“Phantasmopolis”, the 8th Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Musem of Fine Art, Taichung
30 October 2021 — 6 March 2022
The 8th Asian Art Biennial is headed by Taiwanese independent curator Nobuo Takamori, with a multinational curatorial team comprising Ho Yu-Kuan (Taiwan), Tessa Maria Guazon (Philippines), Anushka Rajedran (India) and Thanavi Chotpradit (Thailand). Titled “Phantasmopolis”, AAB 2021 treats “Asian futurism” and “Asian sci-fi culture” as its main themes, seeking to review Asia’s past and present from the perspective of science fiction.
Phantasmopolis is a newly coined Greek word comprising “phantasma” (phantom) and “polis” (city-state). This word owes its inspiration to Phantasmagoria, a sci-fi novel written in English by architect Wang Da-Hong. While “phantasmagoria” refers to the “phantom-haunted house” constructed with light projection technology before the 19th century, Wang’s novel is about a prince cast adrift in outer space in 3069 AD.
All the 417 works by the 38 artists and artist groups in the exhibition intend to break the stereotypes about Asia in Hollywood sci-fi movies, and meanwhile re-examine the metropolises, technologies, conflicts, gender, and imagined future of Asia from Asian artists’ viewpoints. There are 28 newly commissioned works in the biennial, including those by Taiwanese Lee Yung-Chih and Chen Chun Yu, Malaysian Tan Zi Hao, Japan’s Yuko Mohri and UuDam Tran Nguyen from Vietnam.
The exhibition sections are joined together by “space hatches”, creating tranquil zones in a futurscape through the arrangement of lights, colours and the movement of visitors. Visitors enter the city through the hatches as if they were travelling between reality and illusion in Wang’s sci-fi novel. The transnational curatorial team has also added extra programmes, including a video section, archives, special screening, forums and a publication of readers.
Left: Senga Nengudi, Warp Trance, 2007, multi-channel audio and video installation, dimensions variable. Sound composition: Butch Morris. In collaboration with: The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Courtesy: Sprüth Magers; Thomas Erben Gallery; Lévy Gorvy. Installation view of “Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World”, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021. Photo: Furukawa Yuya. Image courtesy Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Right: Kim Soun-Gui, Forest Poems, 2021, mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Installation view of “Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World”, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021. Photo: Furukawa Yuya. Image. courtesy Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
“Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World”, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
22 October 2021 — 16 January 2022
“Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World” features 16 female artists from across the globe, who in their 70s or older continue to embark on new challenges. With their careers spanning over 50 years, they are originally from 14 different countries, and share a determination to pursue their own distinctive creative paths in turbulent environment and times. The exhibition showcases around 130 works ranging from paintings, video and sculptures, to large-scale installations and performances.
The exhibition contemplates the nature of the special strength or the driving force — “another energy” — of these artists, who started their careers in the 1950s to the 1970s with immovable conviction. The show attempts to present the visual commonalities and similarities that transcend regions and cultural spheres, while also highlighting the individual context and uniqueness of each artist. Among the exhibited artists are Etel Adnan, Anna Boghiguian, Kim Soun-Gui, Miyamoto Kazuko and Arpita Singh.
“Yoko Ono: MEND PIECE for London”, Whitechapel Gallery, London
25 August 2021 — 2 January 2022
Whitechapel Gallery visitors at “Yoko Ono: MEND PIECE for London” are invited to respond to an instruction from artist, musician and activist Yoko Ono that reads:
Mend carefully.
Think of mending the world
at the same time.
y.o.
On entering Galleries 5 and 6, visitors take a seat at a table on which are placed broken fragments of ceramic cups and saucers and some simple materials for repair – scissors, glue, twine and tape. When finished ‘mending’, visitors will display the results of their efforts along the shelves on the walls. Ono first presented this work as Mending Piece I at her 1966 solo exhibition at Indica Gallery, London, a renowned centre for countercultural art. Titled Yoko at Indica: Unfinished Paintings and Objects, almost every work in the exhibition was designed to be completed through the actions of visitors.
MEND PIECE for London draws on the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with precious metals such as gold and silver. The process nurtures breakage as an important part of an object’s history, rather than seeking to disguise it. In this artwork, the physical act of repair becomes a timely metaphor for a different kind of mending which takes place in the mind and through community.
A major exhibition of the artist titled “Yoko Ono: Growing Freedom. The Instructions of Yoko Ono / The Art of John and Yoko” is also on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, from 9 October 2021 to 1 May 2022.
