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Asia Art Archive Presents a Two-chapter Exhibition:At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds
4 March 2026, Hong Kong—Asia Art Archive (AAA) announces its March 2026 programmes, spotlighting the crucial role of art archives in understanding and reinterpreting art history. Presented as part of AAA’s 25th anniversary programme series, At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds is a two-chapter exhibition that gathers eight prominent contemporary artists to reflect on their artistic origins at the age of 25. Part I of the exhibition opens at AAA’s library on 17 March 2026. On 26 March 2026, AAA welcomes renowned Beijing-based artist Zhang Xiaogang as the guest speaker for this year’s Annual Artist’s Lecture. AAA will also launch the publication Hong Kong Art: A Curator’s History (1987–2004) by Oscar Ho, one of Hong Kong’s most influential cultural advocates, at its booth at Art Basel Hong Kong.
Image: Zhang Xiaogang, 1985. Zhang Xiaogang Archive, Asia Art Archive Collections. Courtesy of the artist. For At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds, AAA invites eight contemporary artists from Asia to respond to a seemingly simple question: What were you like at 25? Part Ifeatures Ho Tzu Nyen, Tehching Hsieh, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, and Zhang Xiaogang. Bringing together artworks and rare archival materials, the exhibition offers a close reading of these artists’ personal histories, while tracing the cultural environments in various historical periods that have shaped these artists at 25. The presentation also reflects generational shifts: how conditions of learning and access to information have evolved, and how “beginnings” themselves have changed across decades. Besides artist and art institutional records, the exhibition also draws from documentary photography and film, television, radio, and other mass media, as well as government, academic, and personal collections. At 25 further extends the invitation to visitors to reflect on or imagine their own 25th year, allowing them to weave their personal timelines into a much larger cultural and historical continuum. At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds, Part I will be on view at AAA’s library from 17 March to 27 June 2026. Part II will follow from July to October 2026.
Image: Portrait of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook at age 25. Courtesy of the artist. AAA is honoured to host renowned Beijing-based artist Zhang Xiaogang as the distinguished speaker for this year’s Annual Artist’s Lecture on 26 March 2026. Zhang rose to prominence in the 1990s with his iconic figurative and surreal works that explore Chinese history, identity, and collective memory. In 2007, Zhang first collaborated with AAA to digitise his personal archive. As part of AAA’s 25th anniversary celebration, he returns this March to participate in At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds, Part I, and to deliver a lecture reflecting on his archive and his relationship to personal history. On 26 March 2026, a breakfast reception will be held at 10am at AAA’s library, followed by the lecture at 11am. The Annual Artist’s Lecture is generously supported by Octone Foundation, Stephen King, and Jason Zhai. The breakfast reception is supported by Jina Lee.
Image: Portrait of Zhang Xiaogang. Courtesy of the artist. The publication Hong Kong Art: A Curator’s History (1987–2004) will be launched at AAA’s booth at Art Basel Hong Kong. This publication is the first illustrated art historical study of Hong Kong, focusing on the period from 1987 to 2004. A fascinating insider account by curator, artist, art critic, art educator, and leading cultural figure Oscar Ho Hing Kay, the book will be published by Rizzoli International Publications and is supported by AAA in the areas of research, archival material gathering, and translation. AAA’s presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong is generously supported by Christopher K. Ho, Stephen King, and Nelson Leong. Asia Art Archive is a Cultural Partner of Art Basel Hong Kong 2026.
Archive for All: Growing with Communities is generously supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, as well as Mimi Brown & Alp Erçil and Wendy Lee & Stephen Li.
Supported by
The Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.
Media partners for At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds, Part I are ArtReview Asia and The Art Journal.
