kong artists and critics to voice their discontent about the lack of support from public art in
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Natasha Tontey
Mythologies of the modern state feature founding fathers, independence fighters, and military generals, often hailing from a dominant ethnic group, who anchor hypermasculine cultures in societies today. In Natasha Tontey’s video and installation Gard
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Lo Lai Lai Natalie
A gray bush chat perched on a tree branch quietly gazes at its surrounding in a stern manner. Where did it come from? Where will it go? We ask these questions when we encounter a bird, but as it flutters its wings and flies away without hesitation, w
ArtAsiaPacific7 min read
Kara Walker, in Context
I.“The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events, a point in history and nothing else.” A bewildering series of vignettes play out, larger than life, across white gallery walls: a woman hangs in mid-air, with what appears to be a b
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Ahmet Doğu İpek
Events in the world change how we look at art. Ahmet Doğu İpek’s exhibition at Arter in Istanbul, “A Halo of Blackness Upon Our Heads,” featured artworks produced in the last three years, bringing viewers into encounters with materials whose associat
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Singapore Biennale 2022: Natasha
An oddly moving moment in the latest iteration of the Singapore Biennale was occasioned by a video of a playground being built in rural Jordan. Initiated by the collective Malaeb in the village of Umm Sayhoun, the project aimed to provide a community
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Roppongi Crossing 2022: Coming & Going
The first since the pandemic, the 2022 edition of the triennial series “Roppongi Crossing” had a lofty goal of synthesizing a new Japan, one that experienced border closures, the spectacular failure of the Olympics, and the assassination of former pr
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
The Wild Eighties
After Taiwan’s severance of diplomatic ties with the United States in 1979, the 1980s was a transformative and liberating time for the island-nation, defining Taiwan’s sense of—and search for—identity. As martial law lifted in 1987 after 38 years, th
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Phylogeny of Desire
After trekking across the city’s concrete terrain, visitors to MO_Space Gallery witnessed a lush ecosystem of artworks, each requesting our intention to preserve and remember. “Phylogeny of Desire,” a group show curated by artist and environmentalist
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Jaffa Lam Chasing an Elusive Nature
During the three year-long Covid-19 confinement, many Hong Kong galleries had little choice but to showcase young and trendy local artists, who mainly produced affordable paintings on canvas. It was thus refreshing to see a solo exhibition, “Chasing
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
The 90s Onstage
“The 90s Onstage” offered an overview of Turkey’s cultural scene in the 1990s, a time of social and cultural revival, with a focus on performance and its relation to society, the street, the economy, and politics. The decade marked a period of artist
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Ma Desheng
In 2022, Franco-Chinese artist Ma Desheng was awarded the distinction of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an important French honor. Four decades of the artist’s oeuvre was on view on the permanent collections floor of Musée National d’A
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Bangkok Art Biennale 2022: Chaos: Calm
The third edition of the Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB) carried a sense of progressive evolution from the expo quality of the first edition, a brash showcase of different practices seemingly without a unifying intention. BAB 2022 displayed a more finesse
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Zadie Xa House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness
The appearance of a spirit can mean many things. It could be an ancestor or a deity, a reminder of the unresolved or a lingering old wound. Princess Bari (2022), a colorful robe that opened Zadie Xa’s exhibit “House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
To Guide And To Speak
Edited by Kim Namin with Kim Hyunkyung, Park Hwalsung, Richard Harris Published by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2022 In the hurried return to normal, the emergent discourses of the pandemic—including those around nurturing c
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art
Covering the years 1897 to 1965, “The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art” focused on the period following the traditional Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) and spanning the Japanese colonial period between 1910–45, the Korean War of 1950–53, and early
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
İnci̇ Evi̇ner
When you see Turkish artist İnci Eviner’s work, it is hard to imagine what her studio might look like. Her recent solo exhibition “Houris and Travelers” at Dirimart gallery in Istanbul in November 2022 highlighted the range of her artistic practice.
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Contributors
Johanna Bear is a curator and writer based in Gadigal Country, Sydney. She is assistant curator of contemporary Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Bear was previously associate curator at Artspace, Sydney, and chair of Runway Journ

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