119 (Jul/Aug 2020)

ArtAsiaPacific

Contemporary Visual Culture

ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
Dreams of Progress
Sometimes it is necessary to leave the crowds behind in order to discover the world again. Writers, monks, artists, naturalists, and astronomers are all known to check out for extended periods of time to gain a renewed perspective on life. In this er
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ArtAsiaPacific
EDITOR & PUBLISHER Elaine W. Ng DEPUTY EDITOR & DEPUTY PUBLISHER HG Masters MANAGING EDITOR Chloe Chu SENIOR EDITOR Don J. Cohn ASSOCIATE EDITOR Ophelia Lai NEWS & WEB EDITOR Lauren Long ASSISTANT EDITOR Pamela Wong EDITORIAL INTERNS Ashlyn Chak, Cha
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Contributors
Michaela Bear is a curator and writer currently working at the RMIT Design Hub Gallery in Melbourne. She previously worked on the 2017 Honolulu Biennial and has written for a range of Australian and international arts publications. (See REVIEWS) As a
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Amsterdam
According to the governmental website for the Municipality of Amsterdam, the city is one of the most multicultural metropolises in the world, with ethnic minorities making up 45 percent of its population. It is often praised for its open and tolerant
ArtAsiaPacific5 min readWorld
First Reawakenings Across the Asia Pacific
As the initial epicenter of Covid-19, China was also the first to resume regular business and cultural life. More than 180 public museums across 19 provinces reopened in mid-March, with safety precautions such as temperature checks and limited entry.
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Art as Multispecies Vibrancy
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. In 2020, the Point examines how our cultural and sociopolitical systems are implicated in climate change, and what actions the arts industry can take. For this issue, we invited Zheng Bo to dis
ArtAsiaPacific1 min read
Obituaries
Rifat Chadirji (1926–2020), who designed more than 100 buildings in Iraq and is hailed as the “father of Iraqi architecture,” died from Covid-19 in London on April 10. Also in London, printmaker, sculptor, and poet Zarina Hashmi (1937–2020), known fo
ArtAsiaPacific1 min read
Awards
On May 13, Samson Young won the inaugural M+ Sigg Prize in Hong Kong with his 12-channel sound-and-video installation Muted Situations #22: Muted Tchaikovsky’s 5th (2018), receiving HKD 500,000 (USD 64,500). Abstract painter and writer Etel Adnan was
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
More than Elbows Bumping
Covid-19 continues to upend all aspects of life, particularly in the promiscuous little art world. In Hong Kong, after the cancellation of Art Basel, the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association (HKAGA) made a whole-hearted attempt to create local buzz, whi
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The New Normal
With governments making ad hoc public safety mandates in response to uncertain Covid-19 infection rates, art fairs have sidestepped the uncertainties of staging in-person events by shifting to digital alternatives, following on the heels of Art Basel
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Sung Tieu on Mary Kelly
It was serendipity that brought me to Post-Partum Document (1973–79), one of Mary Kelly’s most expansive works. I was 21 and studying political science and international relations. Disillusioned with my course, I would take regular train journeys fro
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Feeding Frenzy
Live auctions have become a thing of the past since the outbreak of Covid-19. In New York City, which reopened more slowly despite the easing of lockdown measures elsewhere in the country, the March Asian Art sales previously delayed to June have bee
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Undaunted By Distance
JUL 1–OCT 4 M+ PAVILION, HONG KONG The homecoming exhibition of the Hong Kong Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, “Stakes and Holders,” features a new configuration of Shirley Tse’s two installations produced abroad. The first of these, Neg
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Beneath The Surface
Hun Kyu Kim’s intricate silk paintings feature provocative scenes layered with historical and popular-culture iconographies. The Secret Barn (2019), which calls to mind George Orwell’s allegorical fiction Animal Farm (1945), depicts a hierarchical so
ArtAsiaPacific6 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
The Year Of The Rat
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. On March 9, I published an open letter to Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), withdrawing my participation from the exhibition “A New Constellation: Chinese Diaspora Now.”
