'Oh, I'm getting all excited now,' Cosmin Costinas exclaims as he flings open a wardrobe in his apartment, revealing hundreds of brightly coloured, intricately patterned textiles stacked on top of each other. 'I think I have over a thousand,' he adds, opening a second cupboard packed with fabrics and gesturing at the reams of material draped around...

Hong Kong artist Hon Chi-fun, now in his late 90s, and American artist James Turrell, are featured at the Asia Society. Hon is renowned for co-founding the Circle Art Group in the 1960s, a pioneering collective of artists hailed for bringing modern art to Hong Kong.

Chinese collectors have so quickly become a mainstay of the art market that it is easy to forget that wealthy Southeast Asian connoisseurs started buying contemporary art decades earlier.

Though at present the concept of 'media' is almost wholly equated with communication technologies, throughout the modern period this notion extended beyond the technological field, to include aesthetic and spiritual registers. In the late nineteenth century, a medium was someone with the alleged ability to act as a psychic conduit or transmitter,...

2 or 3 Tigers explores modernity as a colonial pattern inscribed in the history of nation states, militarisation and financialisation as well as an ontological revolution that fundamentally orders the social realm, national narratives and cosmologies, and whose effects have led to a profound crisis of consciousness as well as myriad and multiple...

What could be more pertinent to today's helter-skelter mudslide into the political abyss than a reflection on the idea of justice? The eighth edition of the Contour Biennial is dedicated to this most noble of themes. Both thrilling and frustrating, the biennial offers vertiginous perspectives by artists and theorists, as well as the inevitable...

Oniric atmospheres and lyrical rural landscapes, surreal imagery reflecting lost memories and superstitions, karmic events and a sensual, languid pace mark the oeuvre of renowned and acclaimed Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.Born in 1970 in Khon Kaen in northeastern Thailand, Weerasethakul now lives and works in Chiang Mai....

Who are the people under 40 making waves in the art world? That was the question we asked ourselves in 2014, when we launched the first Apollo 40 Under 40. That year’s list, which focused on Europe, and the subsequent 40 Under 40 USA, weren’t meant as power lists but as surveys of talent: of young people who have firmly established...

Opened alongside Para Site’s 4th annual International Conference (6/21–23), That Has Been, and May Be Again is an exhibition honoring the multitude of voices that have arisen throughout 1980s and ’90s China, that speak to the search for a cultural and political identity during the country’s modernization. The diverse...

You might not have guessed from Samson Young’s eclectic work that he is a classically trained music composer; or maybe you would, given how intellectually challenging some of his pieces are. But that is the exhilarating aspect of navigating through his works. Just when you feel your mind is being bogged down by all that Hong Kong history,...

The notion of the “Hong Kong identity” is certainly nothing new. Constructing and defining the “Hong Kong identity” has been a prevalent topic since the years preceding the handover of the city-state to China in 1997. Leaders of Hong Kong branded the Fragrant Harbor as “Asia’s World City” in 2001; now 15...

A new show at Hong Kong’s Para Site exhibition space is a reminder that mainstream narratives have a tendency to obscure what artists do during periods of great political change.Those narratives affect how we see art history. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, it was assumed that the restrictive environment forced artists to...

Entering its ninth year, ArtJog has grown to become a pre-eminent event in Indonesia's art calendar, bringing together an array of works by leading contemporary artists as well as launching the career of emerging names. When it returns at Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, on May 27, the annual art fair will showcase 97 works by 72 local...

Since the 1980s, the work of Alfredo Jaar has dealt with the forms and ethics through which art takes responsibility for complex phenomena in society. He has created a language that breaks through the mechanisms that dehumanize individuals and communities in moments of turmoil from our recent history. In 2016, two solo exhibitions of his...

Unlimited, the Art Basel platform allotted for large-scale and unconventional artworks, will be showing a record 88 projects from participating galleries this year. Gianni Jetzer, curator-at-large at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, is heading the section for the fifth year in a row.

Running from 19 March to 29 May 2016 at Para Site, Afterwork is a group exhibition that explores a wide scope of issues related to “race” – as constructed through ingrained socio-cultural, political, economic, legal and historical forces and representations – as well as its relation to class, labour and migration within and...

When the sprawling aisles of Art Basel Hong Kong become too much, there’s plenty more art to see around the city. Here’s our guide to the must-see exhibitions. From the collection of former Swiss ambassador Uli Sigg to Conrad Shawcross’s dancing robot, find out what’s going on beyond the fair. 

At a time when the traversing of borders, by people, information and culture, is at the forefront of international consciousness and concern, Para Site, an independent art center in Hong Kong, is presenting an exhibition of four postwar artists whose outputs have shown just how fluid such boundaries can be. Held in Hong Kong’s North Point...

The Prudential Eye Awards 2016 was held at the Sands Theatre at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on 19 January 2016. Featuring 15 shortlisted artists, 39 works and an eminent panel of Judges, the event celebrates Asia’s most exciting up-and-coming talent. The awards ceremony was officiated by Grace Fu, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth,...

Singaporean curator Qinyi Lim’s exhibition A Luxury We Cannot Afford begins by citing the attitude of Lee Kuan Yew towards art and culture: a frivolous waste of energy and resources better spent on industrialization and militarization. If this approach persisted until the creative industries were recognized as a cornerstone of...

Seattle might be at the edge of the American frontier, but its location on the west coast situates the city within the realm of the vast Pacific Rim, replete with a rich and diverse art community. Leeza Ahmady, the director of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), has partnered with the Seattle Art Fair to bring Thinking Currents, a...

With tensions brewing in Hong Kong, questions of identity have re-emerged as pertinent concerns for artists. Taking its title from Xixi's My City, Para Site's upcoming exhibition hones in on personal conflicts and encounters set amongst the seething complexities of nationhood.Imagine there’s no country, Above us only our...

If you've been to a gallery, museum or art event in Hong Kong the past decade, you're most likely to have spotted curator Tobias Berger.He's known for his jovial demeanour and candid views on the city's cultural development, and, of course, his love affair with the visual - he is as likely to be seen peering at a Picasso as at...

After relocating to their new home in Quarry Bay, the Hong Kong’s nonprofit art space Para Site launched their inaugural exhibition, “A Hundred Years of Shame–Songs of Resistance and Scenarios for Chinese Nations,” early this March. Co-curated by Cosmin Costinas, executive director and curator of Para Site, and Anthony Yung,...