Programme Schedule
Exhibition | At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds, Part I
17 March–27 June 2026 (Mon–Sat, 10am–6pm)
CCG Library, Asia Art Archive, 11/F Hollywood Centre, 233 Hollywood Road, Sheung WanMedia Tour of the Exhibition
Tuesday, 17 March 2026, 12nn–1pm
CCG Library, Asia Art Archive, 11/F Hollywood Centre, 233 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan
Please RSVP via email to christy@aaa.org.hkAnnual Artist’s Lecture: Zhang Xiaogang
Thursday, 26 March 2026, 10–11am (breakfast reception), 11am–12:30pm (talk)
CCG Library, Asia Art Archive, 11/F Hollywood Centre, 233 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan
Register to attendBook Launch | Hong Kong Art: A Curator’s History
27–29 March 2026
Cultural Partners Area on Level 1 Concourse, Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition CentreAbout the Program
Asia Art Archive (AAA) is an independent non-profit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. With one of the most valuable collections of material on art freely available from its website and onsite library, AAA builds tools and communities to collectively expand knowledge through research, residency, and educational programmes.
(Text and images courtesy of Asia Art Archive)
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Gajah Gallery Presents Suzann Victor’s City Lantern at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026
Poster credit: Gajah Gallery Gajah Gallery is proud to present Suzann Victor’s monumental kinetic installation City Lantern at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026. The work will be shown at Booth EN12, Level 3 as part of Encounters, the sector dedicated to large-scale installations, sculptures, and performances. City Lantern is a reflection on Asia’s evolving urban landscapes, pairing colonial-era photographs with contemporary images into a panoramic, rotating cityscape. Through its field of Fresnel lenses, the region’s histories fracture and recombine — buildings, bodies, and landscapes surfacing and dissolving in shifting constellations.
City Lantern, 2025, (Installation View) At once luminous and disorienting, City Lantern is a 3.6-metre-wide kinetic installation in which a ten-meter photographic mural rotates slowly behind a ring of Fresnel lenses. The composition weaves together approximately sixty architectural sites from across the region, such as the General Post Office, Freemasons Hall, and Tian Tan Buddha in Hong Kong; Binondo Church and shanty houses in Manila; Tiger Pagoda in Taiwan; Temple of Heaven in Beijing; Golden Mile Complex and Roxy Theatre in Singapore, among others. This pictorial narrative maps a visual geography shaped by empire, migration, and aspirations to modernity, where buildings act as palimpsests, bearing the legacies of war, conflict, and the often invisible histories of women.
Detail view of Suzann Victor’s City Lantern (2025) First presented in her 2025 solo show A Thousand Histories at Gajah Gallery Singapore, City Lantern expands upon Victor’s Lens Paintings and Lens-Sculptures body of works, confronting colonial-era photographic and post-card imagery to reclaim space for obscured histories of women and migration. Most of the images refracted through the lenses are drawn from colonial-era photographic records of Southeast Asia, dating to the turn of the 20th century. Comprising studio portraits and postcards — popular forms of visual culture at the time — these photographs reflect racial and social hierarchies that shaped perceptions of the region through a colonial lens.
By bringing City Lantern into the global stage of Encounters at Art Basel Hong Kong, Victor expands the work’s frame of reference. In this context, the lantern becomes more than an optical device: it is a space of encounter where audiences navigate histories of visibility and invisibility, of colonial image-making and its undoing. The very act of seeing is unsettled, made contingent on the viewer’s movement. From one perspective, the panorama might read as a continuous cinematic scroll; from another, it might fracture into a surface of unstable, shifting images. Larger lenses trace the panorama’s clockwise rotation while smaller ones generate counter-rotations, conjuring the uncanny sensation of two directions at once.
Suzann Victor with guests Victor has long defied disciplinary boundaries. From her historic participation at the 6th Havana Biennale—the first time the biennale included an Asian section—to being the first woman artist to represent Singapore at the Venice Biennale in 2001, she has consistently probed the poetics and politics of visibility. Through collaborations with Yogya Art Lab (YAL), Gajah Gallery’s production arm in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, she has expanded her lens sculptures to an architectural scale. Her lens-based explorations also include Sea Lantern II (2025), a commissioned work currently on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia, and Third World Extra Virgin Dreams (1997), first shown at the 1997 Havana Biennale and now in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum.
