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Rare Sea Presents Group Exhibition: fiction, fraction
Poster credit: Rare Sea Rare Sea warmly introduces fiction, fraction, a group exhibition featuring works by Lê Đ. Chung, Lê Nguyễn Minh Như, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai, Huyền Dương, Thanh Tùng (Ches) and Sophia Mai Brown. Through oil painting, lacquer, hand-printed practice, silk and paper, the exhibition brings together distinct visual languages. Here, the flatness of a painting is not a limit, but an invitation into layers of gestures, materials and time that accumulate across surfaces, allowing paintings and prints to hold multiple narratives and histories. Together, these works become visual fables that transmit fragmented narratives about a society still haunted by memories of upheavals, trapped in production, and immersed in material excess.
fiction, fraction begins from whispers: sometimes as intimations from dreams, sometimes as collective silences, tracing shadows on the wall of an abandoned tea factory, lurking beneath urban soil, echoing in the taste of wild plants, lingering between the real and the imaginary. In this turbulent era, what lullabies are better than fables and the realms of the perennial? Where imagined creatures dwell, where scenes of labor unfold as unresolved mysteries, where space and time reverse and humans remain faceless in their naming. In-between these realms, stories that seem disconnected reveal shared histories and collective memories, opening spaces for personal documentation, archival practice, translation, and interpretation beyond official narratives enforced by institutions.
fiction, fraction, Installation view, Courtesy of Rare Sea Neither abstract nor deliberately realistic, the works transmit small, fragmentary stories in visual forms. These minor tales become fables that open not only pathways for escape but also alternative visions of cities, landscapes, and communities. They are stories that have always been there, murmuring faintly beneath the polished layers of the world—where small fractions accumulate into an unfinished landscape that is forever in progress.
From urban materiality and colonial archives rooted in maps, soil, dust and oral histories, Sophia Mai Brown and Thanh Tùng (Ches) challenge and expand the positioning of urban development. They open up space and time through multiple vantage points: the city reconfigured through layers of buildings, where roads become rivers and rivers become roads, overlaid onto colonial maps of Saigon; or an organic anatomy of decay unfolding beneath the street surface. Through mythical elements—worldmaking, imagined creatures, traces of local legends—the artists treat the environment not as a background but as a living character, whose voice carries through cycles of growth and decomposition.
Tracing real communities and places across past and present, Lê Đ. Chung and Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai employ different types of visual journals to record fragments of narratives in different geographical areas. Both follow the threads of history to recount ongoing consequences of coercion. Lê Đ. Chung exploits the layers of oil paint to foreground the unresolved absurdities in the life of a post-Đổi Mới migrant community, who dwell on the remains of an abandoned factory in Lâm Đồng. On the fragility of notebook paper and carbon paper, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai whispers the silent relationship formed between humans and the amaranth, which resiliently carries the violence that haunts Vietnamese-Cambodian survivors of forced displacement under the Khmer Rouge from Kampong Chhnang (Cambodia)—a community still being displaced today. If Lê Đ. Chung records the rumbling conflicts of another enforcement that continues on post-colonial ruins, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai exposes memories through the very body of materiality itself.
fiction, fraction, Installation view, Courtesy of Rare Sea Fleshing out their own fantastical realms, Huyền Dương and Lê Nguyễn Minh Như show that to dream is not to escape reality, but to remain within it. Turning inward, their works carry fragments of materiality, memory and history into dreams. Smooth brushstrokes masking layers of dark colors, Huyền Dương constructs absurdly flat worlds where tomorrow is still today, mountain is equal to tree, and oracles from 6PM sleeps are delivered through human-faced creatures and upside-down fallen angels. A humorous desacralization, she lays bare the clashes of Western and Asian aesthetic structures, affirming absurdity manifests both reality and fantasy. Lê Nguyễn Minh Như traces back the journey of being in the world and post-production society through the chain of Buddhism dependent origination. Treating silk both as a fragile surface and a land of accumulation, where every intervention leaves a trace that cannot be erased, she lays down dense passages of color, sharply meta lines and a samsara of relations. Coiling, intersecting and persisting, causes and conditions interchangeably weave together through a collection of semi-realistic fragments. As life threads through the log inside the claw machine, she exposes birth as a process of production, where desire is shaped before a life begins.
Obliquely mysterious, playful and sometimes poignant, yet more truthful than any master narrative, their paintings offer fiction and fractions as ways of archiving and existing otherwise.
Venue
3 Đặng Thị Nhu, Bến Thành Ward, Hồ Chí Minh City, VietnamArtists
Sophia Mai Brown, Huyền Dương, Thanh Tùng, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai, Lê Nguyễn Minh Như, Lê Đ. ChungExhibition Dates
August 8 – October 4, 2026Opening Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 10 AM – 6 PMWebsite
http://raresea.vnInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/raresea.vn/Contact
info@raresea.vn(Text and images courtesy of Rare Sea)
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The Drawing Room Presents Group Exhibition: Nest and Cliff
Poster credit: The Drawing Room Home is often imagined as a place of arrival, a fixed point where one settles into familiarity. Yet for artists Jay Ticar and Amy Aragon, home is less a destination than an ongoing negotiation-a condition continually shaped by movement, memory, vulnerability, and the restless desire to locate oneself amid changing circumstances.
Nest and Cliff brings together works from distinct moments in the husband-and-wife artists’ respective practices, generating not merely a familial dialogue but a spatial and conceptual one. Place emerges here not as an inert backdrop but as something volatile, expansive, and constantly remade through acts of inhabitation, accumulation, and displacement.
Jay Ticar and Amy Aragon, Nest and Cliff, Installation view, 2026, The Drawing Room Venue
Ground Floor, Building C, Karrivin Plaza, 2316, Chino Roces Extension, Barangay Magallanes, Makati City, 1231 Metro Manila, PhilippinesArtists
Jay Ticar and Amy AragonExhibition Dates
July 18 – August 15, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11:00 AM – 6:00 PMWebsite
https://drawingroomgallery.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/drawingroommanilaContact
info@drawingroomgallery.comAbout the Artist
Filipino-Canadian artist Amy Aragon took her BFA at U.P. and continued postgraduate studies in Seneca at York University in Toronto. As a student, her paintings were awarded in the Land Bank, Union Bank and Shell competitions. Since the late 90s, she has been exhibiting in established venues of art in the Philippines and abroad. She has lived and worked in Tokyo, Bandung, Toronto, Vancouver, Manila and now in Singapore.
