The Asia Society in New York. Photo by Lia Chang
The Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone, the first recurring initiative in the United States devoted to contemporary art from and about Asia and Asian diasporas, is currently on view through February 7, 2021.
Asia Society rescheduled its inaugural Triennial due to the global COVID-19 outbreak. Originally programmed to take place from June 5–August 9, 2020, this groundbreaking initiative is unfolding in two successive parts at Asia Society Museum, and across select participating venues throughout Manhattan.
The first part opened on October 27, 2020 at Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Avenue in New York, and is on view for free through February 7, 2021. The Museum will be operating on the following reduced schedule: Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.–3 p.m. Book your time tickets here.
Five years in the planning stages, the Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone is the first new exhibition to open in New York during the pandemic, thanks to the intrepid spirit and savvy of Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair of the Asia Society Triennial. Dr. Hsu-Tang fought for the Triennial not to be cancelled, came up with the idea of reorganizing, postponing, extending it to 8 months and implementing the Triennial to make art a democratic right for all.
The second part opens on March 16, 2021 and will run through June 27, 2021.
Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair and Artistic Director of the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
“Throughout history, pandemics have shown us how vulnerable we are, but also how we give each other strength and hope by coming together,” said Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair of the Asia Society Triennial. “We believe that the Triennial will be a potent manifestation of the power of art to bring humanity back to a divided, vulnerable, post-COVID-19 world. We are profoundly grateful to our supporters and partner institutions, who have stood firmly by us as we navigated the many difficult challenges to keep the Triennial viable and strong.”
Boon Hui Tan, Founding Artistic Director of the Triennial and Former Asia Society Museum Director. Photo by Lia Chang
In April 2020, Dr. Hsu-Tang, Boon Hui Tan, Founding Artistic Director of the Triennial and then Asia Society Museum Director, and Ken Tan, then Executive Director of Global Artistic Programs, reconceived the exhibition and programs in response to the historic lockdown due to the pandemic.
Ken Tan, Former Executive Director of Global Artistic Programs, Boon Hui Tan, Founding Artistic Director of the Triennial and Former Asia Society Museum Director, and Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair of the Asia Society Triennial pose in front of Anne Samat’s Follow Your Heart Wholeheartedly, 2020 at Asia Society in New York. Photo by Lia Chang
The exhibition features over 40 artists and collectives from 20 countries. The participating artists and collectives work across a variety of disciplines including painting, sculpture, photography, video, fiber art, and performance, and nearly half have been commissioned to create new work. There is also a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue and an expanded digital component.
The artists featured in Part 1 of We Do Not Dream Alone are Hamra Abbas, Ghiora Aharoni, Christine Ay Tjoe, Nandalal Bose, Daniel Crooks, Kyungah Ham, Kimsooja, Lao Tongli, Minouk Lim, Kevork Mourad, Nasim Nasr, Jordan Nassar, Anne Samat, Shahzia Sikander, Arpita Singh, Sun Xun, Natee Utarit, Jason Wee, Xu Bing, Xu Zhen®️, Ken + Julia Yonetani and Huang Ruo (Composer-in-Residence).
Below is my exclusive multimedia tour of We Do Not Dream Alone with Boon Hui Tan and Ken Tan.
Xu Zhen®, Eternity—Male Figure, Statue of Venus Genetrix (2019-20) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Xu Zhen’s practice incorporates provocative sculptures, paintings, installations, and interventions that confront sociopolitical taboos in contemporary China and belie western assumptions of Chinese art and commerce. The artist received a degree from the Shanghai Arts & Crafts Institute in 1996. In 2009, Xu subsumed his individual artistic identity to become what he calls an “art creation company” named MadeIn. In 2013, MadeIn launched the brand Xu Zhen, redundantly making Xu a product of his own corporation. This circuitous, multifaceted identity humorously subverts notions relating to craftsmanship, originality versus mass production, appropriation and authorship, agency, and the effects of digital-era globalization on the art market.