City Lanten with Guest On the stage of Encounters, City Lantern is presented as a luminous, disorienting archive that transforms colonial images into a kinetic ocean of vision. It asks us to reconsider what it means to look, to remember, and to orient ourselves amidst fractured yet interwoven worlds. In the words of writer Anca Rujoiu, “As in Victor’s other kinetic sculptures, the unmooring perception stems not from engineering complexity but from the quiet force of fundamental optical physics. No single image can be fully seen, consumed, or possessed. There is no fixed vantage point. There is no totalising gaze. The image remains in perpetual motion; it refuses to yield clarity or closure.”
Address
Booth EN12, Level 3, Convention & Exhibition Centre, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, ChinaArtist
Suzann VictorExhibition Dates
March 27 – 29, 2026Website
https://gajahgallery.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/gajahgallery/Contact
art@gajahgallery.comAbout the artist
Image Credits to Gajah Gallery Suzann Victor (b. 1959, Singapore)
Suzann Victor is a Singapore-born, Sydney-based contemporary artist known for prospecting the contours of human sensorial experience, perception and phenomena. Her works activate materials derived from the body, the physics of light, water, sound and lenses, in conjunction with engineered components and the readymade. Through intimate performances, large-scale installations, public artworks and collective labour, Victor creates immersive environments that draw awareness to the viewer’s own body as an investigative tool for apprehending the world at large.The first female artist to represent Singapore at its inaugural showing in the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), she is the concept-developer of 5th Passage, Singapore’s first corporate-sponsored female-artist-run space that set the precedent of reaching out to the public long before “outreach” became a mainstay of local art institutions to come. A leading figure in Singapore’s contemporary art ecology, Victor’s socio-political works are recognised for their critical engagement with the colonial aftermath in Southeast Asia, the politics of female disembodiment and the inversion of the abject.
On environmental concerns, her meteorological installation at the 4th Singapore Biennale employed green technology to produce objectless art – optically conjured with the eye – by inducing natural rainbow arcs to appear within the museum’s rotunda. Its methodological precursor, the Rich Manoeuvre iterations, presented a mid-air calligraphy of twelve live ephemeral drawings rendered by moving lights from swaying chandelier-pendulums – a signature kinetic series whose ocular nature captivated audiences physiologically and psychologically at multiple international venues. This conflation of dynamic image, sumptuous materiality, movement, and multi-tiered concepts epitomises Victor’s oeuvre.
Victor’s works have been commissioned for presentation beyond Venice in notable exhibitions including the 6th Havana Biennale, 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, the 6th Gwangju Biennale, and the 4th Singapore Biennale. As part of the Sunshower Exhibition (Tokyo, 2017), she was invited by the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum for a special artist residency to create a cultural response to the city. Her iconic performance, Still Waters 1998, was honoured 21 years later as the theme of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2019.
She received her MA and BA (First Class Honours) and completed her doctorate in 2009 at the University of Western Sydney, supported by the Australian Postgraduate Award and the UWS Top Up Award. Victor’s works reside in public and private collections worldwide.
About Gajah Gallery
Founded in 1996, Gajah Gallery has developed a sustained, critically engaged commitment to Southeast Asian contemporary art, shaped through long-term collaboration with artists and the region’s leading academics and art historians. Operating across Singapore, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Manila, the gallery presents a rigorous year-round exhibition programme and maintains a strong presence across major regional and international platforms. Its activities extend to long-term research and scholarly engagement, as well as supporting the production of extensive printed publications on seminal artists and collectives, contributing to the scholarship and historiography of Southeast Asian art.
About Yogya Art Lab
Co-founded by Gajah Gallery Director Jasdeep Sandhu and Indonesian artist Yunizar, Yogya Art Lab (YAL) was established to provide artists with a dedicated space to experiment with new mediums and to ensure access to high-quality materials. Over the years, YAL has evolved into a world-class foundry and production house, enabling artists to realise new dimensions in their practice.