Immigration and family greatly developed several aspects of Aragon’s practice. To manage portability in moving, initially collecting objects which reflect her identity shifted to gathering images with multicultural content for memory. A sounding object was the first project she exhibited at Green Papaya. Afterwards, several installations and mixed-media artworks followed for her other shows before leaving Manila. These artistic concerns naturally found progression in the compact nature of painting, which guides what she mostly does today. Family led her to concepts of home. She began working on interior-related imagery and photographs as conceptual materials relating to familial connections and memory. She continued working on the exteriors of the home through outdoor imagery, also from photographs taken with the family.
The immigrant home is a constantly morphing entity informed by changing territories, circumstances and future perspectives. Visually articulating its various formations, including its shifting states, requires abstraction and a gamut of contemporary art strategies. In her works, she either produce actual setups of objects and installations or visualize them in a plan. She continually processes these works by engaging emerging issues and personal interests until these articulations distill into paintings.
Jay Ticar formed his artistic foundation while accomplishing his BFA at the University of the Philippines. He was a student of Roberto Chabet, who curated and recommended his first breaks to exhibit. Ticar is an admirer of avant-garde art which inspired him to pursue progression. This led him to further his studies taking up MFA at Tama Art University on full scholarship in 2003. As a result of artistic exposure, resources and working on dynamic platforms, while living in Tokyo, the scope and manifestations of his projects increased. He began engaging in Identity and sociocultural meanings. Ticar also worked on processes where the conceptual material shifts from one creative platform to another. This is a time when he painted through non-painting media and conversely, expressed various media through painting.
Overseas artistic research has been a key factor in his practice primarily because of the subjects of his concentration which he continued to engage and grow. As an Asian Public Intellectual awardee, his research is on the livelihood perspective of the artist’s identity. The ideas and opportunities generated through his year-long residency in Japan and Indonesia are reflected in his creative concepts on immigration and family. In 2017 he was awarded the Asia Centre Fellowship which afforded him to research sound art in Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia. In practice, he organized and presented previous exhibitions about sound art in Manila. As he currently engages in the resonance of the pandemic he carries the accumulation of his experiences in his projects. If asked about the common denominator that links his varied paintings It will be that he is a painter of art projects.
(Text and images courtesy of The Drawing Room)
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Yeo Workshop Presents Group Exhibition: Scenes from Another Life: Imagined Narratives Inspired by Film, Art and Pop Culture
Poster credit: Yeo Workshop In conjunction with Singapore Gallery Month, Yeo Workshop is pleased to present Scenes from Another Life, a group exhibition curated by Chelsea Pettitt, Director of the Bagri Foundation at Gillman Barracks.
The mise-en-scène, a well-known French term that encompasses ‘what is put into the scene’, comes alive in this group exhibition. Featuring four artists Noor Mahnun (Anum), Hoa Dung Clerget, Justin Loke and Shayne Phua, the exhibition invites the visitor to explore a series of scenes which hint at recognisable cultural moments. From famous films to detective novels and pop ballads to Bollywood, each artist manifests a scene from another life.
Shayne Phua, Fragments of Performance, 2025, Ceramic, 26.5 x 18 x 19 cm.
Commissioned for Checkpoint Theatre gala dinner 2025. Image courtesy of the Artist.Ceramics, paintings and film are brought into new dialogue with their surroundings, combining historical and personal moments with expanded visions that emanate from the wall and onto the floor. Widely used in cinema, a mise-en-scène is made up of sets, people, lighting and props, arranged in a specific way to tell a story. The artists here were invited to share their cinematic world and allow us to populate their fictional tale. What is the narrative they are trying to convey through this method of ‘setting the scene’? Each object has its place, but what do the colours and patterns tell us? Can we imagine each artist’s state of mind as they materialise this space from their inner world?
Noor Mahnun (Anum), An Evening, 2025, Oil on linen, 84 x 76 cm. Image courtesy of the Artist and Yeo Workshop. Much like a Stephen King novel, Loke’s paintings keep you guessing, from the wayward shoe to the smears of blood – evoking a sense of ‘whodunnit?’. Whilst Phua’s ceramics and curtains invite you to liberate yourself from the confines of a fictional, apathetic Truman Show-like world into one where we take action, as seen in the reconstructed photo of her idealist grandfather with fellow activists.
Anum and Clerget’s worlds are inspired by song and dance, and of celebrations of the women and communities of which they are a part or imagine they can be. Sit with Anum’s joyful domestic colours, patterns and textures whilst enjoying a Bollywood moment or sing along to a Vietnamese anthem in a nail salon whilst celebrating community halls, theatres and restaurants of its diaspora.
Hoa Dung Clerget, Amazing nails, 2025, Single-channel digital video, 6 mins 53 secs, Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Image courtesy of the Artist.The story is only just beginning to be written. As American poet J.D McClatchy said, “Our prose was, well, / versed in poses no less real for being / mimic rushes of scenes from another life to come.”[1]
This exhibition is part of Yeo Workshop’s annual summer programming, which provides a platform for guest curators, foundations and artists to showcase alternative perspectives in contemporary art. The programme invites audiences to discover and engage with experimental voices outside the gallery’s roster, some of whom have never been exhibited in Singapore before.
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=130&issue=1&page=34
Justin Loke, Blue of Noon, 2026, Mixed media, 169 × 110 cm, Image courtesy of the Artist. PUBLIC PROGRAMME
ESPRESSO TOURS
Espresso & Conversation: Curator & Artist-Led Tour of Scenes from Another Life
Saturday 15 August 2026, 2 – 4 pm
Yeo Workshop, Gillman Barracks
Enjoy an espresso while artists Shayne Phua, Justin Loke, and Noor Mahnun (Anum) lead an intimate tour of Scenes from Another Life, sharing the stories, inspirations, and processes behind their works.