Kevork Mourad, Seeing Through Babel (2019). Photo by Lia Chang
Kevork Mourad’s practice employs drawing and print-based techniques rooted in the artist’s training as a printmaker to create dynamic sculptures, installations, and cross-disciplinary collaborative performances with choreographers, composers, and writers, among others. His intricate architectonic tableaux recall ancient civilizations and are often visual manifestations of oral-history traditions and the artist’s childhood memories of Syria and Armenia. His projects tackle timely issues relating to sociopolitical histories, the plight of political refugees, and religious tolerance, specifically in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths. The artist received an MFA from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts and Theatre in 1996 and is the only member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble who is a visual artist.
Kevork Mourad, Seeing Through Babel (2019). Photo by Lia Chang
Seeing Through Babel takes inspiration from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel to create an allegory of how aversions to cultural differences may result in conflict. The immense tower, constructed from six concentric circles suspended from the ceiling, is animated with Mourad’s trademark architectonic monotypes and drawings. These textural inscriptions and images fill the supple fabric walls and seemingly come alive when the surface becomes subtly activated by the movements of a passerby. Mourad’s interpretation of the Tower of Babel is meant to inspire recognition of the commonalities that unite humanity, while cultural and religious differences render us unique contributors to a diverse and cosmopolitan world.
Lao Tongli, The Desire of Libido No. 5 (2017-19) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
China has a very long and continuous tradition of painting beginning from around 200 BCE. Guangzhou-based artist Lao Tongli’s practice is a contemporary transformation of this centuries-old Chinese literati painting tradition. His work for the Triennial, The Desire of Libido No. 5, references the monumental landscape paintings of the Northern Song period, which is considered one of the pinnacles of landscape painting in China. This panorama of trees takes the form of a complex interlocking web of blood vessels, painstakingly rendered in the gongbi style, which reached its peak during the Tang and Song dynasties. Gongbi uses precise brushstrokes that portray details meticulously and with little variation. The artist began incorporating blood-vessel imagery as he endured the painful experience of observing his father’s death from heart disease. The association of blood vessels within the human body with an external landscape of trees is a poignant reminder of the deep and unbreakable bonds between humans and nature, a central theme of literati landscape painting.
Detail of Lao Tongli, The Desire of Libido No. 5 (2017-19) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Lao Tongli’s contemporary practice can be viewed as transforming the centuries-old Chinese literati painting tradition while remaining open to global art currents, particularly seen in the artist’s sensitivity to the use of color as a way to mark space and movement. The artist received a BA in Chinese painting from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2006 and subsequently lived in Paris, France, and Heidelberg, Germany, from 2006 to 2008.
Shazia Sikander, The Scroll (1989-1990) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Shahzia Sikander’s pioneering practice pushes the boundaries of the Indo-Persian miniature-painting tradition through her experimentation with scale and diverse mediums, including animation, video, large-scale murals, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The artist deftly explores the complex origins of contested cultural, religious, and political histories through imagery appropriated from popular culture, current events, and mythology. The artist received a BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore in 1991 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. Sikander was a recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship (known as the “Genius Grant”) in 2006 and a U.S. State Department Medal of Art in 2012.
Shazia Sikander, No Calm of Consummation (2019) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
The Scroll and No Calm of Consummation are compelling bookends that chart Sikander’s evolution as an artist and her founding role in the establishment of the neo-miniature movement. The Scroll, Sikander’s thesis project at the National College of Arts in Lahore, is a visual bildungsroman that poetically encapsulates the female experience of coming of age in Pakistan in the 1980s under the military dictatorship’s Hudood Ordinances limiting women’s rights. The revolutionary nature of its visual and conceptual premise, likened to an epic poem, creates a compelling bridge between tradition and modernity, the personal and the political. Literature has remained a touchstone for Sikander, and No Calm of Consummation takes inspiration from a ghazal by the nineteenth-century poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.
Christine Ay Tjoe, Pleasant Breath of The Black, 2018. Photo by Lia Chang
Christine Ay Tjoe’s practice has its roots in the graphic arts and specifically drypoint etching. The artist received a Faculty of Art and Design degree in printmaking and graphic art from the Bandung Institute of Technology in 1997. While her choice of medium has expanded beyond prints to include drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, the centrality of the line, first seen in her prints, has remained. Ay Tjoe’s scratches, marks, gestures, and strokes—most evident in her two-dimensional works—seem to tap into a personal and primal outpouring of emotion and psychological anxiety.