(Text and images courtesy of Gajah Gallery)
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Artemin Gallery Presents a Group Exhibition: No Man’s Land
Poster credit: Artemin Gallery Artemin Gallery is pleased to present No Man’s Land, a group exhibition featuring Su Wong-shen, Bram Kinsbergen, and Brian Chen, from March 7 to April 4, 2026, showing works spanning different periods of the three artists’ practices. The exhibition revolves around a psychological and spatial state of “no one,” a shared concern across the three artists:
Is the self “present” or “absent”? In what form does self continue to exist?
Brian Chen, Character 002, 2026, 80 x 60 cm First, the exhibition features the important Taiwanese artist Su Wong-shen, born in 1956 and a graduate of the Department of Fine Arts at Chinese Culture University. Emerging in the late 1980s Taiwan art scene, he worked through a politically charged environment but stayed flexible—both in his art and in his own position—continuously developing his own visual language. He began with hard-edge painting style, and while his style and subject matter have shifted toward landscapes over the years, his mastery of layered color blocks and tactile surfaces remains evident in the works presented here.
Su has long worked on the theme of “local landscapes,” often using a bird’s-eye view, as if observing the land from above. His compositions are restrained and quiet, but frequently contain small, illogical, or subtly humorous details. Unidentifiable animals or odd figures recur within his landscapes. They do not serve a clear narrative and do not correspond to real species—and that is precisely not the point. In all of Su’s works, humans are absent, fully de-emphasized, and species are undefined, yet traces of organic presence remain. This approach turns the landscape into a scene without a protagonist, while prompting reflection: from this low-altitude perspective, you, as the absent subject, may find yourself observing, hovering above, and attending to the land below.
Bram Kinsbergen, born in 1984 in Belgium, focuses on moments that are about to vanish—moments of fleeting, fragile beauty. His work revisits ephemeral beauty, capturing things that are destined to disappear, such as a damaged but still beautiful butterfly or a plant struggling to survive in a crack between paving stones. His paintings are predominantly low in saturation; even when bright yellows or oranges appear, they occupy only a small portion of the composition, while the overall tone remains subdued, restrained, and with a sense of impending instability. His works frequently include elements such as sunsets, palm trees, and water. Water, in particular, is never just a background element; it alters the structure of the painting itself. Rising or expanding water shifts otherwise stable landscapes, creating a subtle but persistent imbalance.
Bram Kinsbergen, Fragments, 2025, Oil and oilsticks on linen, 200 x 250 cm For Kinsbergen, water carries both personal and global significance. Growing up in a family closely connected to boats, water represents lived experience and a sense of security, but against the backdrop of climate change and rising sea levels, it also signals threat and irreversible change. This duality keeps his compositions at a critical point—appearing calm, yet loaded with risk. Palm trees, once symbols of vacation or escape, become drifting objects when surrounded by water. The instability of natural landscapes mirrors the precariousness of human positions—when the environment changes, can people still stand where they once stood?
Brian Chen’s work brings the question back to the human figure. In a contemporary context in which AI has already permeated our everyday life, the boundary between the “real” and the “replicable” becomes blurred. Using a sewing machine, Chen embeds wool, synthetic fibers, and threads into a textile base, creating surfaces that straddle painting and fabric. The three portraits presented in this exhibition deliberately leave the faces blank, removing identifiable features and preventing the viewer from confirming identity through the face. Figures exist in the work, yet are simultaneously absent. When images can be generated, copied, or replaced, how can the self be confirmed? What remains may be no more than a formal outline.
No Man’s Land is about a suspension of identity and position. When we can no longer determine whether we are present or have already been replaced, selfhood is no longer guaranteed but becomes a condition in flux. This suspension, and the precarious state of selfhood it reveals, is the central concern of the exhibition.