ARTISTS TALK
Scenes from Another Life: Artist talk with curator Chelsea Pettitt, Noor Mahnun (Anum), Justin Loke, Shayne Phua and Hoa Dung Clerget
Thursday 27 August, 8 – 9 pm
Online
ARTISTS AND CURATOR BIOGRAPHIES
NOOR MAHNUN (b. 1964, Malaysia), also known as ANUM, is known for adapting the traditional technique of oil painting into a style that has been praised for its simplicity and meticulousness. Beneath their guide of naivety and delicacy are carefully crafted compositions that weave subtle psychological narratives with dark wit and emotional depth. Born in Kelantan, Anum trained in architecture in the United States before pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in painting at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany in 1996. Anum was artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan in Kuang, Selangor (2000-2001) and received a scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a printmaking course at Il Bisonte, Florence (2002-2003). During her time in Europe, she held solo shows in Florence and across Germany, and upon returning to Malaysia, became an active figure in the local art scene—not only as an artist, but also as a curator, educator, and arts manager. This year, her works were showcased at Painting Itself, ANU Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra and in Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in Australia. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘ANUM’, Yeo Workshop, Singapore (2025); ‘September’, The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur (2021); ‘Disco Lombok Still Life’, The Edge Galerie, Kuala Lumpur (2017).
JUSTIN LOKE (b. 1979, Singapore) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator known for his storytelling-driven works, which blend installation, painting, theatre, and curatorial practice. He is the director of Vertical Submarine, an art collective acclaimed for its interdisciplinary projects.
Loke’s notable achievements include receiving the JCCI Japan Foundation Arts Award in 2009. He was also the creative director and writer of Cathay Hotel: The Curse of the Missing Red Shoe, the highlight act of the 2022 Singapore Night Festival. In 2023, he curated Benchmarks, a placemaking initiative commissioned by the Civic District Alliance. More recently, he completed an artist residency and exhibition at the Points Center for Contemporary Arts in Shanghai-Suzhou, organised by the Troy Foundation, London. He also curated Creative Intersections: Traces of Dragons at Funan Mall, as well as 8-Bit Word Cloud, a public art installation for the National Gallery Singapore’s Light to Night Festival during Singapore Art Week 2024. Vertical Submarine has received numerous awards, including the President’s Young Talent Award (Singapore, 2009), the Celeste Prize (New York, 2011), and finalist recognition for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (Hong Kong, 2015). Featured in ROUNDTABLE at the 9th Gwangju Biennale, the collective’s work is distinguished by a distinctive visual narrative style that has garnered international recognition and acclaim. Loke will present a solo exhibition at Yeo Workshop in January 2027, coinciding with Singapore Art Week.
SHAYNE PHUA (b. 1997, Singapore) uses the medium of clay to narrate stories and turn a critical eye on everyday realities. Her ceramic objects employ history, myth and literature to reflect on the world around her. She graduated with a BA(Hons) in Communication Design from The Glasgow School of Art, Singapore. Phua enjoys observing the forms and functions of utilitarian objects. Her work focuses on these aspects of ceramics as the vehicle for exploring a host of discourses, including oral traditions, folklore, historical anecdote and socio-political ideologies. In a world increasingly flattened out by social media and cultural homogenisation, her practice is premised on a keen interest in the local and often overlooked – a register of things and tales that flicker beneath public attention. In 2019, Shayne was an Artist in Residence at Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin and Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark. She participated in ‘Blended Tongue’ in Paris, featuring works of artists based in Singapore and France, along with botanical installations by This Humid House in 2022. The following year, she exhibited her works in a group show, ‘New Makers,’ in Bangkok, featuring Thai and Singaporean artists. She held a first solo exhibition with Yeo Workshop in 2024.
HOA DUNG CLERGET (b. 1985, France), creates films, installations, and painted objects that explore the labour and lives of immigrant women and the Nail Art subculture. Her Vietnamese heritage and education in France have shaped her research into how immigrant women construct their identities and find their place in society, especially through their work. Her practice reflects her own diasporic experience. At the heart of her work is the ongoing process of identity reconstruction. Clerget draws on Homi Bhabha’s concept of the liminal space, an in-between where diasporic identity is constructed through hybridisation, through the refusal of fixed categories, and through the subversion of imposed norms. The artist sees this constant negotiation in the lives of immigrant women, whether in domestic or professional spaces. The materials and objects Clerget integrates into her work come directly from the everyday lives of Vietnamese families: brooms, plastic stools, durian, folk songs, seemingly mundane elements that carry deep cultural significance, passed down through generations. By repurposing these objects, she challenges their meaning and status, using art as a tool to reverse situations.
CHELSEA PETTITT, a curator originally from California, is Director of the Bagri Foundation in London where she cultivates space for Asian arts and culture. Recent and forthcoming curatorial projects for the Foundation include the Springboard Exhibition with Nomin Zezegmaa at Sy Cyprian’s, Myths, Dreams and New Realities at the Saatchi Gallery and the Bagri Samaya Series. After living in Beijing in 2005, she graduated from Goldsmiths College London with an MA in Visual Anthropology focussing on contemporary Chinese arts and culture. Pettitt was previously the Bagri Foundation’s Head of Arts where she initiated or supported many arts and cultural projects such as the Bagri Commission at the Hayward Gallery, Chang/ce, Untold: Write Afghanistan, Rebel Rebel by Soheila Sokhanvari at Barbican, Asia Forum and Object, Story, Wonder: Museums Collections Revealed. Prior to this she was Head of Partnerships at Wysing Arts Centre where she curated and assisted on national and international exhibitions and projects and Assistant Curator at the Hayward Gallery and Hayward Touring for many years, producing and curating such touring exhibitions. She speaks widely on panels, has contributed to exhibition catalogues and art magazines and is a board member of Untold Narratives, a development programme for writers structurally marginalised by community or conflict.
ABOUT YEO WORKSHOP
Yeo Workshop is a gallery committed to contemporary art in Singapore. Based in the Gillman Barracks district, it champions a diverse roster of artists whose practices reflect deep engagement with our contemporary socio-cultural landscape, to stimulate dialogue and critical discourse, including several Southeast Asian artists who are producing cutting-edge works. Covering a multi-disciplinary approach and collaborative spirit, the gallery defines itself by its progressive engagements that strive to shape the trajectory of contemporary art in Southeast Asia and beyond.