Works from Christine Ay Tjoe’s “Floating in the Near Distance” series (all 2018). Photo by Lia Chang
For the Triennial, Ay Tjoe present a group of works demonstrating her mastery of line and ability to evoke emotional intensity through varying the density and thickness of her lines. These marks and lines almost seem to resist any sense of formal structure and threaten to break out of their canvas or aluminum containers. The 2018 diptych Pleasant Breath of The Black is accompanied by five lithographs on aluminum plates from Always Floating In A Constant Distance, a series of thirteen prints also from 2018. The intimate scale of the works and their cold, stark surfaces accentuate the explosive quality of her jet-black strokes. This suite of works captures the tensions between light and dark, presence and absence, and freedom and constraint that run through Ay Tjoe’s practice. Hovering between pure abstraction and figuration, her works hint at the possibility of violence being ever-present beneath the surface of our lives and raise existential concerns relating to human existence.
Nasim Nasr, What to Do? (2012) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Nasim Nasr uses her experience as a diasporic artist to illuminate the complexities associated with a multivalent identity and how cultural differences in the East and West have the potential to produce disjuncture within the global community. Utilizing video, photography, performance, sculpture, installation, and sound to illustrate the ways that divergent cultural interpretations of objects and actions influence their meanings, the artist decontextualizes ethnically specific behaviors as a means to reveal hidden truths.
What to Do? is a seven-channel video installation that deconstructs the predominately male practice of carrying tasbih—religious prayer beads, also known as “worry beads”—as a religious and psychological tool to allay anxiety. The monitors, hung at waist height, feature anonymous men’s hands fingering the beads. This imagery conjures the commonalities of prayer among different faiths, from Islam to Buddhism to Catholicism. A related work from 2018, 33 Beads (Unworried) #1, is a single-channel video that also features worry beads. However, in this iteration a group of women grasp and ultimately destroy the talismans, metaphorically defying patriarchal traditions. The artist received a BA in graphic design from the Tehran University of Art in 2006 and an MA in visual arts, architecture, and design from the University of South Australia, Adelaide, in 2011.
Natee Utarit, The Dream of Siamese Monks (2020) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Natee Utarit’s practice focuses on challenging the relevance of historical European painting, specifically within the context of postcolonial Southeast Asia. Organized in series and utilizing the genres of history painting, portraiture, landscape, and still life, Utarit’s paintings expose and question the visual strategies that have been inherited and ingrained in contemporary painting outside the West, raising issues of how one perceives origination, authenticity, and hybridity in contemporary painting in a “post-West” era. Utarit graduated with a degree in graphic arts at the Painting and Sculpture Faculty at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, in 1991.
Co-curator Ken Tan stands in front of Works by Arpita Singh, Amina Kidwai (1992); The Eternal Repose (1997); The Ritual (1989) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Born in 1937, a decade before the partition of India, Arpita Singh is part of the second wave of modernists, including Rameshwar Broota and Jogen Chowdhury, a group that followed the pioneering artists of the Progressive movement. Singh’s paintings and drawings pay tribute to the joys and sorrows of family life, where tensions and ties often indicate larger social and political formations, outside the family. Frequently executed in heavy impasto and distinguished by the artist’s love of blues and pinks, Singh’s works feature a bright palette and seemingly whimsical imagery that belie darker themes. Her works’ highly decorated surfaces are populated by people she knows: family, friends, and neighbors. These figures are often portrayed surrounded by objects of everyday life, such as teacups, bouquets, and dining utensils.
Arpita Singh, The Eternal Repose (1997) and The Ritual (1989) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Singh’s paintings of the late 1980s through the 1990s portray older Indian women with brutal honesty. Many works feature a female nude, exposed and floating alone in a colored background. In The Ritual and The Eternal Repose, the female body dominates the canvas, the rolls and wrinkles of her flesh softening her forms while forcing the viewer to confront her sheer physical reality. The Ritual is particularly enigmatic in composition, with its unexpected pink bodies enacting an almost agressive but undefined ritual. The phrase “In the beginning the earth was a square” is overlaid onto the strip of river or ocean to the right edge of the work and hints at a kind of primordial setting.
