Innholdsfortegnelse for Almanac 2016 i ArtAsiaPacific

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

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. ARIE AMAYA-AKKERMANS is an independent writer and critic currently based in Istanbul. His research deals primarily with contemporary art histories in the Middle East and political memory. MIRNA BAMIEH is an artist from Jerusalem currently based in Beirut. Her research interests address spaces of in-between temporality, which she approaches through deconstructing the burdened vocabulary of politics through sets of nonsensical acts, objects and relations. XHINGYU CHEN is a Shanghai-based author and independent art critic. Formerly the art editor for Time Out Shanghai, her writing has also been featured in Yishu and NuktaArt. Her book, Chinese Artists:…

4 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Heat Stroke

The United Nation’s Climate Change conference in Paris, held the first two weeks in December, was billed as our last chance to avoid global average temperatures increasing more than two degrees Celsius this century—the point at which scientists say will bring profound and deadly changes to humanity and entire ecosystems. While diplomats squabbled over how much more destruction they could do in the name of the corporations they represent back home, people everywhere are already living in a world under duress. And it’s not just due to the surge in horrific, unprecedented storms, floods, snows and winds, or the burning, acrid oceans and skies around us. The prospect of an international conflict breaking out over who will dictate the outcome of the Syrian Civil War and who will control the…

2 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Lost Legends

Nek Chand ARTIST The sculptor of the Rock Garden of Chandigarh in India, Nek Chand died on June 12, at age 90. While a road inspector in the Le Corbusier-designed city in the 1950s, Chand surreptitiously gathered waste material to create a secret sculpture park. The garden gained state support after its discovery in the 1970s and is today a major tourist site. Tomie Ohtake ARTIST Born in Kyoto in 1913 and forced to remain in Brazil after the outbreak of World War II, Tomie Ohtake passed away on February 12. She became one of Brazil’s most acclaimed artists, beginning her career in the mid- 1950s with bold, primary-colored abstract canvases before moving to large-scale public sculptures in the 1980s. Menashe Kadishman ARTIST Known for his rough-hewn metal sculptures, public…

Established in 2000, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale is unique in the world: artworks are integrated into the landscape of the Tokamachi area in Japan’s agricultural region of Niigata Prefecture—with many becoming permanent fixtures. With its mission to revitalize the aging community and local economy, as well as to encourage people to evaluate their relationship with nature, the Triennale has two main themes: “Art is how people engage with nature and civilization” and “Exchange between the region and the city.” Among the 200-plus projects to visit in the “art field” this year were extant works such as Jenny Holzer’s engraved slogans on stones, entitled Nature Walk (2003), and nearby, surrounding what used to be an outdoor sumo ring, Liu Jianhua’s Discard (2015), a mass of what looked like white, rock pieces…

1 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

8TH ASIA PACIFIC TRIENNIAL

With more than 80 participants from 32 countries in the 8th edition of this broad regional survey, APT8 included for the first time artists from Mongolia—four painters working in the zurag style—Nepal, Kyrgyz Republic, Iraq and Georgia. There was a newly commissioned, all-white suspended blind installation by Haegue Yang that references Sol LeWitt’s sculptures, and Asim Waqif’s installation All We Leave Behind Are the Memories, made of worn timber from old bridges, wharfs, houses and other demolished buildings. Throughout the show, figuration was a strong component, with the large-scale, absurdist paintings of Guangzhou-based Duan Jianyu as well as Liu Ding’s contemporaneous depictions of Chinese society straining under antiquated ideologies and in thrall to technology. Veteran Australian-Chilean painter Juan Davila explored the charged topic of asylumseekers in six new paintings mounted…

