ArtAsiaPacific Magazine - September - October 2021

In this issue

How can we communicate with our ancestors, and what can we learn from the way they survived, and thrived, as communities? In our cover feature, managing editor Chloe Chu speaks to artist Zadie Xa about works that stage quasi-mythical rituals and environments populated by shamans and animals. In our second feature, Cleo Roberts-Komireddi caught up with Gala Porras-Kim to learn about the Los Angeles-based artist’s engagements with cultural artifacts and the institutions in which they are kept and displayed.
Up Close shines a spotlight on recent projects by Liu Yin, Shuruq Harb, and Pınar Öğrenci. Inside Burger Collection focuses on the legendary artist Lee Ufan.
This issue’s Essay is penned by Susan Htoo, the winner of the 2021 Young Writers Contest, and looks at the virtual exhibitions and social-media activities of artists from Myanmar.
Kang Seung Lee, Nabuqi, and experimental noise musician Xper.Xr appear in Profiles. In The Point, Yi Cao, from the Art Institute of Chicago, discusses the ways in which museums need to make themselves relevant to their communities in the wake of social-justice movements. In Dispatch, Seattle-based artist and educator Robert Rhee reflects on the Pacific northwest city’s stuttering efforts to get back to “normal.”
In Fine Print, art lawyers Yayoi Shionoiri and Ryan Su discuss the practical legal issues that NFT creators face, and offer a sample contract for artists and collectors to use. Mark Salvatus, in One on One, describes how installation artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan inspired his future practice.
Finally, for Where I Work, associate editor Ophelia Lai visited the studio of Hong Kong artist Leelee Chan, who imbues found materials with biomorphic qualities. In a world that produces more and more objects every day, Chan seeks out moments of material beauty in discarded remnants. Like Xa, Porras-Kim, and others, Chan offers a model for learning to adapt to the conditions of our new world, just as our ancestors did before us.

ArtAsiaPacific Magazine Description:

For 20 years, ArtAsiaPacific Magazine has been at the forefront of the powerful creative forces that shape contemporary art from Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East. Covering the latest in contemporary visual culture, ArtAsiaPacific is published 6 times a year in Hong Kong, with editorial desks in 25 countries around the world. Our special annual issue, the ArtAsiaPacific Almanac, published in January, covers the major art events of the past year and forecasts the key trends of the year to come.
The dominant artistic influence in the world today - and for many years to come emanates from the vast territory that lies between Turkey and the Pacific island of Tonga that we call the Asia-Pacific. This territory includes India, China, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Pakistan, New Zealand, Korea and Indonesia, whose combined populations make up an amazing half of the world's total population. Also included are Burma, Cambodia, Kiribati and Uzbekistan - places hitherto overlooked, but which like their gigantic neighbors, are producing cutting-edge art of stunning and unexpected quality.
ArtAsiaPacific is authoritative, accurate, even-handed, exact and essential. Included in each issue is an up-to-date directory of the major galleries, not-for-profit organizations and museums with a focus on contemporary art from our geographical footprint. ArtAsiaPacific offers thoughtful reportage, analysis, comment and criticism to its readers made up of collectors, gallerists, curators, artists and those who want and who need to know the latest developments in the fastest-growing and most astonishing region of the contemporary art world.