Arpita Singh, Amina Kidwai (1992) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
InThe Eternal Repose, Singh renders her female figure at almost the same miniature scale as the domestic objects floating around her. The multi-armed woman reaches out towards a series of figures, as if juggling the multiple relationships with her family and friends that the modern Indian woman has to maintain. The reclining pose also recalls that of the god Vishnu, the protector, just like the modern mother figure has to protect and nurture her family and the domestic realm. In Amina Kidwai, the artist depicts a family who was a neighbor of Singh for many years and grew to become close friends. The work depicts Amina and probably her husband at tea surrounded by a floating array of plants, flowers, teacups and teapot, and birds. Amina’s daughter Ayesha was a frequent subject of Singh’s painting during the 1990s. This younger woman, despite family opposition, married outside her community, surfacing the conflict between religions, cultures, and genders. The artist has spoken of how this family seems to her like a microcosm of contemporary India with its diversity, but also its fractures.
Ken + Julia Yonetani’s collaborative, research-based practice explores the interaction between humans, nature, science, and the spiritual realm to counteract the isolation experienced by individuals in contemporary society. Their interdisciplinary and often immersive installations are meant to engage the senses as a means to reconnect the viewer with the natural world. Ken Yonetani received an MA from the Australian National University, Canberra, and a PhD from Sydney College of the Arts. Julia Yonetani received a PhD from the Australian National University.
Ken and Julia Yonetani, Three Wishes (2014). Three sculptures, each: Glass figurine, butterfly specimen, glass dome, music box (playing It’s A Small World) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Three Wishes is a multimedia installation that highlights the dangers associated with the development of nuclear energy, especially as a source of sustainable energy. The project, produced in collaboration with Otaki Laboratory at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, was inspired by Walt Disney’s belief in the benefits of atomic energy following the Second World War. Disney’s Faith in the promise of nuclear energy is best exemplified in the 1956 publication The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom, a collaboration with the German physicist Heinz Haber. The contents were later adapted into a 1957 Disneyland television program titled “Our Friend the Atom.”
Vitrine featuring artifacts related to Walt Disney’s support of nuclear power in The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom (1956); Ken and Julia Yonetani’s installation, Three Wishes, 2014, in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Ken and Julia Yonetani, Three Wishes (2014). Three sculptures, each: Glass figurine, butterfly specimen, glass dome, music box (playing It’s A Small World) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Three Wishes features three rotating figures of the Disney Character Tinker Bell, fabricated with wings from Zizeeria maha butterflies, which were hatched from eggs collected as a part of a scientific study into the biological impact of the Fukushima nuclear power disaster. These figures, whose construction evokes Frankenstein’s monster, are accompanied by the well-known song “It’s a Small World,” which was developed as part of Disney’s contribution to the Children of the World Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The Yonetani’s mutated rendition of Tinker Bell serves as a cautionary tale regarding the great risks involved with our reliance on nuclear power and the potential problems it engenders for future generations.
Detail of Ken and Julia Yonetani, Three Wishes (2014) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Jordan Nassar, Detail of I Am Waiting for You (2018). Photo by Lia Chang
Jordan Nassar’s meticulously crafted embroidered works depict imaginary landscapes that fuse craft with concept. Growing up within the Palestinian diaspora inspired the artist’s engagement with traditional Palestinian decorative motifs. He uses these to address the sociopolitical histories and hierarchies that dictate the existence of Palestinians living in the West Bank and the imaginations of those who have left that place. These works are often realized with assistance from hired female artisans from the West Bank. This partnership allows the women to build entrepreneurial businesses, providing them a viable livelihood and some economic agency, atypical within the region, while connecting them to global networks. The artist received a BA from Middlebury College in 2007.
Works from Ghiora Aharoni’s “Thank God for Making Me a Woman” series and Jordan Nassar’s I Am Waiting for You (2018) and Memories (2018). Photo by Lia Chang
Ghiora Aharoni, Thank God for Making Me a Woman, III (2019) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Ghiora Aharoni’s multifaceted practice contextualizes sociopolitical histories through an investigation of how found and often culturally specific artifacts, sacred texts, and languages can reveal and challenge patriarchal notions of gender and religion. His work often juxtaposes objects from seemingly disparate cultures as a means to provoke dialogue. This is exemplified by the artist’s exploration of intercultural connectivity through his creation of Hindru©, a hybridization of Hindi and Urdu, and Hebrabic©, which similarly merges Hebrew and Arabic into functioning texts. The artist received a BA in architecture from the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at City College, New York, in 1998, and an MA in architecture from Yale University, New Haven, in 2001.
