One-day programme on Saturday 23 April 2022
In-person at Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia
Online via ArtReview
We are pleased to announce the launch of the Asia Forum for the Contemporary Art at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Proudly supported by the Bagri Foundation, the Forum is envisioned as a new itinerant platform for experimental art practices and research generative of new worlds beyond the North Atlantic.
Through a series of incisive and engaging discussions, artists’ presentations, interactive sessions and screenings, the Asia Forum departs from the central exhibition, national pavilions, and collateral events that present the arts of ‘Asias’. Artists, curators, and thinkers will be invited to respond to pressing current events and engage in discussions addressing questions such as:
What is the role of art in reshaping public cultures, when both problems and solutions have become globally entangled?
How do adopting ‘Asias-centered’ perspectives help re-imagine futures beyond current thought paradigms? How do artistic practices reshape our understanding of the collective building and sharing of knowledge?
Asia Forum will provide the public with a richer and deeper engagement with these and other questions, while amplifying narratives of transformation, knowledge building, and transnational solidarity. The one-day event seeks to provide a gathering place for like-minded local, national, and international people to foster connections.
The Asia Forum is proud to present contributions by Reza Afisina (ruangrupa), Hoor Al Qasimi, Patrick Flores, Ho Rui An, Saodat Ismailova, Yuki Kihara (Paradise Camp / New Zealand Pavilion 2022), Sin Wai Kin, Abbas Zahedi, and the curators and artist of the inaugural Nepal Pavilion, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Hit Man Gurung, and Tsherin Sherpa, amongst others.
Conceived by Annie Jael Kwan, the Asia Forum works with a council of international curators and researchers, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, and Ming Tiampo, in a sustained dialogue with contributors to navigate the key themes that have arisen in relation to contemporary artistic practices of Global Asias.
Presented as digital gatherings in 2021, the inaugural one-day programme at the historic Fondazione Querini Stampalia will take place on 23 April 2022 during the opening week of the 59th Venice Biennale.
Simultaneously, the Forum will be live-streamed digitally via ArtReview.
Registration for Asia Forum and how to attend either in-person or online are now open.
PROGRAMME (Download Programme PDF)
09:00 | Registration + Welcome Coffee
9:45 Welcome
10:00 Roundtable: Tracing Asia Art Histories: Modernity as Crime Scene: with Hoor Al Qasimi, Patrick Flores, Annie Jael Kwan, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, Ming Tiampo.
11:30 Factories, Tables, Postrevolution by Ho Rui An
Drawing upon his recent works examining the material networks and political imaginaries of Reform-era China, Ho probes into the foreclosure of class politics amidst the ongoing “crisis” of late capitalism. Moving from cinematic scenes of workers appearing in and around factory gates the world over to photographs of Chinese and Singaporean technocrats seated at massive meeting tables, this presentation considers what it means to speak of “the economy” in a time when the Revolution appears to have exhausted its historical course.
12:20 Break
12:30 Curatorial Directions with Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Hit Man Gunung and Tsherin Sherpa, (Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La, Nepal Pavilion 2022)
13:30 Screening Programme featuring work by Lawrence Lek, Yarli Allison, and Jin-me Yoon.
14:15 Registration
14:45 Welcome
14:50 Abbas Zahedi X Querini Stampalia
In treating artist talks as subjective experiences, Zahedi intends to ask questions of how the constant physical and digital crises have impacted our ability to comprehend and work with the themes of time, care and connectivity (relationships). As in, is it still even possible to prepare a pertinent subject for a talk that is weeks away, with any clear certainty?
15:30 Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara
Samoa-based artist, Yuki Kihara, will expand on her multidisciplinary practice that will be presented as part of the New Zealand Pavilion, 2022.
16:20 Break
16:30 Screening of The One (2021) by Sin Wai Kin
The One (2020) features Sin deep in meditation, eyes shut, stationery, breathing. With the sun disk as his third eye, the outline of the body is relocated to the face, and the mouth stands in for every orifice, redefining and eroticising the limits of the body. There is no more division between self and world, mind and body, individual and context.
17:00 Collective Futures – participatory collective discussion with Reza Afisina (ruangrupa), Saodat Ismailova, Annie Jael Kwan, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, Ming Tiampo.
18:30 END
Conceived by Annie Jael Kwan, the Asia Forum works with a council of international curators and researchers, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, and Ming Tiampo.
Proudly presented by the Bagri Foundation.
The Asia Forum is presented in partnership with Fondazione Querini Stampalia, IED – Istituto Europeo di Design, Ca’ Foscari Alumni, GAD – Giudecca Art District, School for Curatorial Studies Venice.
With the patronage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Annie Jael Kwan 