Hon Chi Fun: Full Circle
Among the many changes brought about by 20th-century modernity was the expansion of human mobility, whether in search of refuge, opportunity, or adventure. At various points in his life, the Hong Kong-born, self-taught artist Hon Chi Fun has packed his bags for all three . . . Read more [PDF]
Looking at Looking: An Interview with Lam Tung Pang
It was July 1, the 23rd anniversary of Hong
Kong’s handover from the United Kingdom
to China, when I headed to the Hong Kong
Museum of Art to see Lam Tung Pang’s
video installation Image-coated (2019).
Projected onto a translucent screen over
windows with panoramic views of Victoria
Harbour . . . Read more [PDF]
Thu Van Tran: The Materiality of Memory
Grotesque histories of political domination and beautiful moments of intersubjective connection—for Thu Van Tran, these are both instances of contamination: a phenomenon where disparate agents come into contact, and a process that has fundamentally informed our world . . . Read more [PDF].
Mai Thu Perret: I Know the Meaning of Revolution
A blazing asteroid hurtles across the sky, alarming three dinosaurs who stand immobile as devastation looms on their horizon. The tyrannosaurus, mouth agape, exclaims, “Oh shit! The economy!!”
Read more [PDF]
Candice Lin: Eat Me
Two years ago, in perfect health and aged 40, Candice Lin decided to sculpt her own
sarcophagus. Formed from terra-cotta, two striped cats sit atop the ceramic receptacle
designed for her corpse; one is perched on a pillow, with a paw resting protectively on
a statue of the seated artist swaddled in a blanket. This mixed-species band of tomb sentries . . . Read more [PDF]
Bad Students, Gudskuls: Alternative Art Education in Southeast Asia
From Germany’s Bauhaus, which placed equal value on craft, industrial design, and fine arts, to India’s Santiniketan, where an anticolonial, transnational perspective was promulgated, the radical art schools of the early 20th century . . . Read more [PDF].
Lee Kai Chung: Crisscrossing Time
History as fiction, fiction as history—over the last five years, in his multimedia projects encompassing video installations, sculptures, and publications, Hong Kong-based artist Lee Kai Chung has been unraveling official narratives of the Second Sino-Japanese War to reveal their ideological inflections and omissions. But far from being simply analytical, Lee’s works present their own fictions. Read more [PDF].