ArtAsiaPacific
May/June 2014
Out now
The May/June issue of ArtAsiaPacific looks at artists and collectors, some under the radar, others simply overlooked, who are doing something wonderful and unconventional.
For our cover feature, Lesley Ma, M+’s ink art curator, introduces a group of young Taiwanese writers, photographers and filmmakers who produced Theatre, the first Chinese-language magazine dedicated to experimental time-based art, in the 1960s. Ma explains, “The Theatre generation of artists was the first to consciously and confidently develop a new aesthetic that discarded the need to label itself as representative of Chinese identity, and instead turn their attention to their lives and experiences in Taiwan.”
Also working in the mid-20th century was Saloua Raouda Choucair, a Lebanese early modernist. Dubai desk editor Kevin Jones pens an absorbing rumination on Choucair’s artistic contributions and why this pioneer of abstraction and public sculpture was marginalized and forgotten by art historians, critics and curators. Closer to home, artist Leung Chi Wo tells the story of his hero, Josh Hon, a popular but largely unknown painter and performance artist working in Hong Kong in the 1980s. As part of a project commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 2012, Leung not only investigated Hon’s legacy in the local art community, but also searched for the artist, who left Hong Kong in the 1990s during the exodus after events at Tiananmen in 1989 and before the 1997 handover of the British colony to the Chinese government.
Rounding out the features, Western and Central Asia editor Sara Raza sits down with up-and-coming artists Batool al-Shomrani, Sarah Abu Abdallah, Heba Abed and Basmah Felemban to discuss their work and the burgeoning art scene in Saudi Arabia. In a special profiles section on collectors, we chat with Jakarta’s Poppy Hadiman Setiawan, Leo Shih from Taiwan, Sydney’s Patrick Corrigan and Vietnam-based Adrian Jones about their visions of assembling collections that historically represent a country’s art scene. Managing editor John Jervis meets William Lim in Hong Kong and contributing editor Jyoti Dhar interviews Feroze Gujral in New Delhi, both of whom are patrons nurturing young artists and experimental practices in their respective hometowns. We also introduce our new special column “Inside Burger Collection,” which looks at different ways this Hong Kong-based private collection—with its emphasis on Euro-American, Indian and Asian art—is able to support artists, from making acquisitions to producing pop-up exhibitions and publishing their annual Torrent publication.
In our artist profiles, Manila desk editor Marlyne Sahakian looks at the work of artist-curator Gary Ross Pastrana, assistant editor Sylvia Tsai travels to Singapore’s Institute of Critical Zoologists to meet Robert Zhao Renhui and, in Los Angeles, assistant editor Ming Lin takes us behind the scenes of Chinese-American Wu Tsang’s subversive documentaries and performances.
In Essays, guest contributor Macushla Robinson looks at a number of subtle artistic practices taking place in China today, such as Hu Xiaoyuan’s delicate minimalist assemblages, while Jyoti Dhar considers Dhaka Art Summit’s hybrid art fair-biennial model, and the opportunities it affords Bangladesh’s artists. In Where I Work, contributing editor Michael Young travels to Shanghai, where he meets Xu Zhen, the artist and CEO of MadeIn Company, while Dispatch takes us to Sydney with Museum of Contemporary Art Australia senior curator Rachel Kent. In the Point, artist Cheo Chai-Hiang revisits the 1989 article “Will the Gifted Blossom?” by Dr. Neville Ellis, a former education officer for Singapore’s Ministry of Education, to discuss whether the city-state’s policy on art education has borne fruit. For One on One, Nadim Abbas, who will design the Absolut Art Bar at this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong, attributes his impetus for becoming an artist to a childhood diet of anime and comics, particularly those by Yoshihiro Togashi. Abbas—along with many of the collectors profiled here—reminds us that boredom, perhaps in the guise of wandering in a vast art fair, can occasionally lead us to unexpected discoveries.
Select articles now online in Arabic and Chinese: artasiapacific.com
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