ABOUT THE BAGRI FOUNDATION
The Bagri Foundation, established in 1990 in London, UK, is a family foundation driven by curiosity. Through grants and strategic partnerships, the Foundation champions unique ideas that weave the traditional and the contemporary of Asian culture. Recent and forthcoming projects include Myths, Dreams and New Realities featuring 13 emerging Asian artists co-curated with the Saatchi Gallery (2025); a co-production, Thikra: Night of Remembering, by Akram Khan Company (2025-27); Bagri Springboard commission by Nomin Zezegmaa at St Cyprian’s Church, London (2026) and the Bagri Commission by Gulnur Mukazhanova at the Whitworth, Manchester (2026). Additionally, the family continues to support education, relief work, development and healthcare.
ABOUT SINGAPORE GALLERY MONTH
Presented by the Art Galleries Association Singapore (AGAS), Singapore Gallery Month 2026 is a citywide celebration of contemporary art, and a great way to explore the world of collecting. Bringing together over 30 leading galleries over 5 weeks, this year’s edition features an exciting line-up of exhibitions, talks, tours, workshops, performances, and more – alongside exclusive experiences such as Collectors’ Home Tours and opportunities to meet artists and fellow collectors.
>> AGAS I Singapore Gallery Month
Venue
Gillman Barracks
47 Malan Road
#01-25
Singapore 109444Artists
Noor Mahnun (Anum) (MY), Hoa Dung Clerget (VN/UK), Justin Loke (SG), Shayne Phua (SG)Exhibition Dates
August 15 – October 11, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Sundays | 12:00 PM – 6:00 PMWebsite
https://www.yeoworkshop.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/yeoworkshop/Contact
info@yeoworkshop.com(Text and images courtesy of Yeo Workshop)
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Singapore Art Museum Presents A Solo Exhibition: Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage
Exhibition view of Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum. Singapore, 21 July 2026 – Singapore Art Museum (SAM) presents Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage, the first monographic exhibition of the renowned artist at a Singapore museum. Opening on 24 July 2026, the exhibition brings together nearly two decades of Taniguchi’s multidisciplinary practice, featuring her signature “brick paintings”, modular Runaways sculptures, and four video works, including the newly commissioned A painter, if black were a place. Together, these works offer audiences the most comprehensive presentation of Taniguchi’s practice in Singapore to date.
Taking its title from visual sensations that linger in a viewer’s field of vision, Afterimage explores the recurring themes of repetition, time and labour that have shaped Taniguchi’s practice over nearly two decades. Through painting, sculpture and moving image, the exhibition invites audiences to slow down and reflect on the quiet processes that underpin both artistic creation and everyday life.
The exhibition comes at a significant moment in Taniguchi’s career, following her major survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design Manila. It also reflects SAM’s continued commitment to presenting ambitious exhibitions by leading contemporary artists from Southeast Asia while supporting new commissions that advance artistic practice in the region.
Installation view of Maria Taniguchi’s Untitled (2017–2026) as part of Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum. At the heart of Taniguchi’s practice lies an unwavering dedication to repetition as both method and meaning. Her “brick paintings” (2008–ongoing) feature uniform rows of pencil-drawn rectangles, each carefully filled in with paint over days or weeks. Rather than a deliberate response to the art-historical legacy of minimalism, they capture the sheer time and effort invested in creating each work. This ongoing series of paintings remain untitled and unnumbered, as Taniguchi treats each new canvas as part of a single, continuously growing artwork. The series has evolved subtly with shifts in colour and scale, tracing the progression of her artistic practice over the years. Leaning against the gallery walls, Taniguchi’s large “brick paintings” blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architectural space.
“Maria Taniguchi’s art asks us to slow down and consider how time, labour and material decisions become form. Across painting, sculpture and moving image, her practice is quiet but exacting, transforming repetition into a way of thinking about perception, process and the conditions of making. SAM is proud to present her first monographic museum exhibition in Singapore and to support a new commission by one of the most rigorous artists working in Southeast Asia today,” said Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, Chief Curator of SAM.
Installation view of Maria Taniguchi’s Runaways (2026) as part of Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum. Runaways (2026) features site-responsive sculptures—some standing several metres tall—that merge personal memory with traditional craft. Using the gallery as a canvas, Taniguchi transforms simple circles and lines, the most fundamental elements of drawing, into three-dimensional compositions. This sparse formal vocabulary evokes computational language like the 1 and 0 of binary code to suggest infinite possibilities within the gallery space. Carved from Java plum wood, known in the Philippines as duhat, these sculptures carry intergenerational memory: Taniguchi’s mother craved the tree’s dark violet fruit while pregnant with her. By embracing handcraft over industrial production and embedding personal history, Taniguchi challenges the seemingly detached nature of minimalism. At SAM, Runaways serves as a series of spatial markers guiding visitors through Gallery 3, including new site-responsive iterations created specifically for this exhibition.
Installation view of Maria Taniguchi’s Mies 421 (2010) as part of Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum. Four video works extend Taniguchi’s longstanding interest in repetition, duration and process into moving image, exploring themes of history, memory, and modernist architecture. Mies 421 (2010) documents her attention to structural details throughout the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion designed by influential German architects Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. Black-and-white still photographs focus on the building’s minimal lines and varied surface textures, echoing the architectural quality of her “brick paintings”. Synchronised with an accelerating metronome, the mechanical progression of images generates a sense of mounting tension while emphasising how repeated fragments accumulate into a larger whole.
Installation view of Maria Taniguchi’s Figure Study (2012) and Figure Study (2018) as part of Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum. Subsequently, Figure Study (2012) and Figure Study (2018) trace Taniguchi’s evolving investigations into the body, space, and time. The 2012 work, also shot in black-and-white, captures two workers in a dense jungle extracting clay from the earth and filling white bags. Filmed from multiple angles, the repetitive labour unfolds to the irregular rhythm of their tools—a sonic counterpoint to the metronomic precision of Mies 421.
Figure Study (2018) prioritises process over narrative through tightly framed, richly saturated red and blue images. A sequence of stills captures the artist’s hands shaping raw clay, making visible subtle traces of labour invested over time. These are followed by a single shot that tracks the length of the finished object, though the narrow framing prevents viewers from grasping how the individual parts relate to the whole. This fragmented approach recalls Taniguchi’s formative exercises at the Philippine High School for the Arts, where students experimented with materials without a predetermined outcome.
