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...
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 13 th 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...
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...
Ocula Insight For the first week of Asia Contemporary Art Week 's (ACAW) October programming, a series of diverse and thought-provoking events unfolded across various boroughs of New York City. On 3 October, Christopher K Ho staged a walk-through of his solo project Aloha to the World at the Don Ho Terrace (3 October 2018 to 6 January 2019) at The Bronx...
Ocula Insight In this third week of ACAW, which offered the continuing opportunity to engage in 'thinking collections' through the lens of Asian arts practitioners in the city, the identity of collecting and collections found its own centrifugal force, with a fusion, proliferation and collision of ideas. Chen Dongfan and Cyoko Tamai 's open studios offered...
Ocula Insight Closing out the first week and ushering in the second of Asia Contemporary Art Week 's season-long programme of Asia-focused activities throughout New York City were 'Writing the Indian Modern', and 'Collecting the Indian Modern' at Asia Society. The panels were hosted in conjunction with their new exhibition The Progressive Revolution: Modern...
Ocula Insight The 13 th edition of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) launched during the first week of September—along with the rest of the New York art world—offering rare insight into artist spaces and practices during one of the most frenetic months of the year. The 2018 iteration of ACAW contains a season-long programme of signature events...
Ocula Insight An introduction to FIELD MEETING Take 5: Thinking Projects, New York By Leeza Ahmady When living at a pivotal moment in history where declining political, economic and environmental conditions mean that the planet could meet its demise more possibly through human mal-activities than extraterrestrial cosmic, or planetary shifts, it is no small occasion for hundreds of US and Asia based artists and arts professionals to gather to...