Works from Ghiora Aharoni’s “Thank God for Making Me a Woman” series in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Jason Wee, Uncommon Choreographies (2020) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Jason Wee is a Singaporean artist and writer working between the mediums of photography, architecture, and poetry. The work Uncommon Choreographies is a photo-based installation composed of ten panels that demonstrates Wee’s interest in abstraction as a tool to extend the expressive possibilities of photographic surfaces and depths. Each image depicts an unspecified cruising location frequented by the queer community in Singapore. The artist has turned the photograph into a jigsaw puzzle, moving the pieces around before reassembling them into their current form, thereby obscuring the original image. As the jigsaw-puzzle motif suggests, Wee’s deconstruction of these locations is a visual strategy to express the immediacy and distancing possibilities of his subject’s movements, while reinforcing the clandestine nature of their actions. In addition to his artistic practice, Wee founded Grey Projects, an artist studio, gallery, library, and residency program in Singapore.
Hamra Abbas, Every Color (2020) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Emerging from the South Asian miniature-painting tradition, Hamra Abbas’s multidisciplinary practice is inspired by her personal encounters. The artist transforms these experiences, taking an image, icon, or gesture and altering its scale, medium, or form. Her diverse body of work often questions notions of cultural history, sexuality, violence, ornamentation, and faith. In this suite of ten paintings, titled Every Color, Abbas has created portraits of her friends and contacts from the Lahore transgender community, which she has been documenting for the past five years. Abbas completed her MFA and MA in visual arts from the National College of Arts in Lahore, followed by an MFA from the Universität der Künste, Berlin.
Untitled Works by Nandalal Bose in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Nandalal Bose was one of the leading figures of the Neo-Bengal school in India, which sought a new pictorial language in response to early twentieth-century nationalist agitation. The school developed an indigenous and national visual aesthetic, separate from the prevailing British colonial academic painting style. A student of Abanindranath Tagore, Bose was adept at synthesizing diverse art traditions, including folk art, Mogul and Pahari miniatures, Ajanta murals, and East Asian sumi-e (ink wash) paintings. He seamlessly integrated these aesthetic elements with an eclectic sensibility that was sympathetic to the rising sociopolitical concerns of his time, as well as to his pedagogic aims as an art educator, without sacrificing his personal expression. He became the principal of the Kala Bhavana (College of Arts) at Tagore’s International University Santiniketan in 1922, and among his students are some of the greatest Indian artists of the twentieth century, such as Benode Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinkar Baij, K. G. Subramanyan, A. Ramachandran, and Satyajit Ray.
Untitled Works by Nandalal Bose in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Bose’s association (and the Bengal School’s connection) with East Asia is exemplified through this group of small works on paper, largely executed toward the later period of his life. The artist was exposed to sumi-e through his encounters with Tagore’s circle of Japanese artist and scholar friends. This technique utilized the tonal qualities of ink to evoke mood and sentiment, bolstering the argument that Indian art possessed a spiritual identity outside the principles of western realism. This group of ink paintings and prints points to the importance of intra-Asian aesthetic traditions, aside from European modernism, as an inspiration for Indian modern art. Moving away from realist pictorialism, Bose painted many of these images—abstracted landscapes and humble studies of daily Indian life—from memory, building up his paintings from quasi-abstract elements. Repetitive looping lines coalesce into clusters of moving clouds or water while a group of flying birds or bending tree branches indicate the movement of air through the unpainted areas of the paper. These works demonstrate the inwardly contemplative aesthetic of the artist’s late work and connection with the literati traditions of East Asian landscape painting.
VIDEO
Anne Samat, Follow Your Heart Wholeheartedly (2020) in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Anne Samat is a contemporary artist from Malaysia who works with fiber and weaving techniques from archipelagic Southeast Asia. Moving beyond the rules and acceptable practices of traditional weaving, Samat creates technically complex and visually arresting sculptural wall reliefs and anthropomorphic figures that engage with issues of gender and identity.