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ARTHUR DE VILLEPIN Path of Self-discovery
Arthur de Villepin started collecting art when he was 22 years old. His first acquisition was a red-and-black rendering of the Parisian Basilica, Sans Titre (Sacré-Coeur) (1948), painted by Zao Wou-ki just after the artist had moved to the French cap
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The Body Is Political; Politics Is Embodied ANGELA TIATIA
There are two common English words that borrow from Polynesian languages: tattoo (tatau) and taboo (tapu or tabu). In many precolonial Pacific cultures, tattoos were a form of familial identification and clothing. Yet when Christian missionaries gain
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
JOVEN CUANANG A Second Life
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. While surveying the Indigenous and contemporary Philippine art in the sunlit, al fresco galleries of Pinto Art Museum, I chanced upon a canvas by painter Winner Jumalon depicting a man with his
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
At The Edge
A blazing asteroid hurtles across the sky, alarming three dinosaurs who stand immobile as devastation looms on their horizon. The tyrannosaurus, mouth agape, exclaims, “Oh shit! The economy!!” A Covid-19-era internet gem, this meme’s witticism strike
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Reflections Of Stifled Futures
Early in Perret’s development of the series, the women’s quest for non-capitalist and non-patriarchal lifestyles leads them to the history of Soviet Constructivism. Their research is reflected in the installation Perpetual Time Clock (2004), a device
ArtAsiaPacific3 min readWicca / Witchcraft
Me, Her, It, Utopia
Perret’s works have at times veered from The Crystal Frontier narrative. At her 2019 Spike Island solo exhibition, “The Blazing World,” Perret dissected the societal treatment of women through the lens of witchcraft. The works were based on her studi
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
What The Non-place Tells Us About Here And Now
Admittedly, at first, I felt rudely reminded by Perret’s work that utopian ideals remain chained to the world of fiction. How then can a utopian imagination still be constructive? Perhaps a chimera such as The Crystal Frontier is valuable because it
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Memories of Zarina Hashmi
Photo by Ram Rahman. Courtesy Luhring Augustine, New York. ■
ArtAsiaPacific6 min read
Capturing a Time
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. In 2011, Zarina Hashmi was one of four artists selected to represent India at the 54th Venice Biennale, in the country’s first national pavilion. When the curator, poet, and theorist Ranjit Hos
ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
Farid Rasulov
Every year, millions of livestock are killed for Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic holiday commemorating Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. The festival is known as Qurban Bayram in Azerbaijan, where the tradition outlived Soviet atheism a
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Zarina (1937–2020)
Zarina began her day by peeling and eating the seven almonds she had soaked in water overnight. She hated eggs but ate them regularly for breakfast. “Good protein.” With a slice of brioche. And tea of course. That Renu brought from India. Only Renu’s
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Byron Kim
From afar, Byron Kim’s Muffled (2019) appears to depict a dusty Martian crater, with a shaded clump lurking under diffused golden hues. Walk closer and the painting takes on the guise of a microscopic image showing the wound of a fuzzy, yellow peach.