1 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

A Productive Decade

Welcome to the Almanac, ArtAsiaPacific’s compendium of the most significant art events of 2015 and a look ahead at what’s next, in 2016. In addition to spotlighting the 53 countries that constitute our active footprint, the Almanac extends to the rest of the world—wherever the artists of Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East work and wherever their work is shown, traded and critiqued. As the activity and influence of these artists have grown, so too has the Almanac’s remit. This year’s Almanac marks our 11th edition of this particular endeavor, ushering us into the second decade of this enormous project. What began as an effort to systematically track all artistic activity in the region and to map the dynamic networks being forged between neighbors, both near and far, has…

4 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Extreme Sensitivity

In politically tense times, artists are making their voices heard. At a press conference on October 27, the artist-and-scholar platform for political action, SAHMAT (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust), issued an open letter signed by over 400 artists and scholars expressing concern on the sectarian politics of the ruling BJ Party, while beginning on August 31, students at the Delhi College of Art in India’s capital held a 24-day protest, calling for improvements—an updated curriculum, adequate furniture, new computers—as well as investigations into sexual harassment. The art community in India was shocked by news on December 13 that artist Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer had been found murdered in Mumbai. Last seen on the evening of Friday December 11 by their respective families, their bodies were discovered in the Kandivali neighborhood…

6 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Under the Beach, the Labor Camps

Almost five years after Gulf Labor began its campaign to highlight brutal working conditions on Saadiyat Island—Abu Dhabi’s future oasis of luxury tourism, elite education and high culture—the fight reached a critical juncture in 2015. The island’s centerpiece, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, is likely to open on December 2, 2016, on the United Arab Emirates’s National Day, while construction is underway at the site of a future Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim outpost. Meanwhile, a report by Human Rights Watch, released in February, found continued widespread abuses in the kalafa sponsorship system and in the treatment of workers, despite newly passed regulations. On June 8, an unnamed Pakistani worker died inside the Louvre site, a fact which was only revealed after Gulf Labor’s annual report was released. The document details how despite…

3 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Gold Fingers

Art prizes are cosmopolitan almost by nature. Case in point: in 2015 France’s highest cultural awards honored artists with roots in India. Sculptor Bharti Kher was inducted as a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, France’s most prestigious cultural award, and 93-year-old painter SH Raza was declared a Commander of the Legion of Honor, the highest civilian award in France. The Centre Pompidou’s Duchamp Prize, awarded during the FIAC fair, was given to French-Armenian multimedia artist Melik Ohanian. Ohanian also participated in the Armenia Pavilion, “Armenity,” at the Venice Biennale, which garnered the Golden Lion for best national participation. Also in the lagoon, Korean Im Heung-soon picked up the Silver Lion for promising young artist for his documentary on Korean female factory workers. In March, Palestinian artist-duo Basel…

3 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

FEBRUARY

2 Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee dies at age 65, shortly after the opening of her retrospective at NGMA New Delhi 2 Palestinian Authority investigates Palestinian cartoonist for depiction of Muhammad 5 Qatar Museums buys Paul Gauguin canvas for USD 300 million from Swiss collector 5—8 Art Fair Philippines, Manila 10 Malaysian court upholds conviction of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charge of sodomy 13 Artists for Palestine UK releases petition for cultural boycott of Israel with 1,000 signatories, including Mona Hatoum, Jeremy Deller, Bharti Kher and John Berger 14 Banned from traveling and filmmaking, Iranian director Jafar Panahi wins Golden Bear for Taxi at Berlin Film Festival 23 Israeli cultural nonprofit Artis announces it received a USD 1 million donation 27 Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov assassinated in Moscow 28…

1 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

MAY

1 Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction protesters occupy rotunda of Guggenheim Museum in New York 8 During preview of Venice Biennale, activists occupy entrance to Peggy Guggenheim Museum 9 Armenia Pavilion wins Golden Lion at Venice Biennale, with Im Heungsoon taking Silver Lion for promising young artist 9—Nov 22 Venice Biennale 11 Artists Ashok Sukumaran and Walid Raad denied entry to UAE to attend March Meetings at Sharjah Art Foundation 11 Former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani rumored to be buyer of most expensive artwork sold at auction, a 1955 Picasso painting for USD 179.4 million 14—17 Frieze New York 21 Australia joins Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia in refusing to accept Rohingya refugees fleeing religious persecution in Myanmar 27 Chinese artist Dai Jianyong detained in Shanghai…