Anne Samat, Follow Your Heart Wholeheartedly, 2020. Rattan sticks, yarn, rakes, washers, plastic swords, toy soldiers, beads, metallic and plastic ornaments. Photo by Lia Chang
Anne Samat, Follow Your Heart Wholeheartedly, 2020. Rattan sticks, yarn, rakes, washers, plastic swords, toy soldiers, beads, metallic and plastic ornaments. Photo by Lia Chang
The work Follow Your Heart Wholeheartedly is a sculptural installation composed of three wall sculptures and one standing figure. The artist considers this work a tribute to her parents, ordinary folk who inspired her to pursue her dreams beyond what many would have expected of someone from her humble background. The title of the work alludes to the advice given to her many years ago by her late father, which was instrumental in her decision to become an artist. The artist interrupts the lines and patterns of the weave by inserting a wide range of everyday objects, usually household items such as colanders, combs, and rakes. Her selection of these objects is congruent with the often very personal nature of her sculptures, which draw heavily from her biography. Samat’s practice challenges the Euro-American hierarchical notions of art and craft, which often relegate non-western artisanal practices to the disparaged realm of craft. Samat received a BA in art and design from the Mara Institute of Technology, Shah Alam, in 1995.
Ken Tan, Former Executive Director of Global Artistic Programs poses in front of Works by Kyungah Ham’s “What you see is the unseen : Chandeliers for Five Cities” series. Photo by Lia Chang
Kyungah Ham’s multifaceted practice is driven by an interest in mapping unseen power dynamics dictated by sociopolitical ideologies and subjective histories. She is best known for her embroidered canvases created in dialogue with anonymous North Korean artisans who convert Ham’s coded instructions into intricate embroideries, which are then smuggled back to the artist in South Korea to be integrated into the finished compositions.
Work from Kyungah Ham’s “What you see is the unseen : Chandeliers for Five Cities” series. Photo by Lia Chang
This suite of embroideries from the series What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities by Kyungah Ham depicts a crystal chandelier at increasing magnification until it is rendered as an unrecognizable field of abstracted color. This act of deconstructing the chandelier, an image selected as a representation of political power and privilege, represents the thousands of individuals affected by the legislative decisions made by governments and those in power. Ham’s provocatively collaborative works explore not only the societal impact of the partition of the Korean peninsula but also the devastating consequences politically imposed borders have on societies. The artist received a BFA from Seoul National University in 1989 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1995.
Work from Kyungah Ham’s “What you see is the unseen : Chandeliers for Five Cities” series. Photo by Lia Chang
Work from Kyungah Ham’s “What you see is the unseen : Chandeliers for Five Cities” series. Photo by Lia Chang
We the People: Xu Bing and Sun Xun Respond to the Declaration of Independence, a special project commissioned for the Triennial, curated by Susan L. Beningson, Ph.D. The artists Xu Bing and Sun Xun created new works to respond to a rare nineteenth-century official copy of the Declaration of Independence. Xu Bing used a copy of The Analects by Confucius, a text that inspired the nation’s founders as they crafted the Declaration, to make a new work entitled Silkworm Book: The Analects of Confucius (2019) that comments on the fragility of such manifestos. For his response to the Declaration, Sun Xun created a folding album entitled July Coming Soon (2019).
Xu Bing, Silkworm Book: The Analects of Confucius (2019). Photo by Lia Chang
Xu Bing’s ruminations on the indelible relationship between language and society have been an ongoing subject of his work since the 1980s. He was first recognized for his now-iconic installation, Book From the Sky (1987), which featured more than four thousand nonsensical pictograms resembling the Chinese written language. The artist subsequently created what he calls “square word calligraphy”—a system in which English words are written in a manner resembling Chinese characters. This cross-cultural fusion of language leads viewers to reassess their preconceived notions about written language while it illuminates cultural specificities and commonalities between China and the West. The artist received a BFA and an MFA in printmaking from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 1981 and 1987 respectively. In 1999, Xu Bing was the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, known as the “Genius Grant.”
