AMY WENG | The year of the pig has barely begun with lunar festivities still winding down, yet there’s no sign of rest and relaxation ahead. Here’s our top nine things to do this week to keep the celebrations goings…
Asian New Zealand Art & Culture
From PERIPHERAL
The Aestheticization of Catastrophic Art: Capturing the Imagination of Disasters
KAORU KODAMA & RUMEN RACHEV | From the exhibition description of Catastrophe and the Power of Art, currently on show at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo until 20 January 2019, the text stipulates: Catastrophe and crisis can drive us to despair, yet it is also true that the energy released as we try to recover can simultaneously spark imagination, and boost creative output…
It Follows – TCAC at Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington
DAMP OCEAN | a contemporary art space in Te Whanganui-a-Tara: is it? should it? could it? would it? The exchange show between Taipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC) and Enjoy Public Art Gallery comes in two parts. A survey opening up the space to the voice of the New Zealand viewer, reworking the questions that stimulated the founding of TCAC here to gauge the voices that are, should, could, would in an unfamiliar space…
Blue Ocean, Yellow River: On visiting Oceania at the Royal Academy of Arts, London
NINA POWLES | The blue wave towers over me, rising up to the ceiling where it hangs suspended from domed glass. I imagine the wave rising higher and higher until it shatters the glass and flows out across the city in a blue current. This is Kiko Moana, a large-scale piece woven together from tarpaulin by Mata Aho…
In Conversation with Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan
AISHA JOHAN | Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan are a husband-and-wife team who emigrated from the Philippines to Australia in 2006. Their artworks often address themes of displacement, change, memory and community. Together they have exhibited at a number of international exhibitions including the 50th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia…
Many Other Worlds are Possible: chance encounters, gathering points, following the sweet potato rhizomes in Mexico City
XIN CHENG | A few days after listening to ‘The Danger of the Single Story’, I headed to the other side of the earth, to join the class Design for the Living World at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts. Quite a change of scenery — yet the questions remain, this time through the lens of ‘solidary societies’, as we prepared for a research residency in Mexico City…
In Conversation with Louie Bretaña
AMY WENG | Louie Bretaña is a graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts and the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines. His work actively challenges Euro-western colonial histories through relational practices, encouraging a respectful engagement with culture via conversation and food…
Beyond the rusted barbed wire: on the dream of peace on the Korean peninsula
REBEKAH JAUNG | “Oh you’re Korean… North or South?” This question, which often follows the painful, “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?” interrogation that was recently demonstrated by Donald Trump, is familiar to literally every Korean who ventures into the English-speaking world…
Fresh Off the Page with Ellison Tan
CHYE-LING HUANG | In July, Fresh Off the page will present Conflict Circle, Singaporean playwright Ellison Tan’s foray into the absurd. With three professional productions under her belt, Ellison’s Conflict Circle challenges the nature of theatre and the futility and absurdity of performance…
In conversation with FX Harsono
AISHA JOHAN | FX Harsono is a leading figure within the Indonesian contemporary art scene. Over the past four decades, his work has developed against the backdrop of the rise and fall of the Soeharto regime, through revolution and reformation. On the eve of Jakarta’s election, which have incited simmering racial and religious tensions in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Harsono’s practice resonates with the national search for plurality. Aisha Johan caught up with the artist to talk…
In conversation with FX Harsono (English Translation)
AISHA JOHAN | I am very drawn to one of your works, Pilgrimage to History, 2013. I feel that you are giving a voice to those who no longer have one, from mass grave to mass audience. Could you please tell me more about the work? FX Harsono: In the beginning, I started this project about the genocide and mass grave that I had found out about in Blitar, a city where I was born and raised…
In conversation with John Young Zerunge
AMY WENG | John Young Zerunge is an Australian-Chinese artist and one of the co-founders and founding president of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. An initiative formed by the Asian Australian Artists’ Association in 1996, 4A has become a leading art institution in Australia, encouraging dialogue on Asian and Australian cultural relations, and…