With his stentorian rhetoric, artistic director Okwui Enwezor proposed to address “the state of things” in the 56th Venice Biennale through a set of three “filters” (“Garden of Disorder,” “Liveness: On Epic Duration” and “Capital: A Live Reading”), while positioning artworks in a “field of dialectical references.” Setting the ponderous tone shared among the 136 artists from 53 countries was Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective, whose monumental statues of disfigured figures that recall the British Raj, Coronation Park (2015), lined the Giardini’s main axes. Within the Central Pavilion exhibition, in a red-curtained space dubbed the Arena, Isaac Julien channeled the latter two “filters” in his orchestration of thrice-daily, 30-minute dramatic readings of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. In Enwezor’s telling, the world is still enmeshed in the capitalist-socialist struggle on which Das…

7 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Maladies of Time and Place

The names, dates, titles, locations, descriptions and statistics that fill every edition of the Almanac help us tell the stories of a year—but they are plainly not the story. So much of what defines a period of time is not what we have done, but what has happened beyond our immediate horizons, somewhere else, and maybe even long before. In early August, as we started planning Almanac 2016, I read that Svetlana Boym had died in Boston. A professor in Slavic languages at Harvard and a media artist herself, she is best known for The Future of Nostalgia (2001), a book whose title alone is so perfectly resonant of its central ideas. Writing eloquently and also personally as someone who was born in Soviet-era St. Petersburg in 1966, Boym formulates…

4 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Who’s the Boss?

In the culture industry, big geographical moves are also leaps of faith. In May, Yongwoo Lee, founding director of the Gwangju Biennale, relocated to China to reinvigorate the Shanghai Himalayas Museum. Waving goodbye to the Merlion, Tan Boon Hui, former director of Singapore Art Museum, was named director of the Asia Society Museum in New York and vice president of its global arts and cultural programs. Also leaving Asia for New York was Yukie Kamiya, former chief curator at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, who became director of Japan Society Gallery in November. Clara Kim joined the Tate Modern as the Daskalopoulos Senior Curator in International Art (Africa, Asia and Middle East). And from Europe, former director of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art Bartomeu Marí has been appointed…

2 min

ArtAsiaPacific|Almanac 2016

Room to Breathe

There is more than one way to escape the gallery’s confines, get some fresh air and maybe a new vantage point. Taturo Atzu (previously known as Tatzu Nishi) took that to heart when he built a terrace above the roof of Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk (“Old Church”), providing expansive views from June to September. Fujiko Nakaya did something like the opposite in Bristol, when he shrouded a pedestrian bridge in artificial fog to celebrate the city’s role as 2015 European Green Capital. In Pittsburgh, Chinese-American artist Jennifer Wen Ma brought the forest to the city center, creating a grove of ink-covered trees between office buildings. Many things can hide in plain sight. In New York, the Little Syria project, part of Edge of Arabia’s ongoing US tour, documented a forgotten diasporic…

Inspired by fin-de-siecle theosophist Annie Besant’s depictions of spiritual energies (“thought forms”), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the “drafter” of the 14th Istanbul Biennial, looked at the motifs of waves (of water, sound and populations) and knots, connecting wars and ethnic cleansings to neuroscience and European intellectual history. Extending from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara at 30-plus locations, the Biennial most significantly addressed the city’s vanished minority communities and the Armenian Genocide (1915–19). On that subject was Michael Rakowitz’s project about a late-19th-century Armenian plaster-mold maker, which connected the craftsman’s trade (and use of ground animal bones in the plaster itself) to the Istanbul government’s 1911 edict that exiled 80,000 stray dogs to a barren island, presaging the genocide four years later. There were works of pure aggravation (or amazement),…

1 min