The multidisciplinary artist Lee Wen passed away on 3 March 2019, in Singapore, after having suffered from Parkinson's Disease. He was a pioneer who defined and shaped performance art in Asia. He came of age at a time when Singapore was undergoing the turbulent and uncertain processes of nation-building—from a former British colony to a brief...

At 53, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye continues to employ the shock factor with abandon. Moving between the sacred and the profane, inflections of gothic drama and high technology imbue the artist's drawings, sculptures, and installations. He frequently swings from fine art to the decorative, applying Belgian ornamental elements such as coats of arms...

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...

What to Let Go?, the sixth annual Para Site International Conference (22–24 November 2018) organised by Hong Kong non-profit art organisation Para Site, took as its theme the tangled issue of heritage. Fittingly, the conference was held in the JC Cube Auditorium in the recently opened Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts, Hong Kong's new public...

The second day of What to Let Go?—Para Site's international conference at Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts in Hong Kong—was largely focused on the subjects of artefacts and repatriation.The day began with a local focus as Tina Pang—M+ curator of Hong Kong visual culture—presented an overview of the institution's...

For Para Site's 2018 edition of its International Conference, titled What to let go? (22–24 November 2018), Hong Kong's longest-running contemporary art space turned its focus to the politics of heritage. Hosted at Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts, and led by Para Site director Cosmin Costinas together with guest curator Inti Guerrero, the...

Occupying a sweet spot between autonomy, rigour and accessibility, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICA Singapore) at LASALLE College of the Arts plays an important role in the presentation and discussion of Southeast Asian contemporary art. Currently boasting five galleries in the McNally campus of LASALLE, the ICA Singapore runs a...

Expanding on the previous two days' themes of heritage, archives and repatriation, the third and final day of Para Site's international conference at Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts in Hong Kong began with an eloquent lecture delivered by artist Pio Abad, whose opening sentiments echoed the previous day's discussion by Marian Pastor Roces...

Since starting a gallery in his apartment at the age of 21, French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin has become well known for his embracing of pop culture and high art. Perrotin is credited with contributing to the rise of Takashi Murakami's global fame, having been the first to show his work outside of Japan in 1993, and was also an early supporter of...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Museum of...

The South East Asia (SEA) Curatorial Exchange Program is a two-way arts management exchange between South Australia and SEA. The Program aims to develop expanded institutional links between the partner organisations and arts professionals in both regions. Capturing this exchange, Asialink Arts and Ocula present discussion between participating...

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 the...

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 Art...

A Dog Pees on Things for More than One Reason (2018) is Gray Wielebinski's most recent installation, presented as part of the artist's MFA graduate show at the Slade earlier this year and recently adapted for Gazelli Art House's exhibition, Window Project 2012-2018. The latter showcased a selection of art chosen from an international open call for...

The 13th 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 under...

'Why cover the same ground again?' Odysseus asked in The Odyssey, one of literature's most lionised tales of homecoming. His question is echoed by New York and Telluride-based artist Christopher K Ho in the presentation CX 888 at de Sarthe Gallery, which explores the complexities of departure and arrival through a Hong Kong-specific lens.As the...

Laurent Grasso, OttO (2018) (extract). HD film. 21 min 26 sec. 1/5 + 2 AP. © Laurent Grasso / ADAGP Paris, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Perrotin.Entrenched in the invisible correlations between mythology and science, French artist Laurent Grasso has lately been attempting to visualise the sacred.OttO, Grasso's solo exhibition at...

It has taken ten years, countless construction delays, a reported one billion dollars and conditions allegedly amounting to forced labour to build the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which finally opened its doors to the public on 11 November this year. The result of an agreement signed between France and the United Arab Emirates in 2007—for which the...

Fang Lijun's immense woodblock print 2016 (2016) encompasses one wall of the artist's solo exhibition at Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, This All Too HumanWorld (3 November–2 December 2017). The work features, in Fang's bright and graphic signature style, a throng of anonymous, bald-headed figures cluttered across the picture plane. They look...

On a September day in 1962, two men set out on a day trip to Lake Como in Northern Italy. One, a self-taught Italian artist who had rushed the day before from Paris to arrive on time, and the other, a senior French artist credited with irrevocably transforming the possibilities of contemporary art. A photo remains of the outing: the former,...