“Carte blanche à Duy Anh Nhan Duc”, Musée Guimet, Paris
10 November 2021 — 7 February 2022
A Vietnamese botanical artist, Duy Anh Nhan Duc makes nature the matrix of his works, creating poetic installations from the materials that fascinate him, especially those plants that are so common we do not pay much attention to them anymore. His works, made from tirelessly gathered plants, encourage us to connect with living things. Dandelions, salsify, thistles, wheat, clover… he transforms his palette of plants into delicate art. Observing the cycles of life, the artist weaves a dialogue with plants, capturing the poetry of nature balanced on the fragility of the moment.
In his solo exhibition “Carte blanche à Duy Anh Nhan Duc”, the artist takes us on a three-part journey, consisting of a triptych of works. Their vibrant harmony inspires reflection, dreaming and action in a world that, despite its collapse, is still full of latent vitality and creativity that hide in every corner of our hectic lives and our tarmacked towns, ready to move us and surprise us.
“trust & confusion”, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
5 May 2021 — 2 January 2022
“trust & confusion” is about the conversation of certainty and chance; the transformative power of bodies, intangibles, and ephemeral encounters; music and magic; and the luck of being alive, with all the concerns that come with it, be they human or not. Evolving, accumulating, the exhibition unfolds over several episodes, on site and online, from now to the end of the year.
trust & confusion transforms the white cube space into a fluctuating environment that hosts activities and sensations; it transforms this space in favour of movements, interactions, and deep listening for ears and bodies. A new relationship of you and I, along with new associations and experiences, shares this temporality. There are several visible performances taking place as you enter, and several invisible ones, mostly new commissions from an intergenerational, international, and cosmopolitan group of artists.
The exhibition is an invitation to observe how things emerge in relation to each other—sounds, gestures, smells—and to be a part of it, being surprised and giving attention to your inner landscape while a spectacle is taking place around you. An invitation to a most sentimental belief: to trust that the hands and arms you decide to fall into will hold and sustain you.
Among the artists in the show are Tarek Atoui, Yuko Mohri, Sriwhana Spong, Trevor Yeung, Pan Daijing and Moe Satt.
“Ai Weiwei: Defend the Future”, MMCA Seoul, Korea
11 December 2021 – 14 April 2022
“Ai Weiwei: Defend the Future” is dedicated to the artist’s numerous artworks on the themes of freedom of expression and the lives of refugees. The title of the exhibition, “Defend the Future,” (which is literally translated as “The Future of Humans” in Korean) is a combination of “humans,” a leading theme of Ai’s artistic agenda, and “future,” the artist’s main artistic pursuit.
His series of works on freedom of expression and resistance to oppression have demanded dignity and basic human rights from his perspective as an artist as well as a human being. Freedom of expression is the most basic right required for individuals in a society to live as “decent human beings.” Ai has been active in encouraging people to speak out about unfair situations, and his actions have made a difference in the real world. In other words, he thinks, dreams, and works to create a reality in which we can “live the best life possible.”
The exhibition will also showcase Ai’s representative works that transcend the dualities of the East and West, such as his photography series Study of Perspectives, 1995-2011 (2014); Study of Perspective in Glass (2018) and Black Chandelier (2017-2021), both in Murano glass created in collaboration with the Berengo Studio on Murano Island, Venice; Porcelain Pillar with Refugee Motif (2017) and Ruyi (2012), made from ceramics from Jingdezhen, a place known for porcelain production in China.
“Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality“, MoMA, New York
21 August 2021 — 1 January 2022 (EXTENDED 13 February 2022)
Likening video technology to a “new paintbrush,” New York–based Shigeko Kubota (Japanese, 1937–2015), whose career spanned more than five decades, was one of the first artists to commit to the video medium in the early 1970s. Formally trained as a sculptor, Kubota’s varied accomplishments as an artist, collaborator, curator, and critic helped to shape a pivotal period in the evolution of video as an art form. The first solo presentation of the artist’s work at a US museum in 25 years, “Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality” focuses on a body of work whose resonances are particularly poignant amid today’s digitally interconnected world.
The six sculptural works in the exhibition include: Three Mountains (1976-1979), Berlin Diary: Thanks to My Ancestors (1981), River (1979-1981), Niagara Falls I (1985), Video Haiku (1981), and Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase (1976). The single-channel work, Self-Portrait (c. 1970–71), is Kubota’s earliest known experimentation with video and electronic colour synthesis.
*Texts taken directly from exhibition press releases and exhibition brochures.