Installation view of Maria Taniguchi’s A painter, if black were a place (2026) as part of Maria Taniguchi: Afterimage at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum. The newly commissioned video, A painter, if black were a place (2026), explores Taniguchi’s artistic lineage through an intimate look at her relationship with her mother, Christina “Kitty” Taniguchi, who is a painter and literary scholar. Mirroring the structure of Mies 421, the film moves through a series of grainy, pixelated still images, captured in the artist’s hometown of Dumaguete City in 2012. The digital photographs feel warm and intimate, but their quality evokes nostalgia and the gradual fading of personal memories. The closely cropped images of a garden filled with terracotta sculptures in this newly commissioned video counter the modernist lines of the Barcelona Pavilion present in Mies 421. At the same time, several paintings by Kitty are woven throughout the film, emphasising the intergenerational connection that informs the younger Taniguchi’s use of material in her Runaways sculptures. The flow of images is disrupted by fields of black which, upon close inspection, reveal themselves as hand-painted surfaces with subtle variations—much like Taniguchi’s own painted canvases.
The exhibition runs from 24 July to 22 November 2026 at Gallery 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Admission is free for all Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents, with standard general admission charges applying for international visitors.
Venue
Gallery 3, Level 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar DistriparkArtists
Maria TaniguchiExhibition Dates
July 24 – November 22, 2026Gallery Hours
Monday – Sunday | 10:00 AM – 7:00 PMWebsite
https://www.singaporeartmuseum.sg/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/singaporeartmuseumContact
enquiries@singaporeartmuseum.sgAbout Singapore Art Museum
Singapore Art Museum opened in 1996 as the first art museum in Singapore. Also known as SAM, we present contemporary art from a Southeast Asian perspective for artists, art lovers and the art curious in multiple venues across the island, including a new venue in the historic port area of Tanjong Pagar.
SAM is building one of the world’s most important public collections of Southeast Asian contemporary art, with the aim of connecting the art and the artists to the public and future generations through exhibitions and programmes. SAM is working towards a humane and sustainable future by committing to responsible practices within its processes.
About the Artist
Maria Taniguchi works across a diverse range of media, including painting, video, sculpture, pottery, printmaking, drawing and writing. Central to her practice are questions of labour, repetition, and temporality, which she explores through an ongoing engagement with materiality and process. Her works invite audiences to experience material culture sensorially, connecting it to broader notions of time, space, labour and technology.
Taniguchi is the recipient of the 2015 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award. Her work has been featured in major international exhibitions including the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), the Gwangju Biennale (2018), the Biennale of Sydney (2018) and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2015). Her solo exhibitions include presentations at MCAD Manila (2024) and the Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Quezon City (2011), among others.
(Text and images courtesy of Singapore Art Museum)
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I.F. Gallery Hong Kong Presents A Solo Exhibition: Seiji Sonoke: Mizen (Pre-Emergence)
Poster credit: I.F. Gallery HK In Sonoke Seiji’s works, there are no clear objects that immediately captivate the eye. Presenting no traces of tangible form, the works often leave viewers perplexed. Yet, this absence of form is also the most defining characteristic of Sonoke’s practice, and the primary reason it is often seen as esoteric. What, then, is the purpose of such works? Sonoke’s answer comes without hesitation: to create an ideal space. Does this refer simply to a space that would be comfortable for the artist? This space undoubtedly does express the artist’s inner world. However, it is also much more. To Sonoke, such a realm is a primordial space, much like the astrophysical state of the universe prior to the Big Bang, charged with the tension of all things yet to be formed. Simultaneously, it encompasses the principles of the human world, beauty and ugliness, good and evil — all elements that may stir human emotions. Sonoke finds affinity between his art and the Zen Buddhist concept of “ku” (emptiness). The space he aims to create is a primordial plane at the very foundation of being, from which all phenomena and objects originate.
Transition II, Kumohadamashi paper, ink, mineral pigments, acrylic gouache, 47 x 130 cm Sonoke’s unique creative process imbues his works with even greater power. In the case of most human creations, a creator sets out with an intent, purpose, and production method to reach their endpoint. Without even a vague goal, creative work is extremely difficult. Therefore, it is typical for creatives to have at least a rough image of their final work in mind, before they develop a plan and composition aimed towards it. For example, when writing a book, one would have a purpose for writing, before they embark on a search for suitable materials and subjects, and finally reach a conclusion that achieves their purpose. Notably, the conventionally easiest method is to first have an idea of a conclusion, and subsequently build logic towards it. The same is true for many painters; they begin with a final image planned, then work towards what they envisioned. Therefore, for many, the concept of creating without a preliminary sketch is likely unthinkable. Yet Sonoke has no sketches. He has no subject (motif) he intends to show the viewer, nor any idea of any destination he wants to reach. There is no blueprint.
Moonlight no.2305, Kumohadamashi paper, ink, mineral pigments, acrylic gouache, 27.3 x 27.3 cm Sonoke faces the canvas and places ink. The initial mark of ink is surrounded by the vast blank space occupying most of the canvas. From within this state, he senses the colour and position of the next mark to place. Through a continuous repetition of this process, Sonoke’s space is constructed. Initially, I was surprised to learn of this production method. It struck me as less like creating a work of art, and more like an archaeological excavation. Sonoke listens to the voice of the ink and converses with empty space. He paints without clarity on where his starting point will be, where it will end, or what his process may ultimately lead to. Puzzled by this process, I found myself wondering: where within this does the artist’s ego lie? That question remains unanswered.
At present, I approach Sonoke’s work through the metaphor of the rock garden at Ryōan-ji Temple; a world that allows the viewer’s imagination to expand, drawing from sparse subjects and subtle colours. Only through collaboration between the artist’s inner world and viewers’ emotions does the artwork become complete. This stands in contrast to the current convention in Japanese painting, in which artists’ intentions tend to be unilaterally conveyed. Instead, Sonoke’s work embodies the traditional, albeit now less commonly encountered, spirit of Japanese art, wherein completion is achieved through the connection formed between an artist’s aesthetic sensibility and the heart of the viewer. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the element of “sonzai” (existence) — a crucial component of painting — is lacking. I look forward to the future possibility that, if a more solid sense of presence were to arise within Sonoke’s spaces, his art would become even more moving.