Venue
Artemin Gallery (111 1F, No. 32, Ln. 251, Jihe Rd., Shilin Dist., 111, Taipei City, Taiwan)Artists
Su Wong-shen, Bram Kinsbergen, and Brian ChenExhibition Dates
March 7 – April 4, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://www.artemingallery.com/Instagram
www.instagram.com/artemin.gallery/Contact
info@artemingallery.com(Text and images courtesy of Artemin Gallery)
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National Gallery Singapore Presents a Group Exhibition Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise
Poster credit: National Gallery Singapore National Gallery Singapore presents Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise, its first exhibition comparing five groundbreaking Southeast Asian artists whose practices reshaped artistic and social norms across the region. Opening 9 January 2026, the exhibition gathers more than 45 major artworks by and over 110 rarely seen archival materials of Amanda Heng, Dolorosa Sinaga, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Nirmala Dutt, and Phaptawan Suwannakudt; many which are being presented in Singapore for the first time.
Spanning performance, painting, photography, sculpture, and archival materials, Fear No Power offers a rare comparative perspective on how these women used art not only as a form of expression to challenge dominant cultural narratives, but as a means of social engagement, resistance, and collective care. Beyond their individual artistic practices, these five artists have played influential roles as educators, writers, organisers, and community builders whose work shaped cultural conversations within and beyond the art world. Working across overlapping decades from the 1960s to the 2020s, these artists developed their practices during a period when women in Southeast Asia were navigating deeply entrenched patriarchal norms. Artistic and cultural fields were largely male dominated, with women’s roles often confined to the domestic sphere, and issues such as care work, reproductive labour, political dissent, and gendered violence were marginalised or rendered invisible in public discourse. Against this backdrop, the artists in Fear No Power used art to challenge who could speak, what could be represented, and whose experiences were considered worthy of attention.
Ms Horikawa Lisa, Director, Curatorial & Collections at National Gallery Singapore says, “Across Southeast Asia, artists have exercised power through art that was grounded in lived experience. Fear No Power foregrounds how women have long used artistic practice to respond to social and political realities, and to imagine ways of living and working otherwise. This exhibition reflects the Gallery’s ongoing commitment to recognising diverse perspectives and placing such long-overlooked narratives at the centre of our shared understanding of art.”
Installation view of Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise, National Gallery Singapore, 2026, Image courtesy of National Gallery Singapore In their respective countries, each of these women is recognised as a prominent figure who reshaped artistic practices and social conversations across Southeast Asia:
● Amanda Heng is a critical voice in Singapore’s contemporary art scene. Through performance, photography, and participatory works, she created spaces for dialogue around identity, gendered social expectations, and the value of housework, inviting audiences to reflect critically on the dynamics of everyday life.
● Dolorosa Sinaga is widely regarded as one of Indonesia’s most important sculptors and a leading advocate for human rights. Drawing from the country’s cultural and political landscape, her figurative sculptures foreground unacknowledged histories, shared struggles, and collective resilience, with women often positioned at the centre of resistance and solidarity.
● Imelda Cajipe Endaya is a key figure in Philippine art and co-founder of the feminist art collective KASIBULAN (est. 1987). Her multidisciplinary practice, spanning printmaking, painting, collage, and mixed media, recasts women as active, conscious subjects engaged with the social, political, and cultural conditions of the Philippines.
● Nirmala Dutt addressed the social and environmental costs of urban development in Malaysia, focusing on the lived struggles of women, children, and indigenous communities. Through painting and photography, her socially engaged works challenged environmental injustice and expanded the role of the artist as a civic actor.
● Phaptawan Suwannakudt, trained in Thai Buddhist mural painting, works with memory, tradition, and the gendered structures embedded within artistic lineages. By reinterpreting this visual language, she expanded a traditionally male-dominated practice
to reflect women’s experiences, migration, and lived histories.
