2014 Residencies Programme
Asia Art Archive
233 Hollywood Road
Sheung Wan
Hong Kong
Asia Art Archive’s Residency Programme catalyses new ideas through invited artists and creative practitioners who engage with the collections we hold, the ideas that shape us, and the sites we inhabit. Encouraging multidisciplinary interaction with flexible time frames, each residency is open to diverse outcomes.
Recent and ongoing Asia Art Archive resident projects and programmes include:
C & G, comprising of Hong Kong artist collaborators Clara Cheung and Cheng Yee Man (Gum), continue their multidisciplinary cross-generational project Meet the Parents. Through an upcoming public programme, which expands on dialogues around Hong Kong art history, they give voice to artists through a familial connection: their parents. C & G also plans to develop an artist book following their Not as Trivial as You Think: Hong Kong Art Quiz performance held during Art Basel Hong Kong 2014.
Iftikhar Dadi (in collaboration with Elizabeth Dadi) created light sculptures during the summer, a new body of work sparked from neon signs permeating the Hong Kong skyline and culminating in an open studio presentation at Spring Workshop. Iftikhar Dadi also gave a public talk on the role of artist-teachers in the development of art schools in South Asia, and helped shape “Innovation Through Tradition,” a two-day AAA workshop that speculated on the parallels between Chinese ink, Arabic calligraphy, and Indo-Persian miniature.
Ho Tzu Nyen continues The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, his ongoing research project that began during his time at AAA in July 2013. In creatively rearticulating the forms for knowledge and processes of archival production, the Singapore and Berlin-based artist examines the historical specificity of Southeast Asia that by his account manifests “not by reason, but by resonance.”
Marysia Lewandowska began a yearlong research project in September, an outgrowth of her 2014 AAA talk “Made in Commons.” She will explore through a dynamic series of open encounters, the consequences for public culture given how property delineates social and political relations in modernising Asia.
Jane Pong experimented with data sourced from AAA’s readily available digital collection and online resources from May through August 2014. Focusing on the history of exhibitions as a thread of inquiry, Pong created data visualisations to imagine how researchers might source and use this information in the future, with select findings that will be featured in the fourth issue of AAA’s e-journal, Field Notes.
Walid Raad is visiting Hong Kong in September to meet with various individuals, organisations and institutions to extend his research interests. During his time, Raad will also give an artist talk hosted by Spring Workshop.
Song Dong extended his initial two-part 2011 and 2012 residency and exhibition (co-presented with M+) through an online participatory project, 36 Calendars. Participants can download and contribute to copies of Song’s hand-drawn calendars, marking significant moments in China’s recent history through a dedicated Facebook page.
Asia Art Archive thanks the following for their generosity:
C&G: Residency: Burger Collection; Programmes: Lavina & William Lim and Yana & Stephen Peel
Ho Tzu Nyen: Mimi Brown and Platform Projects, Singapore
Marysia Lewandowska: Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FFAI)
Song Dong: Ronald & Johanna Arculli, Burger Collection, Ali & Amna Naqvi, The Sovereign Art Foundation, and Swire Properties
And Spring Workshop for their ongoing support
Asia Art Archive is an independent non-profit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. With an international Board of Directors, an Advisory Board made up of noted scholars and curators, and an in-house research team, AAA has collated one of the most valuable collections of material on contemporary art in the region—open to the public free of charge and increasingly accessible from its website. More than a static repository waiting to be discovered, AAA instigates critical thinking and dialogue for a wide range of audiences via public, research, residential and educational programmes.