Installation view of Mizen (Pre-Emergence) Venue
G/F, Ivy House, 18-20 Wyndham St, Central, Hong KongArtists
Seiji SonokeExhibition Dates
July 12 – August 18, 2026Opening Hours
Monday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://ifart.sg/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/i.f.gallery/Contact
admin@ifart.hk(Text and images courtesy of I.F. Gallery HK)
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Gallery VER Presents Duo Exhibition: Unus Mundus
Poster credit: Gallery VER The exhibition “Unus Mundus” by Miyabi and Mookmintra Jariyavidyanont draws inspiration from expressions of belief and faith embedded in Eastern traditions, societies, and cultures, presenting paintings and sculptures within the conceptual framework of Unus Mundus, or “single world.”
Within this “one world,” the human body, spirit, animals, nature, the environment, and cherished objects are brought together and reimagined through the personal perspectives of the two artists. Through painting and sculpture, they create new meanings from these interconnected elements while exploring the possibility of using symbols as poetic expressions of emotion. The exhibition opens an imaginative world that invites reflection on the human condition in the present day, asking how belief and faith might continue to evolve.
Installation view of Unus Mundus, Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery VER
Photo by Marisa SrijunpleangMiyabi, a Thai-Japanese artist, explores the relationship between humans and nature, particularly the animal world, through metaphor and imagination inspired by ancient tales, folklore, and mythology. She reimagines these narratives into new forms of belief.
Mookmintra is interested in objects with which she shares a personal connection, using them to construct new narratives and arrangements. Through this process, she balances reverence with curiosity, asking whether these objects can assume new forms of belief.
“Unus Mundus” represents the creation of a single world by two female artists, seeking unity within a vast universe beyond the reach of ordinary human perception. It reflects both scientific attempts to understand the interconnectedness of all things and the pursuit of philosophical truths through what lies beyond sensory experience—belief and faith. Together, these ideas expand the imagination of how humans might coexist peacefully with all forms of existence through mutual respect and reverence, while also questioning the nature of belief and faith themselves, and whether our own spirits are capable of bringing them into being.
Installation view of Unus Mundus, Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery VER
Photo by Marisa SrijunpleangVenue
2198/10-11 Naradhiwas Rajanagarindra 22, Chong Nonsi, Yannawa, Bangkok 10120Artists
Miyabi and Mookmintra JariyavidyanontExhibition Dates
August 1 – September 26, 2026Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 12:00 PM – 6:00 PMWebsite
https://galleryver.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/vergallery/Contact
galleryver@gmail.com(Text and images courtesy of Gallery VER)
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ShanghART Singapore Presents 13 Nightmares, a Solo Exhibition by Taiki Sakpisit
Poster credit: ShanghART Singapore Singapore, August 2026 — ShanghART Singapore presents 13 Nightmares by Taiki Sakpisit, opening on 15 August 2026. Over the past two decades, Sakpisit has developed one of Southeast Asia’s most distinctive practices, dissolving the boundaries between cinema and contemporary art. Frequently drawing upon Thailand’s histories, folklore and political imaginaries, Sakpisit’s works are rooted in the unstable terrain where personal memory and collective consciousness continually intersect.
The premise of this exhibition can be traced back to a nightmare Sakpisit experienced in Singapore in 2018. A phone call from his brother awoke him from the nightmare, informing him about the passing of a family member. Since then, Sakpisit has become increasingly drawn to the intersections between dreams, memory, grief, and premonition, culminating in this exhibition.
In his first solo exhibition with ShanghART Singapore, Sakpisit transforms the gallery into a labyrinth of moving images, photography, sound and spectral presences. A series of photographic works appear as snapshots and fragments from different realities, layering upon one another. Drawn from the artist’s collection of photographs shot over the past few years as a core part of his working process, the images form a quiet yet intense distillation of Sakpisit’s memories and encounters with place and history.
Anchoring the exhibition, the two-channel installation transforms cinematic language into a spatial, sculptural, and psychological encounter. Within this shifting landscape, animism, supernatural presences, and altered states appear as recurring motifs through which Sakpisit evokes fear, vulnerability, and the persistence of the unconscious. Together, they construct a landscape haunted by historical trauma and contemporary anxieties.
Working across experimental film, photography, and installation, Sakpisit continues to expand cinema beyond the conventions of projection, inviting audiences to inhabit images physically and experience the moving image as an environment rather than a sequence of projected frames. Rather than following a linear narrative, visitors navigate the exhibition as they might recall a dream: through fragments, repetitions and sudden dislocations.
The Seer, 2026, Archival inkjet print, 75 x 100 cm, Edition of 3 + 2 AP Venue
ShanghART Singapore, 9 Lock Road, #02-22, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108937Artists
Taiki SakpisitExhibition Dates
August 15 – October 4, 2026Gallery Hours
Wednesday – Sunday | 12:00 PM – 6:00 PMWebsite
https://www.shanghartgallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/shanghart.singapore/Contact
tianlim@shanghartgallery.comAbout the Artist
Taiki Sakpisit (ไทก ศกดพสษฐ, b.1975) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Bangkok, renowned for his innovative approach to storytelling and his profound exploration of Thailand’s complex history. Through the lens of cinema, Sakpisit unpacks the nation’s turbulent past, infusing his experimental films with a subtle yet resounding political commitment.
His works delve into the underlying tensions, conflicts, and anticipations of contemporary Thailand, meticulously crafted through precise and sensorially overwhelming audio-visual assemblage. Utilizing a diverse array of sounds and images, Sakpisit creates immersive experiences that challenge conventional narratives and provoke thought.
About ShanghART
ShanghART Gallery was established in Shanghai in 1996. It has since grown to become one of China’s most influential art institutions and a vital player in the development of contemporary art in China, working with over 50 pioneering and emerging artists, including DING Yi, LI Shan, LIN Aojie, Arin RUNGJANG, SUN Xun, Melati SURYODARMO, TANG Da Wu, Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL, XU ZHEN®, YANG Fudong, ZENG Fanzhi, and ZHAO Renhui Robert.
ShanghART Singapore was established in 2012 as the gallery’s Southeast Asia wing, located in the contemporary art cluster Gillman Barracks. The gallery’s first overseas space serves as a platform to introduce Chinese contemporary art to the region while developing collaborations with Southeast Asian artists, facilitating cross-cultural dialogues and enriching artistic exchanges within the global art community.
