Curated with an earnest agenda and a deft hand by Hammad Nasar with Kate Jesson, “Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition” at the … More
Tag: Art Asia Pacific
Art Asia Pacific: Shamanistic Artistry – Highlights from Ghost 2561
The first edition of the triennial video and performance series Ghost:2561 materialized recently across nine venues in bustling Bangkok, amid … More
Art Asia Pacific Review: Uganda Stories
Tucked within the Pitt Rivers Museum, founded in 1884 by archaeologist General Pitt Rivers and geared towards archaeological and ethnographic … More
Art Asia Pacific: Brothers in Art
I first saw the Le Brothers’s large-scale three-channel video projection installation Into the Sea (2011) at the 2013 Singapore Biennale. The video featured the identical male twins in a series of beautifully filmed scenes set against the languid backdrop of the ocean. On one screen, the long-haired shirtless pair dig into the sand on a beach, and one buries the other in the sand.
Art Asia Pacific: Empire of Whom? How Tate Britain’s history of the British Empire marginalized perspectives of the colonized
The title of the Tate Britain exhibition “Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past” overstated the reach of the actual show. Held from November 2015 until April 2016 and curated by Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, Carol Jacobi and Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, experts in Brtish art from the late 18th century to the 20th century, “Artist and Empire” featured 200 selected objects, drawn exclusively from British collections and spanning different historical genres such as maps, heroic paintings, collectibles, portraiture and the artworks made in response to the aftermath of empire. The curatorial description in the visitor’s booklet invited the audience “to consider how [the artworks’] status and meaning change over time. In reflecting imperial narratives and postcolonial re-evaluations, [the exhibition] foregrounds the peoples, dramas and tragedies of Empire and their resonance in art today.”
Art Asia Pacific: Artist Provocateur
April in Paris—the air is still crisp in the late afternoon. People mill around the Trocadéro with its view of the Ei el Tower. A woman, wearing a floor-length red chador covered with sequins, shimmers with each step as she moves near an assembly protesting Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. At first the demonstrators do not notice her, but as she passes them, a few of them suddenly break away to approach her. They talk excitedly at her and take photos. She bows deeply.