Ocula Conversation Hito Steyerl: How To Build a Sustainable Art World 'A Picture of War is Not War', we read in Hito Steyerl's iconic film November (2004), an essayistic Super 8 film tackling the definition of terrorism constructed around the figure of the artist's best friend Andrea Wolf, who was killed as a terrorist in 1998 in Eastern Anatolia after she joined the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Mixing documentary...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK (ACAW) is a dynamic platform that brings together leading New York and Asia-based art institutions, museums and galleries to present the largest showcase of cutting-edge exhibitions, innovative projects, provocative dialogues on current topics, and networking opportunities. Directed by Curator Leeza Ahmady, ACAW is a non-profit curatorial & educational initiative of Asia Contemporary Art Consortium (ACAC), fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Ocula Report Field Meeting Take 6: Thinking Collections 1 Feb 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula Asia Contemporary Art Week's annual forum, Field Meeting, was staged outside of New York for the first time in 2019, with Take 6: Thinking Collections hosted by Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, concurrent to Quoz Arts Fest (25–26 January 2019). The two-day forum unfolded inside Concrete, Alserkal's impressive OMA-designed space, with pop-up exhibitions...
Ocula Report Focus Kazakhstan–Thinking Collections: Telling Tales 15 Nov 2018 : Fawz Kabra for Ocula Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Paleolithic period. Its etymology comes from kazakh, meaning 'wanderer', and stan, which in Persian means 'land'. And so the country—ninth largest in the world—is literally translated to 'land of the wanderers'. From Genghis Khan's Mongolian Empire to the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the...
Ocula Report No More Triumphs: A Report on Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) 2015 9 Nov 2015 : Sophia McKinnon for Ocula ‘I don’t have a concept of place anymore,’ was the response given by Ming Wong when asked about representing specific geographies during a panel as part of New York’s 10th Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), 2015. Presented by the Asia Contemporary Art Consortium (ACAC), it brings together 150 artists, curators, and writers...
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Ocula Insight Culling together artistic and curatorial practices from across Asia, a continent of plural histories and multiple fictions, is no easy task. Especially when that continent has also spawned worldwide diasporas comprising multivalent, transnational artists continually crisscrossing spatial and temporal borders. The effectiveness of Asia Contemporary...
Ocula Insight Moving between her bases in the United States and China, Qinmin Liu questions the structures that define her identity through long-form, playful projects. The farcical nature of the elitist lifestyle synonymous with the global art market is the focus of her ongoing project 'AngelHaha', the first artist-run airline. The 'dream-driven business' was...
Ocula Insight In the final two weeks of October, there seemed to be a shift of focus in the 13th edition of Asia Contemporary Art Week's (ACAW) exhibitions in New York. Beginning on 15 October with Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri's evening of film and conversation with Assistant Curator Sophie Cavoulacos at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the fortnight's shows...
Ocula Insight Far from slowing down, the sixth week of Asia Contemporary Art Week continues to explore and unravel the rich possibilities of 'thinking collections', bringing together a variety of artists, filmmakers, and institutions in transnational and cross-disciplinary dialogue. Together, 'Asian-ness' is not deployed as a homogenising concept, but rather an...
Related Press CREATIVE ALCHEMY: ACAW’S FIELD MEETING TAKE 6 Art Asia Pacific : 1 March 2019 To kick off Asia Contemporary Art Week's two-day forum, Field Meeting Take 6: Thinking Collections, curator and writer Leeza Ahmady performed a reading of On Kings, Films and Astronomads: A Script from Cave Paintings / Sufi Fluxus Production (2017). The fictional story begins with a king reflecting on his life to an audience of transcended beings,...
Related Press Thinking collections, telling tales: “Focus Kazakhstan” Part III in Jersey City – artist profile + curator interview Art Radar : 23 October 2018 Following the success of London's 'Post-nomadic Mind' exhibition, the third instalment of 'Focus Kazakhstan' is due to open at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, USA under the banner 'Thinking Collections: Telling Tales'. The show is nestled within the larger programming of Asia Contemporary Art Week, offering itself as a retrospective exhibition of...
Related Press NEW YORK’S ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK LAUNCHES WITH EXPANDED PROGRAM ArtForum : 7 September 2018 Featuring more than 150 artists from China, India, Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Syria, and more, the thirteenth edition of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) kicked off on Wednesday, September 5, with an expanded program.
Related Press YU FAN ArtAsiaPacific : 3 September 2018 As part of this year's Asia Contemporary Art Week, and co-presented with Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation's inaugural Creative China Festival, Beijing-based artist Yu Fan mounted an exhibition of 20 sculptures at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York.
Related Video & Audio ‘Field Meeting: Take 6’ Brings Its Asian Contemporary Art Focus to Dubai Berlin Art Link : 8 March 2019 Berlin Art Link Productions visited the 6th Field Meeting in Dubai.
Related Video & Audio Dialogues in Asian Contemporary Art: Jitish Kallat, Boon Hui Tan & Leeza Ahmady Asia Contemporary Art Week : 19 June 2018 As a prelude to Asia Contemporary Art Week 2018, ACAW presented a wide-ranging discussion with internationally noted, Mumbai-based artist, Jitish Kallat, on the occasion of his exhibition "Decimal Point" at Sperone Westwater, with Vice President of Global Arts & Programs and Asia Society Museum Director, Boon Hui Tan and Independent...
Related Video & Audio FIELD MEETING Take 5: Thinking Projects - Simon Fujiwara (ACAW 2017) Asia Contemporary Art Week : 21 December 2017 Emerging from his most ambitious installation project to date – Fujiwara's keynote lecture performance transported the audience through the process of reproducing a full-scale replica of the Anne Frank House presented as a building within a building across four floors of a gallery in Tel Aviv.
Related Video & Audio FIELD MEETING Take 5: Thinking Projects - Hajra Waheed Asia Contemporary Art Week : 19 December 2017 This 10-minute performance piece by Hajra Waheed in collaboration with Clea Minaker translates elements of the artist's material practice into light and shadow. Set to a dedicated audio recording, an intimate letter from her sister, the work speaks to legacies of colonial violence and acts as both cry and call as it traces back a perpetuating...