(Text and images courtesy of ShanghART Singapore)
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ARARIO GALLERY Presents at KIAF SEOUL 2026
LIM Nosik, Wildflower – Landscape 58, 2026, Oil on canvas, 153 x 90 cm
© LIM Nosik. Courtesy of the Artist and ARARIO GALLERY.ARARIO GALLERY is pleased to participate in KIAF SEOUL 2026, held at COEX in Seoul from September 2 (Wed) to 6 (Sun), 2026. Our booth will present works by 11 Korean artists: AN Gyungsu (b. 1975, Korea), CHA Hyeonwook (b. 1987, Korea), KANG Cheolgyu (b. 1990, Korea), KOO Jiyoon (b. 1982, Korea), LEE Eunsil (b. 1983, Korea), LEE Jihyun (b. 1979, Korea), LIM Nosik (b. 1989, Korea), LIM Subeom (b. 1997, Korea), NOH Sangho (b. 1986, Korea), SIM Raejung (b. 1983, Korea), and WON Seoung Won (b. 1972, Korea). Working primarily through two-dimensional media—including Western painting, East Asian painting, and photography—these artists continue to expand the expressive possibilities of their respective practices. In an age saturated by digital screens, the tactile sensibility conveyed through the surfaces of analog artworks resonates with renewed significance.
Bringing together artists born between the 1970s and the 1990s, our booth (A05) presents a diverse range of formal perspectives through which contemporary realities are observed and reimagined. While inheriting the traditions of their respective mediums, the participating artists have continually developed distinctive artistic languages through experimental approaches rather than remaining confined by convention. The presentation first examines experimental approaches to painting and photography that blur the boundaries between the digital and the analog. NOH Sangho presents a series of paintings that reinterpret AI-generated images through the medium of hand-painted canvases, collecting and recombining digital imagery into analog form. WON Seoung Won constructs expansive narrative landscapes where reality and imagination intersect through meticulous digital collage, whose carefully edited and composited images paradoxically evoke a deeply analog sensibility.
NOH Sangho, THE GREAT CHAPBOOK 3, 2026, Oil on canvas, 112 x 162 cm
© NOH Sangho. Courtesy of the Artist and ARARIO GALLERY.The booth also highlights painterly investigations into urban environments, place, and spatial memory. LIM Nosik unfolds narratives of place and relationships, depicting the continuous coexistence of local communities, nature, and human life through dreamlike and delicately rendered landscapes. KOO Jiyoon transforms the anxiety and emptiness embedded within aging architecture and the temporality of cities into abstract compositions of entangled colors and lines, while AN Gyungsu patiently reconstructs the shifting and fluid sense of place through depictions of piles, debris, and byproducts displaced to the margins of the urban landscape. Also featured are artists who have developed distinctive pictorial languages grounded in the techniques and materials of traditional Korean painting. LEE Eunsil employs the techniques of Korean ink painting to metaphorically visualize psychological conflict and emotional turbulence arising from the tension between desire and social norms. CHA Hyeonwook explores the boundaries between contemporary landscape and memory through repeated dry brushstrokes and traditional pigments on hanji (Korean traditional paper), creating landscapes where fragments of memory gradually accumulate like sediment.
The exhibition further foregrounds works that imaginatively construct the inner landscape of the human psyche. KANG Cheolgyu captures psychological conflict and existential instability through the concept of “projection,” translating personal experiences and desires into fictional worlds where the self is continuously displaced and reconstructed. SIM Raejung dissects instinctive human emotions—including loneliness, anxiety, and powerlessness—as well as bodily impulses through a cynical yet rhythmically dynamic visual language. LEE Jihyun visualizes the associative workings of memory by superimposing memories from disparate times and spaces onto the pictorial plane. LIM Subeom summons undefined beings and unknown worlds that exist beyond the limits of human perception, constructing organic networks through richly layered iconography and imaginative forms.
CHA Hyeonwook, Happenings on the Layers, 2026, Powdered color pigment on hanji, 140 x 116 cm
© CHA Hyeonwook. Courtesy of the Artist and ARARIO GALLERY.Venue
Booth A05, Hall A&B, COEX, SeoulArtists
AN Gyungsu, CHA Hyeonwook, KANG Cheolgyu, KOO Jiyoon, LEE Eunsil, LEE Jihyun, LIM Nosik, LIM Subeom, NOH Sangho, SIM Raejung, WON Seoung WonExhibition Dates
September 2 – 6, 2026Website
https://www.arariogallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/arariogallery_official/Contact
PARK Miran, Deputy Director, M. +82 10 6768 8812 / E. miran.park@arariogallery.com
KANG Sojung, Executive Director, M. +82 10 9256 1491 / E. sojung.kang@arariogallery.com(Text and images courtesy of ARARIO GALLERY)
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Observation | Contemporary Asian Art and the Questions Being Asked
Reflections on Home and Abroad (Alisan Fine Arts New York), How Asian Is It? (The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation), and recent conversations on contemporary Asian art in New York.
Text by Webson Ji, Asian Art Contemporary™
Contemporary Asian art occupies a distinctive position within New York’s art ecosystem. It is often used to describe artists connected by geography, migration, ethnicity, or cultural heritage, even though their work frequently begins from very different points of departure. Rather than identifying a single artistic position, contemporary Asian art often functions as an umbrella for multiple artistic trajectories.
Over the past several years, building Asian artist communities through a nonprofit arts organization in New York has allowed me to work closely with artists based across Asia, Asian diaspora artists, and Asian American artists, while collaborating with galleries, museums, universities, and independent arts organizations throughout the city. Across these conversations, one observation has remained consistent: artists grouped under the term “contemporary Asian art” often begin from fundamentally different starting points. They are not necessarily responding to the same histories, asking the same questions, or working toward the same artistic concerns.
Installation view of Home and Abroad, Courtesy of Alisan Fine Arts New York That observation was reinforced while visiting Home and Abroad, on view at Alisan Fine Arts New York from July 9 through August 28, 2026. Celebrating the gallery’s 45th anniversary, the exhibition brings together more than thirty artists through three curatorial sections—Reinventing Tradition, New York Voices, and Home and Abroad. Rather than presenting a chronological survey of Chinese contemporary art, the exhibition places artists working across generations and cultural contexts into dialogue. The curatorial structure is less concerned with establishing a single historical narrative than with revealing multiple artistic trajectories existing simultaneously.
