108 (May/Jun 2018)

ArtAsiaPacific

Contemporary Visual Culture

ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Ways of Marking Time
A homecoming event in Sydney to celebrate ArtAsiaPacific’s 25th anniversary and the opening of the 21st Biennale of Sydney—graciously hosted by art patrons Gene Sherman and Andrew Cameron—brought together many editors and contributors from the magazi
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Contributors
Joobin Bekhrad is AAP’s Canada desk editor and has authored numerous books of prose and poetry. His writings have been published in Frieze, The New York Times, Columbia Journal, The Financial Times and The Guardian. He has been interviewed by Newswee
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
One on One Slavs and Tatars on Johann Georg Hamann
We’re not normally drawn to bad boys. In fact, we swing more for bookish, soft-spoken types. Johann Georg Hamann, however, is the exception to the rule. He was the enfant terrible of the Counter-Enlightenment and wore the badge with pride. Kierkegaar
ArtAsiaPacific3 min readWorld
Dispatch Pyongyang
All art in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is produced by the state, and is primarily controlled by the three main art studios in Pyongyang: Mansudae, Paekho and Central Art Studio. Mansudae is the largest art “collective.” Yet its s
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Yuz and LACMA form Historic Partnership
On March 28, Indonesian-Chinese entrepreneur, collector and Yuz Museum founder Budi Tek announced an agreement between Yuz and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) that would see a series of joint programming, and a donation of 1,500 works fr
ArtAsiaPacific3 min readPsychology
The Alternatives
When I was director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab’s Design Fiction group, one of the projects we developed was (Im)possible Baby (2016): a speculative design project exploring the possibilities and ethical dilemmas of using induc
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Sweet and Lows
“It’s time to make the doughnuts” is how one gallery director described life on the art-fair circuit. Despite the monotony of hopping from one country to another—or, rather, one massive convention center to another—art fairs apparently still have the
ArtAsiaPacific7 min read
A Roaring Start
The 2018 spring sales, taking place in the final weeks of March across New York, Dubai and Hong Kong, saw record-breaking auction results and high sell-through rates. This positive start to the year exceeded all expectations, especially as stock mark
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Cautious Optimism
The 2018 edition of UBS and Art Basel’s annual art market report, released on March 13, brought glad tidings for many in the commercial art world. According to the study, 2017 marked a year of economic growth, bucking the trend of art market deterior
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
One and Many
HAYWARD GALLERY, LONDON 5/30–8/19 “Crashing,” a midcareer survey examining the multimedia work of Lee Bul, will fill the newly refurbished Hayward Gallery. Best known for her futuristic, room-sized installations and sculptures that take inspiration f
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
I, You, Us
BELGRADE/SHANGHAI The research-driven, multimedia works of Belgrade- and Shanghai-based Hu Yun remind us that we are all active agents in the writing of history. Trained at the China Academy of Art, the artist examines the power dynamics that shape o
ArtAsiaPacific5 min readWorld
Remember Me
She was, at first glance, expressionless, but her smooth facial features belied fearlessness and fortitude. Her straight, chin-length hair was neatly cropped. Dressed in a stiff kimono and entirely covered in gold paint to imitate the sheen of buffed
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Culture Vultures
In an era full of aspiring, soi-disant collectors, it can be startling to encounter the real thing. At a dinner last September in Singapore, to honor Filipino husband-wife artist-duo Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, I found myself sitting across from an
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Specters and Spaces
As a young boy in 1970s Damascus, Hrair Sarkissian was often found in his father’s photography shop—the first of its kind in Syria—secretly playing with the equipment. When he was a little older, in the ’80s, he would take cameras from his father’s s
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Fighting Man
“Why don’t you punch the face?” Niyaz Najafov’s coach would often ask him when the artist first started training as a boxer in his youth. The answer lies in the split-second dilemma that occurs between making a fist and connecting it with the most fr
ArtAsiaPacific13 min read
Hon Chi Fun Full Circle
Among the many changes brought about by 20th-century modernity was the expansion of human mobility, whether in search of refuge, opportunity or adventure. At various points in his life, the Hong Kong-born, self-taught artist Hon Chi Fun has packed hi
ArtAsiaPacific10 min read
Cevdet Erek Bbbbdddrruuuummm!
One night in mid-February, Cevdet Erek was standing alone on a small stage with a large Turkish bass drum, a davul, on the darkened top floor of Karga, a bar in an old wood-and-brick building in Istanbul’s Kadökoy district. With a soft-headed mallet
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
YOUNG & EMERGING
Shen Xin’s video works—which focus on the ways spirituality and everyday life intermingle in a world complicated by power, science and love—convey a perpetual instability. In this turbulent environment, which mirrors our contemporary age, the artist
