Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
Tang Contemporary Art was established in 1997 in Bangkok, later establishing galleries in Beijing and most recently Hong Kong. Tang Contemporary Art is fully committed to producing critical projects and exhibitions to promote Contemporary Chinese art regionally and worldwide and encourage a dynamic exchange between Chinese artists and those abroad.
Acting as one of the most progressive and critically driven exhibition spaces in China, the gallery strives to initiate dialogue between artists, curators, collectors and institutions working both locally and internationally. A roster of groundbreaking exhibitions has earned Tang Contemporary Art internationally renowned recognition, establishing its status as a pioneer of the contemporary art scene in Asia.
Ocula Photolog Asia Now 2018 19 October 2018 'Founded by Claude Fain and Alexandra Fain, ASIA NOW aims to present the new perspectives and issues for contemporary Asian art and its market: the value of its artists, its potential for development and its rising stars.'–Asia Now Paris (17–21 October 2018).
Ocula Report PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai 2018 15 Oct 2018 : Georgina Adam for Ocula PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai held its fifth edition between 21 and 23 September 2018. As in previous years, the event was held in the Shanghai Exhibition Center—a neoclassical construction dating from 1955, built in the form of a central hall with two curved wings, topped with an ornate and unmissable 110-metre spire. The building is surprisingly...
Ocula Report EVA International: Ireland’s Biennial Talks About Power 6 Jul 2018 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula If Koyo Kouoh's 37th EVA International took the Easter Rising of 1916 as its starting point, marking the beginning of a revolutionary period that culminated in the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, then Inti Guerrero's follow-up edition continues the trajectory.With no title, the 38th edition of EVA International (14 April–8 July...
Ocula Conversation Huang Yong Ping Artist Born in 1954 in Xiamen, China, Huang Yong Ping is a performance and installation artist who emerged from the '85 New Wave: a momentous avant-garde movement that flourished across the country from 1985 to 1989. After graduating from the Department of Oil Painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou (now China Academy of Art), Huang...
Related Press 25 Oil Paintings: 1993-2007 Liu Xiaodong ArtAsiaPacific : 6 June 2018 Can Contemporary Chinese art be revived as a tool for social critique? Returning to the traditional medium of painting, Liu Xiaodong, whose solo exhibition '25 Oil Paintings: 1993-2007' was up at Yallay Gallery in Hong Kong in March, makes a renewed case for this question, departing from the legacy of socialist realism that has occupied the medium...
Related Press Sydney Biennale modestly comes of age with moments of curatorial brilliance The Conversation : 16 March 2018 If a 21st birthday "coming of age" observance can be applied to cultural events, 2018 marks the launch into adulthood of the Biennale of Sydney. In some ways Sydney's biennale was a precocious child, turning its back during infancy on mainstream Eurocentric art in favour of exploring its local geographic region, early on including...
Related Press Picturing Ai Weiwei in Istanbul Hyperallergic : 5 January 2018 In an era where superstar Chinese artist Ai Weiwei feels ubiquitous, this past summer I experienced the full extent of that reality over the course of two months. After attending a New York preview for his new film about migrants, Human Flow (2017), I traveled to Israel to visit a major exhibition of his work at the Israel Museum in West Jerusalem,...
Related Press Indonesian Art Scene Revs Up 18 November 2017 When one is new to Jakarta, one makes the mistake of not telling the cab driver to travel via the toll roads. And so it is that while creeping through the city's tight tangled backstreets, the cab finds itself coming head-to-head with another car, both unable to give way because they are simultaneously surrounded by three dozen motorcycles.But if...
Related Video & Audio Artshare Interviews Artist Xu Qu Artshare : 29 May 2015 Xu Qu graduated with a MFA in Fine Arts and Film at Braunschweig University of Art, and currently lives and works in Beijing. Xu Qu's art practice investigates aesthetic considerations behind social connections. He attempts to dismiss any unnecessary elements that distract from the theme, using a minimalist approach to simplify the picture. The...
Related Video & Audio Michael Lin Michael Lin : 9 February 2012 Many years ago, as political protest and dissent shook his native Taiwan, artist Michael Lin made a conscious decision to turn inward for inspiration. The vicissitudes of domestic life—rather than the political currents shaping the public sphere—gave way to what have become Lin's signature flower motifs. Using the patterns and shapes on...
