Issue 144
In our fraught global political landscape, where conservative policy proposals are not only being embraced, but also realized by populist regimes, issue 144 of ArtAsiaPacific highlights artists whose practice mirrors key issues of power, access, and inclusion.
For our cover Feature, Xintian Tina Wang spoke with Christine Sun Kim during the American artist’s midcareer survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Kim inhabits sound not as a given, but as a contested space—a terrain of power where access is not granted but taken. Her work is not about Deafness but about the politics of communication and the invisible barriers that determine who participates in the conversation and who is excluded.
In our second Feature, “When Artists Commission Artists,” contributing editor Ryan Su, a practicing arts lawyer, looks at intellectual property rights and the boundaries of authorship and creative labor in the age of artificial intelligence.
Our Up Close section spotlights three recently debuted works: the haunting figurative sculpture Head of a Dancer by Richard Hawkins; Taiwanese artist group Xindian Boys’ poetic site-specific projection, Don’t Worry, Baby, which runs on game engine technology; and Sopheap Pich’s Silent Restraint, which revisits his first-ever rattan work of a human lung.
For our Inside Burger Collection section, Larissa Kikol interviewed ceramicist Ranti Bam, who discussed her unique alchemy of transforming earthy terracotta into vessels for healing and empathy.
In Profiles, our new managing editor Michele Chan met up with gallerists Lorraine Kiang and Edouard Malingue in their first US outpost as well as back home in their Hong Kong flagship. From Korea, Andy St. Louis chronicles the life experience of Hyun Nahm, who grew up witnessing the ruthless urban development in the commuter town of Ilsan, which has informed his aesthetic influences that ooze out of his tactile sculptures. From Turkey, Matt A. Hanson spoke with Paris-based filmmaker Ali Kazma on the eve of his opening at the Istanbul Modern to discuss his career-long fascination with human activity across economic, industrial, and cultural fields.
Elsewhere in the issue, Johanna Bear penned an essay about environmental justice inspired by the recent exhibition “Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania,” curated by Taloi Havini for Ocean Space in Venice and at Artspace in Sydney. For Dispatch, we hear from Manuela Lietti about the cultural regeneration taking place in Milan. We also travel to Riyadh to visit the vast studio of Nasser Al Salem, who is redefining traditional Arabic calligraphy by experimenting with the ancient art form.
In Reviews, among shows covered from Mumbai to Houston, Arthur Solway covers the much-overdue retrospective of the late Ruth Asawa. Her experience in a post-World War II Japanese internment camp in the US helped shape her resilience as an artist who was continually passed over due to the sexist bias that downplayed her practice as craft, and merely decorative.
Finally, for One on One, Beijing’s Lin Jingjing—known for her fictitious artist identity “Lov-Lov”—reflects on first seeing Wael Shawky’s video Drama 1882 at the 2024 Venice Biennale, writing: “It forces us to pause, to enter an uncomfortable, unfamiliar, yet irresistible experiment, hovering between inevitability and agency.” Like many of the artists in this issue, Shawky’s work compels us to embrace a more expansive, inclusive vision of creative practice.
A digital edition of the full issue is now available for purchase on Zinio, Google Play, iTunes, and Magzter.