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Then And Now
Writing from Paris, where he had arrived four years earlier, Guangdong-born art critic Hou Hanru—soon to be a leading independent curator in the era of globalization—explored the challenges that many Chinese immigrant artists face in the Euro-America
ArtAsiaPacific10 min read
Blooming Mavericks In A World Of Giants
Nothing sounds more gratifying than making a living from art, right? The mere thought of spending your days surrounded by works that nurture your soul and spark your creativity is thrilling. There is a certain romance in meeting like-minded individua
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
21st Biennale Of Sydney
In Mami Kataoka’s keynote conversation with Ai Weiwei during the opening days of the 21st Biennale of Sydney (BoS), the artistic director asked the headline-dominating artist whether he thought bringing together so many artworks from around the world
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Lois Conner
For more than three decades, American photographer Lois Conner has journeyed through various parts of China, exploring the country’s diverse landscapes and cultures. During her first trip to China on a nine-month Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, Conner
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Liu Wei
For almost two decades, Beijing-born artist Liu Wei has been attempting to visually crystallize the impacts of technological advances and industrialization on China’s relentlessly morphing urban environment and society. Liu’s ambitiously staged, larg
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
A Beast, A God, And A Line
Stepping into Para Site, where “A Beast, a God, and a Line” made the second stop of its international tour after premiering at this year’s Dhaka Art Summit, one was immediately accosted by brightly-colored artworks, hung on similarly vivid walls of c
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Manila Biennale
Survivors of war often carry scars. The inaugural Manila Biennale, and its works under the theme of “Open City,” presented its own array of wounds. The concept evokes several interpretations. It references the idea of passages, of the possibilities t
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Raden Saleh And Juan Luna
Raden Saleh and Juan Luna are cornerstone figures in 19th-century Southeast Asian art history. The two artists’ successes were unprecedented: Indonesia-born Saleh was the first person from Java to receive art training in Europe, while Luna, a Filipin
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Mona Saudi
In the Middle East, poetry and art are intertwined. As an homage to this relationship, in the Sharjah Art Museum’s solo exhibition of sculptor and poet Mona Saudi, the artist’s works in stone were framed by the intangibility of poetry and her love of
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Naeem Mohaiemen
In Naeem Mohaiemen’s three-channel film Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017), a few familiar faces crop up. For instance, Fidel Castro announces Yasser Arafat will be taking over the podium, having been “appointed to speak for all liberation movements.”
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Ali Mahmut Demirel
Walking into Ali Mahmut Demirel’s solo exhibition “Isle” was like walking into a dark cave on a remote island, in a postapocalyptic future. The dimly lit entrance to the exhibition immediately summoned a sacred and isolated place, intensified by the
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Zhang Da Li
Although the multimedia artist Zhang Dali rose to prominence for his graffiti in the 1990s in Beijing, it was in Bologna—where he lived for a few years following the Tiananmen Square massacre—that he first became exposed to the art form. It was thus
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Chikako Yamashiro
After closing its doors in June 2017, White Rainbow has returned to its old location on London’s Mortimer Street with a new program of exhibitions and projects. For its inaugural event, it welcomed Chikako Yamashiro—the award-winning performance and
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Danh Vō
Even today, historians still do not know the exact number of casualties from the Cambodian Campaign, which US President Richard Nixon covertly ordered in 1969 as an extension of the American war in Vietnam. Discussions of this operation, as disclosed
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Yoko Ono
On an unsettlingly warm February’s day in Toronto, a hodgepodge of geriatrics, hipsters and curious children gathered at a table at the Gardiner Museum. Taking their cues from the captions on the walls, they fumbled as they tried to join ceramic shar
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns’s retrospective at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles opened incisively with a singular work, Painting with Two Balls (1960), a conceptually rigorous yet jocular painting with a humor that is part schoolboy and part art-world-sophisticate.
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Art in Crisis
In 1967, reflecting on the golden era of television, Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan declared: “At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be releva
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Rina Banerjee
Along a corridor of tightly sealed doors in a midtown Manhattan building, only one was slightly ajar. Poking my head around the doorframe into the studio of Rina Banerjee, past a kitchenette and makeshift storage, I saw an ensemble of paintings lying

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