Installation view of Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise, National Gallery Singapore, 2026, Image courtesy of National Gallery Singapore By bringing these five figures together, Fear No Power positions them not only as artists, but as trailblazers whose practices shaped artistic and social conversations across Southeast Asia, and whose legacies continue to resonate today. The exhibition title is drawn from Dolorosa Sinaga’s sculpture on display Fear No Power (2003) and celebrates the artists’ fearlessness in their artistic journeys. It aims to remind that ‘power’ not only refers to the political and authoritarian, but to one’s own inner strength and capacity for resistance, care, and responsibility to others. By extension, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on what courage might mean to them, and how that strength can be extended to the communities they inhabit.
Presented across three interconnected zones, the exhibition traces how the artists’ practices moved between personal experience, resistance, and collective action. Where the Body Thinks, Worlds Open begins with works rooted in lived experience, reflecting on the body, memory, domestic space, and artistic inheritance as these artists navigated gendered expectations. The second zone, Refusal and Hope, examines how these personal perspectives informed the artists’ responses to wider political, environmental, and social issues. The works bear witness to women’s often overlooked participation in public life and address inequality, displacement, and social change through acts of resistance grounded in everyday realities. The exhibition concludes with Imagining Otherwise, which highlights how these artists’ work and commitments extended beyond individual artmaking, building collectives, sustaining traditions, and creating spaces for dialogue, support, and solidarity.
By bringing together these five artistic practices in these different zones, Fear No Power invites visitors to engage closely with the works, uncover their layered meanings, and see how each artist drew on her own lived context to challenge gendered norms in art and everyday life – reimagining both inner and outer worlds on her own terms.
Installation view of Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise, National Gallery Singapore, 2026, Image courtesy of National Gallery Singapore Venue
1 St Andrew’s Road, Singapore 178957Artists
Amanda Heng, Dolorosa Sinaga, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Nirmala Dutt, and Phaptawan SuwannakudtExhibition Dates
January 9 – November 15, 2026Gallery Hours
Daily| 10 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.nationalgallery.sgInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/nationalgallerysingapore/Contact
https://www.nationalgallery.sg/sg/en/contactAbout National Gallery Singapore
National Gallery Singapore is a leading visual arts institution and the largest modern and contemporary art museum in Southeast Asia. Dedicated to making art accessible to all, the Gallery engages audiences of all ages through its exhibitions, educational programmes, and public festivals.
Home to the world’s largest public collection of Singapore and Southeast Asian art, the Gallery is redefining the region’s art history through pioneering research, strategic acquisitions, and thoughtfully curated exhibitions. By offering new perspectives, it recontextualises the region’s artistic contributions within global narratives.
Located in the heart of the Civic District, the Gallery is housed in two national monuments – the City Hall and former Supreme Court – making it an iconic cultural landmark where architectural grandeur meets deep historical significance.
A vibrant cultural destination, the Gallery has been ranked among Asia’s Top 10 most visited museums by The Art Newspaper since 2019. It has also received accolades at the Singapore Tourism Awards, including “Best Leisure Event” for Light to Night Festival 2020 and “Outstanding Leisure Event” for Gallery Children’s Biennale 2021.
As a registered Charity and an Institute of Public Character, the Gallery relies on public support to expand its collection, advance research, and bring art to more people, shaping cultural discourse and inspiring creativity for generations to come.
(Text and images courtesy of National Gallery Singapore)
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Arario Gallery Presents Contemporary Art Works at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026
Poster credit: Arario Gallery ARARIO GALLERY will participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, taking place from March 25 to 29, 2026 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
At this edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, ARARIO GALLERY aims to present an expanded landscape of contemporary Asian art through artists who explore a wide range of issues—from identity and history to materiality, digital imagery, and embodied sensation—based on distinct thematic focuses and experimental approaches to media.