Installation view of Home and Abroad, Courtesy of Alisan Fine Arts New York This perspective continues in How Asian Is It?, presented at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation from May 8 through July 26, 2026. Curated by Lilly Wei, the exhibition brings together twelve Asian American abstract painters whose work resists easy cultural categorization. As Wei writes in the accompanying essay, ” Artists are not predictable, nor is the art they make—which is as it should be. Artists should be free to make the work they choose to make, and not be compelled to pursue choices that have been determined for them.” Rather than reinforcing identity as a fixed interpretive framework, the exhibition invites viewers to reconsider how contemporary Asian art is read in the first place.
Installation view of How Asian Is It?, 2026. © Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation Neither exhibition attempts to define contemporary Asian art. Instead, both demonstrate that the field becomes more meaningful when approached through artistic inquiry rather than predetermined categories.
Working across these different contexts, I have found myself returning to three recurring observations.
For many Asian diaspora artists, a recurring question is:
How do I translate?
Translation extends far beyond language. It becomes a way of navigating different educational systems, artistic traditions, cultural expectations, and lived experiences. Included in Home and Abroad, Yang Jiechang’s Hundred Layers of Ink, developed after his move from Guangzhou to Paris, transforms ink painting through repetition and conceptual process. Rather than preserving tradition unchanged, the work demonstrates how artistic traditions continue to evolve as they move across different cultural environments.
Yang Jiechang, Hundred Layers of Ink – Rectangle Inclined, 1995, Ink on paper, 51.5 x 70 cm (20 ¼ x 27 ½ in) For many Asian American artists, another question emerges:
Where do I come from?
Family archives, memory, ancestry, and cultural inheritance frequently become the foundation of artistic inquiry. Also included in Home and Abroad, Summer Mei-Ling Lee layers family photographs, translucent gauze, and gold leaf to reconstruct inherited histories across generations. Rather than translating between cultures, her work reflects an effort to understand what has been preserved, what has been forgotten, and what can still be carried forward.
Summer Mei-Ling Lee, Annunciation XI, 2025, Oil, acrylic, and 23.5k gold on wood, 30.5 x 46.5 cm (open) (12 x 18 ¼ in [open]) For many artists living and working in Asia, the question is often different:
How do I respond to where I already am?
Cities, labor, materiality, technology, ecology, politics, and everyday life frequently become the central subjects of artistic practice. Cultural identity remains one possible reading, but not always the artist’s primary concern. Also featured in Home and Abroad, Malaysian artist Justin Lim turns toward domestic interiors and the visual culture of everyday life, demonstrating how contemporary Asian art is equally shaped by artists responding directly to their own social and cultural environments.
Justin Lim, Cornerstone, 2026, Acrylic on canvas, 75 x 60 cm (29 ½ x 23 ⅝ in) These observations are not intended to construct another system of categorization. Artists move between different concerns throughout their careers, and many practices resist any fixed interpretive framework. What matters is not where artists are placed, but where their work begins.
These ideas extended beyond the exhibitions during a recent public conversation at Alisan Fine Arts between Richard Vine, former Managing Editor of Art in America, and Jenny Wang, Editor-in-Chief of IMPULSE Magazine. Rather than seeking a definitive description of contemporary Asian art, the discussion returned to many of the same questions raised by Home and Abroad and How Asian Is It? How should contemporary Asian art be understood? Can one institutional framework adequately describe artists working across such different cultural and social contexts?
The Third Object, Conversation moderated by Richard Vine and Xuezhu Jenny Wang, Photo credit: Asian Art Contemporary, Courtesy of Alisan Fine Arts New York Categories such as Asian art, Asian American art, and Asian diaspora art have long shaped how contemporary Asian art is presented and discussed. While these categories continue to influence institutional narratives, they cannot fully represent the diversity of artistic practices within the field. The contemporary Asian art ecosystem is built not by labels, but by the artists and art professionals who question, create, document, exhibit, and expand the many ways the field is experienced and understood. Asian diaspora artists, Asian American artists, and artists living and working across Asia may begin from different questions, yet together they shape the ecosystem that curators, writers, museums, galleries, educators, nonprofit organizations, collectors, publications, and AAPI communities continue to build.
The Third Object, Conversation moderated by Richard Vine and Xuezhu Jenny Wang, Photo credit: Asian Art Contemporary, Courtesy of Alisan Fine Arts New York Contemporary Asian art is best understood as an evolving field of inquiry, shaped by the people who create it, interpret it, and contribute to it. Understanding the field is therefore less about arriving at a single definition than remaining open to the questions that continue to shape it.
About the Writer
Webson Ji is a New York–based cultural producer, nonprofit arts leader, and curator. As the Editorial Director of Asian Art Contemporary™ and Founder and Director of Li Tang Community, he focuses on contemporary Asian art, Asian diaspora cultural ecosystems, nonprofit and institutional development, public programming, and the evolving relationships between artists, institutions, and communities.
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PODIUM Presents a Solo Exhibition by Shimon Kamada
Poster credit: PODIUM PODIUM is proud to present “Phantom(’s) Presence”, Rotterdam-based Japanese artist Shimon Kamada’s first solo presentation with the gallery and in his career. In this new body of work, Kamada draws from his photo archives that span his childhood and teenage years in his hometown in Japan, conjuring realms where these images drift, overlap, and intertwine like fragmented memories. From hometown streets and domestic settings to scenes of natural sublimity and surreal dreamscapes; the artist bathes each composition in skewed light, melancholic shadows, and psychological tension to render a series of enigmatic narratives, revealing the fragile and elusive nature of remembrance. The exhibition opens on 13 June (Saturday) from 2 to 7 PM and is on view until 29 August (Saturday).
The exhibition title unfolds along a dual register. On one hand, memories return as spectral traces, resurfacing as phantoms that linger within the present. On the other hand, it references the phenomenon of the phantom limb, where absence is paradoxically experienced as presence, blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy. Together, these ideas probe the unstable and illusionary nature of memory as something both fleeting and insistently felt. Additionally, to underscore the plasticity and influx nature of memories, the exhibition will not remain a static presentation, instead it will be restructured mid-way during its exhibition period.
Installation view of Phantom(’s) Presence. Image courtesy of PODIUM Venue
Unit 9D, E Tat Factory Building, 4 Heung Yip Road, Wong Chuk Hang, Hong KongArtists
Shimon KamadaExhibition Dates
June 13 – August 29, 2026Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
www.podiumgallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/podiumgallery/Contact
info@podiumgallery.com(Text and images courtesy of PODIUM)
