Innholdsfortegnelse for Almanac 2017 i ArtAsiaPacific

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

CONTRIBUTORS

SHAWON AKAND is an artist, researcher and curator based in Dhaka. He is co-founder of Crack International Art Camp in Kushtia, and his publications include Dhakai Jamdani and Tendency of Modern Art in Bangladesh. POJAI AKRANTANAKUL has a Masters degree in visual arts administration from New York University and was previously a project based publication coordinator at Independent Curators International. PEDRO DE ALMEIDA is program manger at Sydney’s 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art where he is curating an upcoming survey exhibition, “Dacchi Dang: An Omen Near and Far” (2017). His writings have appeared in various publications such as Art & Australia, Artist Profile and Art Monthly Australia. FRANCES ARNOLD is an independent writer, journalist and freelance art editor based in Shanghai. She writes for AAP, Artsy and SmartShanghai. MIRNA…

4 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

Hyper De-Normalization

You can get used to almost anything. It’s a human truism that cuts both ways. In the case of Christian Lemmerz and Norbert Tadeusz’s joint exhibition at the Faurschou Foundation in Beijing in September, the cutting was perhaps a bit too extreme for censors at the Chinese Culture Bureau who banned Tadeusz’s gruesome paintings of slaughtered carcasses and rope-splayed naked humans. Instead, harmoniously all-white canvases in wooden frames replaced them, pairing so remarkably well with Lemmerz’s white-marble sculptures of mutilated-looking body parts that visitors might have mistaken the show’s bleached interior as an intended effect (at least, until they read the press release about Tadeusz’s “colorful, powerful works”). Instead of canceling the show, the Foundation chose to bear this evidence of censorship in its front rooms—a butchering of a different…

2 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

Forever Remembered

KG Subramanyan 1924–2016 Awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, in 2012, KG Subramanyan was known for his practice transforming mythological tales into modernist paintings, murals, sculptures and experiments in toy-making, glass and weaving. A student of the Bengal School, Subramanyan was a lifelong art educator, teaching at universities in India, Britain and the United States. Huang Zhuan 1958–2016 Curator and art historian Huang Zhuan led the inaugural Guangzhou Biennale in 1992 and the first Guangzhou Triennial in 2002. He was named director of Shenzhen’s OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in 1997, and then executive director of OCAT Shenzhen and the OCAT Institute, Beijing, in 2012, the same year he curated a retrospective of Wang Guangyi at Today Art Museum. Natsuyuki Nakanishi 1935–2016 In 1959, one year after Natsuyuki Nakanishi…

1 Beirut Art Center Tony Chakar Beirut 1/25–3/26 For “On Becoming Two,” Beiruti artist, writer and architect Tony Chakar is inventing a site-specific journey through the ground floor of the Beirut Art Center, leading to spots where literature creeps onto the walls and reconstructed decorative panels from public buildings are amplified by sound installations. 2 Aga Khan Museum “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet” Toronto 2/4–6/4 Twenty-seven artworks by 23 “contemporary Persians” rise up in a cultural rebellion against the constraints of politics, religion, gender and war in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, with playful works by Farhad Moshiri and Shirin Aliabadi, the abstractions of Monir Farmanfarmaian and conceptual projects by Mahmoud Bakhshi. 3 Astrup Fearnley Museet Takashi Murakami Oslo 2/9–5/14 Superflat giant Takashi Murakami will present a solo show…

2 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

FACING THE FUTURE

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, strives to embrace the 21st century. To accomplish this, we must discuss new technologies and investigate their artistic potential. In fall 2016, three panel discussions, under the title “Art + Science,” brought together scientists from leading American universities and artists from “Suspended Animation,” a group show that investigates new forms of embodying the physical world in digital space. The series explored crucial questions about creativity, technology and humanity in order to discover the future potential— and pitfalls—of digital tools in both science and art. Recent advances in cutting-edge visual computing have opened up radical possibilities for artists and scientists alike. Facial substitution, interactive narratives and artificial intelligence (AI) are now available as tools, allowing artists to create avatars and interactive scenarios…

10 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

Glitched Out

Blame it on the monkey. As 2016 approached, many people—particularly those who follow the Chinese lunar calendar—were apprehensive. For 2016 was the Year of the Monkey—that wily creature that is always looking to disrupt, just for the fun of it. And sure enough, the last 12 months have witnessed plenty of mischief, mayhem and malfeasance. For those who don’t follow the pseudoscience of the zodiac—instead having faith in either facts or conspiracy theories (or both)—2016 felt like one big systems glitch. Much of the news, particularly from the political realm, was mind-boggling. And it monopolized conversations off and online, and often seemed too Orwellian to be true. What is actually going on between the United States and Russia? What role does Julian Assange play in all this? Or could it…

5 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

Sign of the Times

Confrontations between artists and governments remained in the global headlines. Early in the year, two artists were granted slight reprieves from draconian sentences. In February, an appeals court in Saudi Arabia commuted the death sentence given to Palestinian poet, artist and curator Ashraf Fayadh in November 2015 for “apostasy.” Amid international campaigns, an appeals court upheld Fayadh’s conviction but lessened his punishment to 800 lashes and eight years in prison. In another multiyear saga, an appeals court in Iran reduced Atena Farghadani’s sentence from 12 years and nine months to 18 months. She was released from Tehran’s Evin Prison in May. Farghadani had been arrested in 2014 for a cartoon depicting Iranian lawmakers as animals, following a policy limiting women’s access to contraception. The legal standoff between a female artist…

6 min

4 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

Hopscotching the World

Political shifts prompted reshufflings at major institutions around the Asia-Pacific region. In Hong Kong, the direction of M+ hangs in the city’s fraught political balance. Suhanya Raffel, deputy director of Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), was named executive director of M+ in July, after Lars Nittve departed in January. While M+ regained stability at the top, associate curator Yung Ma left for Paris’s Centre Pompiodou for a three-year curatorial role funded by the Hong Kong-based K11 Art Foundation. There have been fewer sightings of Yana Peel in Hong Kong after her appointment as CEO of London’s Serpentine Galleries in April. As Australia’s culture industry suffers budget cuts, arts professionals are changing positions, while others are trying their luck abroad. In April, Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Contemporary Art…

2 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2017

Making Connections

A tumultous year in global politics compelled many artists to use art as social commentary, particularly as far-right politicians have risen to prominence in countries around the world. In February, in response to the United States’ presidential candidate Donald J. Trump’s vision of a wall along the US-Mexico border, Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar created a five-meter-tall ladder, in the border city of Juarez, to symbolize a connection between the two countries. Also addressing US policy, in particular guns laws, was Australian artist CJ Hendry who flew a 279-square-meter drawing of a bloody T-shirt shaped like a gun on June 18 over the cities of Orlando, New York and Chicago, after a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12 that killed 49. The ongoing refugee crisis across…

Somewhere out there there is a type of art catalog that is slowly becoming extinct. You know the ones: glossy, static immortalizations of exhibitions once mounted and often relegated to the underside of a coffee table or the lower level of a bookshelf. We leave those behind to gather dust and highlight instead new breeds of art literature, the ones pushing for books as spaces for critique and reimaginings, books as alternative avenues for urgent calls-to-action and engagement, and books as a gathering place for stories. As art texts, they can also be used as vehicles for homage to and as intimate, polyphonic readings of artists’ works. For instance, London’s Serpentine Galleries released a humble-sized monograph of a legendary literary and art figure—Etel Adnan—featuring color images of her paintings and…

11 min