Issue 136
We often think of objects as lacking agency. Yet, the power they can have over humans is understood when we reference works of art—our attachments to them, what they represent, and the values we confer on them. With the rise of artificial intelligence and technology that animates ordinary objects like never before, our relationship to things has begun to change.
The cover Feature of this issue is an interview with Kim Beom, an artist who imagines the consciousness or agency that objects might possess through projects dating back several decades. A playful postmodernist of the 1990s art scene in Korea, Kim explores philosophical questions about our perceptions of artworks and images, and how these can be manipulated to humorous or tragic ends.
Our second Feature is an interview with Lebanese artist Simone Fattal, whose long career as an artist has involved experimenting with diverse media, from painting to sculpture and photography. In conjunction with her work as an editor and publisher, Fattal’s experiences have led her to understand the long history of culture that has survived through, and because of, our relationship to objects. In her interview with Ruba Al-Sweel about her exhibition at Ocean Space in Venice, Fattal reflects on creating works for a deconsecrated church and the sharing of knowledge through the printed word.
For Inside Burger Collection, writer Jennifer Piejko examines the paintings and sculptures of Ida Ekblad, a Norwegian artist inspired by the dérives (urban wanderings) of the Situationists and graffiti artists.
Rounding off the Features section with four Up Close articles, AAP’s editors recount their experiences with an architectural intervention by Hong Kong artist Mark Chung; a hybrid dance-performance-film work by Elysa Wendi and Lee Wai-Shing; the latest M+ Facade commission from Indonesian collective Tromarama; and Yeondoo Jung’s newly commissioned video installation about the lives and legacy of the Korean-Mexican diaspora.
In Profiles, curator Tiffany Leung dives into the practice of Beijing-born, New York-based artist Cici Wu, whose works explore the emotional resonances of personal and cultural migration through time and across media, from ink-painting to experimental film. While in Seoul in September, deputy editor HG Masters participated in a newspaper-reading performance orchestrated by veteran avant-garde artist Sung Neung Kyung, all part of his still-evolving practice incorporating the materials of everyday life. In Essays, curator Béatrice Grenier examines Yu Hong’s painting The Ship of Fools (2021), uncovering its metaphors for intergenerational struggles and connecting it to the artist’s long history of painting young adults in China.
Elsewhere in the issue, for One on One, contemporary thangka painter Tsherin Sherpa recounts the classical training he received from his father, Urgen Dorje Sherpa. In The Point, Pio Abad revisits his projects exploring the stolen wealth of the Marcos family as the political dynasty has returned to power in the Philippines. In Dispatch, curator Shih-yu Hsu looks at the exhibitions happening in Taipei in November, from the 13th Taipei Biennial to many others long postponed by the pandemic.
Our Reviews span the major solo exhibition in New York for Tuan Andrew Nguyen at the New Museum to exhibitions from Auckland to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Yogyakarta, and Vancouver. Finally, for Where I Work, Duong Manh Hung visited the Hanoi studio of painter Ha Manh Thang, nestled between two adjacent temples, where the serenity of the environs prevails over chaos in his abstract paintings. As with many of the artists in this issue, Ha sees artworks as having an innate ability to help us understand and transcend ourselves, a sign of their agency over us and our entangled relationship.
A digital edition of the full AAP issue 136 is now available for purchase on Zinio, Google Play, iTunes, and Magzter.