A copperplate engraving of the Declaration of Independence, as part of “We The People: Sun Xun and Xu Bing Respond to the Declaration of Independence” in the Asia Society Triennial. Photo by Lia Chang
Sun Xun, July Coming Soon, 2019. Ink and color on silk. Photo by Lia Chang
Sun Xun’s practice considers the lingering impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese society, the subjective nature of global history, and the disjunction between personal experience and officially recorded events. His surreal narratives, realized through a broad range of mediums, including animation, drawing, painting, and site-specific installation, deftly appropriate Song-dynasty (960–1279) and western-painting techniques to create animals and other allegorical characters that inhabit dreamlike alternate universes. The artist received a BFA in printmaking at the China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, in 2005 and established π Animation Studio in 2006.
Sun Xun, July Coming Soon, 2019. Ink and color on silk. Photo by Lia Chang
Sun Xun, July Coming Soon, 2019. Ink and color on silk. Photo by Lia Chang
Ken Tan, Former Executive Director of Global Artistic Programs, Boon Hui Tan, Founding Artistic Director of the Triennial and Former Asia Society Museum Director, and Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair of the Asia Society Triennial pose in front of Anne Samat’s Follow Your Heart Wholeheartedly, 2020 at Asia Society in New York. Photo by Lia Chang
Entry to Asia Society Museum is by advance timed ticket only and capacity is limited.
General admission tickets for the Asia Society Triennial (October 27–February 7) at Asia Society Museum, are only available online here. Tickets must be reserved online and will not be available at the Museum. The Museum closes one hour after the last entry time of the day.
The Museum will be operating on the following reduced schedule:
Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.
For the latest information on the Triennial, please visit AsiaSociety.org/triennial.
Prior to the core Triennial exhibition opening at Asia Society Museum, Artistic Director Boon Hui Tan and Wendy N.E. Ikemoto Ph.D. Curator of American Art at New-York Historical Society and curator of the Triennial collateral exhibition Dreaming Together: New-York Historical Society and Asia Society Museum discussed themes from the exhibition and the possibilities unleashed when people, cultures, and institutions dream in tandem. The virtual discussion was held on October 23, 2020 and was moderated by Asia Society Executive Chair and Chair of the Exhibitions Committee and New-York Historical Society Trustee Agnes Hsu- Tang, Ph.D.
Executive Chair
Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D.
Founding Artistic Director of the Triennial
Boon Hui Tan, Former Asia Society Museum Director
Cocurators
Boon Hui Tan and Michelle Yun, Associate Director of the Triennial and Senior Curator of Contemporary Asian Art at Asia Society Museum
Former Executive Director of Global Artistic Programs
Ken Tan
Guest curators
Susan L. Beningson, Ph.D., curator of We the People: Xu Bing and Sun Xun Respond to the Declaration of Independence
Giovanna Fulvi, curator of the Triennial film series
Wendy N. E. Ikemoto, Ph.D. curator of Dreaming Together: New-York Historical Society and Asia Society Museum at the New-York Historical Society, a collateral exhibition
Asia Society Museum presents a wide range of traditional, modern, and contemporary exhibitions of Asian and Asian American art, taking new approaches to familiar masterpieces and introducing under-recognized arts and artists. The Asia Society Museum Collection comprises a traditional art collection, including the initial bequests of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, and a contemporary art collection. Through exhibitions and public programs, Asia Society provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both traditional and contemporary Asian art, and in Asia today.
Founded in 1956, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational institution based in New York with state-of-the-art cultural centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston, and offices in Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
Asia Society Museum is located at 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City.
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Lia Chang
Lia Chang is an actor, a multi-media content producer and co-founder of Bev’s Girl Films, making films that foster inclusion and diversity on both sides of the camera. Bev’s Girl Films’ debut short film, Hide and Seek was a top ten film in the Asian American Film Lab’s 2015 72 Hour Shootout Filmmaking Competition, and she received a Best Actress nomination. BGF collaborates with and produces multi-media content for artists, actors, designers, theatrical productions, composers, musicians and corporations. Lia has appeared in the films Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman. She stars in and served as Executive Producer for the short independent films Hide and Seek, Balancing Act, Rom-Com Gone Wrong, Belongingness and When the World was Young. She is also the Executive Producer for The Cactus, The Language Lesson, The Writer and Cream and 2 Shugahs. All text, graphics, articles & photographs: © 2000-2020 Lia Chang Multimedia. All rights reserved. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Lia Chang. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content. For permission, please contact Lia at liachangpr@gmail.com
Lia Chang Photography 