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Andrew Luk
The archetypal cover of a classic sciencefiction novel features an impossibly craggy architectural structure rising from a barren landscape below a large, lowhanging celestial orb. This retrofuturistic imagery comes rushing to mind when encountering
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35 Gregor Hildebrandt: A House Made of Songs
INSIDE BURGER COLLECTION In painting but also in sculpture, visibility and invisibility, outwardness and concealment, go hand in hand. A painter puts some color on a canvas: the canvas is covered over. A gallerist or collector mounts the painting on
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Ongoing
NOV 8, 2019–MAY 9, 2021 The Shape of Time: Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection Vol. 1 West Bund Museum Shanghai NOV 30, 2019–OCT 11 Classics Remix Hong Kong Museum of Art FEB 28–OCT 4 Japanese Modernism National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne
ArtAsiaPacific10 min read
Art Directory 199
www.nyuad-artgallery.org nyuad.artgallery@nyu.edu New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi T +971 2 628 8000 Mon–Sat 12am–8pm An academic museum-gallery presenting exhibitions by internationallyestablished artists, curators, and scho
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Upcoming
JUL 1–OCT 4 Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders M+ Pavilion Hong Kong JUL 17–OCT 11 Yokohama Triennale 2020: Afterglow Multiple locations Yokohama AUG 12–NOV 3 Manga–Toshi–Tokyo The National Art Center, Tokyo AUG 27–NOV 8 Park Rehyun Retrospective Nation
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: “Monster Theatres”
In the depths of the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) a lone figure in the audience looked out onto an empty stage, teetering on the edge of his seat in a moment of anticipation—his lack of company eerily prophetic of the pandemicenforced isolat
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Hwayeon Nam Mind Stream
Hwayeon Nam’s installation Mind Stream (2020) seems hardly the sort to anchor an exhibition by one of Korea’s eminent contemporary media artists. The work’s minimalist formal language asserts a presence that is both more experiential for the viewer a
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Jeffrey Shaw WYSIWYG
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. Imagine being 22 years old and attending an event in London in 1966 called the “Destruction in Art Symposium,” organized by artist Gustav Metzger with members of Fluxus and Viennese Actionism.
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Robert Zhao Renhui The Lines We Draw
Under the guise of The Institute of Critical Zoologists (ICZ), conceptual artist Robert Zhao Renhui works to reposition science in terms of the “contradictions, assumptions and tensions inherent in our relationship with nature.” Performative hybrids
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Garden of Six Seasons
The garden has always represented human aspirations to the divine; paradise is found in the Persian charbagh and jardin à la française, where chaotic nature is tamed to symmetrical perfection. Yet gardens across the ex-colonial world also exemplify t
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
The Body Politic and the Body
In March, Malaysia’s governing “coalition of hope” fell apart just two years into its term due to political infighting. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 crisis escalated in the country. To this backdrop of uncertainty, “The Body Politic and the Body” at Ilham
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
… Of Bread, Wine, Cars, Security And Peace
What does it mean to live the good life? As ageless as it is protean, the question itself provided the starting point for Kunsthalle Wien’s expansive exhibition “… of bread, wine, cars, security and peace,” named after the metrics used by Lebanese wr
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Trisha Baga The Eye, The Eye And The Ear
The first Italian institutional survey of American-Filipino artist Trisha Baga brought a selection of audiovisual projects, ceramics, and paintings to Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, just a few weeks before Covid-19 resulted in a nationwide lockdown.
ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
Rayyane Tabet Alien Property
Rayyane Tabet’s interconnected art commingles the personal, the political, the historical, and the cultural. His latest exhibition, “Alien Property,” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York pulled off this intricate weaving brilliantly. Located
ArtAsiaPacific3 min readPsychology
Shannon Te Ao Ka Mua, Ka Muri
In his 1919 essay “Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny),” Sigmund Freud describes the unconscious experience of the uncanny as “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar.” In a more immediate regis
ArtAsiaPacific5 min read
Lo Lai Lai Natalie
In Hong Kong’s late spring, I hopped onto bus 64K, the only one that connects both sides of the suburban New Territories. The vehicle was crowded with villagers returning home with their groceries, and the warm air made me drowsy as I watched the tre
ArtAsiaPacific5 min readWorld
Art History's Takeaways
The texts of art historians, critics, and curators are creative projects in their own right, and should not be seen as merely auxiliary mechanisms for the amplification of an artist’s or institution’s ideas. The importance of artistic discourse was n
ArtAsiaPacific1 min read
LAM TUNG PANG What Am I Looking At?
“Our city and environment are like an essay, there are many things happening in it, and sometimes it can be tiresome. If I could choose my position within this essay, I would want to be the punctuation marks, maybe the comma, full stop, or simply the
ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
The Ethics and Legality of Deaccessioning in Desperate Times
See our website for the Chinese version of this article. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Covid-19 has wreaked havoc all over the world. UNESCO and the International Council of Museums have estimated that 13 percent of the world’s museums

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