Kohei NAWA, PixCell-Toy-Plum Blossom, 2026, Mixed Media, 27 x 27 x 36 (h) cm In this presentation, artists exploring identity, space, and narratives of migration will be featured. CHEN Yujun(b. 1976, China), one of the most influential figures in Chinese contemporary art, closely connects personal emotions with his hometown and investigates themes of family, identity, and space through intergenerational experiences of migration. In his recent series L’Étranger, he juxtaposes abandoned architectural spaces with the encroachment of nature, metaphorically reflecting fragmented senses of belonging in the era of globalization. HU Yun(b. 1986, China) reconstructs historical fragments and personal memories within a contemporary context, and through his Palm series visualizes intersections of colonial history, globalization, and the commodification of nature. SHIH Yung Chun(b. 1978, Taiwan) draws on the social landscapes of 1980s Taiwan, incorporating toys and vintage packaging to create narratives where mass-produced imagery intersects with personal memory. PARK Wunggyu(b. 1987, Korea) explores the painterly possibilities of East Asian painting by constructing symbolic formal orders of positivity and negativity through subjects that evoke ambivalent emotions. He reconfigures Buddhist painting motifs, insects, and internal organs to juxtapose sublimity and repulsion, generating an ambiguous sensory experience on the pictorial plane.
LEE Jinju, Relation-Darkness at Noon, 2026, Handmade LEE Jeongbae black, powdered pigment, animal skin glue and water on unbleached cotton, 60 x 50 cm Alongside this, the exhibition also highlights explorations of material properties and bodily intervention. MA Lingli(b. 1989, China) uses traditional silk as her primary medium, combining “pinching” and spray techniques to record bodily traces and transform them back into a flat surface, visualizing the accumulation of time and gesture. LEE Jinju(b. 1980, Korea) blends traditional East Asian painting techniques with contemporary sensibilities, meticulously depicting scenes where memory and the unconscious intersect. Through her Shaped Canvas and Black Painting series, she reveals multilayered structures of time, space, and perspective, condensing sensory intensity within highly detailed imagery. BEAK Jungki(b. 1981, Korea) combines scientific experimentation with artistic imagination to explore the essence of materials and the flow of energy. His is of series, which prints images using pigments extracted from plants collected in nature, foregrounds the material presence of the natural world.
Yuki SAEGUSA, In the Forest, 2026, Oil, tempera, pen on canvas, 130 x 162 cm Furthermore, the exhibition highlights the intersection of tradition and contemporary thinking. LEE Ufan(b. 1936, Korea), a master who has long explored the relationships between objects, space, and presence through a restrained visual language of points and lines, presents works from his Correspondence series, in which minimal interventions generate moments of tension and resonance. Kohei NAWA(b. 1975, Japan) combines the minimal unit of digital imagery with the concept of biological cells in his PixCell series, exploring relationships between the natural and the artificial, and the individual and the collective. Yuki SAEGUSA(b. 1987, Japan) references traditional Japanese landscape painting and Flemish painting to meticulously construct “nowhere” scenes where personal memory and imagination overlap.
PARK Wunggyu, Body No. 10, 2025, Pigment on hemp, 135 x 60 cm Meanwhile, works addressing digital environments, ritual elements, and embodied sensation will also be presented. Aokizy(b. 1988, Korea) expands the tension between infinitely reproducible digital images and the uniqueness of artworks into painting and sculpture. Yohan HÀN(b. 1983, Korea) invokes bodily action and ritualistic sensibility through drums made from animal hides, questioning the relevance of tactile experience in an era where physical presence is diminished. Buen CALUBAYAN(b. 1980, Philippines) critically examines the intersections of art, labor, and education from the standpoint of contradictions embedded in Filipino identity, reconfiguring institutionalized visual systems.ARARIO GALLERY will present the works of CHEN Yujun(b. 1976), BEAK Jungki(b. 1981), LEE Jinju(b. 1980), HU Yun(b. 1986), PARK Wunggyu(b. 1987), Yuki SAEGUSA(b. 1987), LEE Ufan(b. 1936), Kohei NAWA(b. 1975), MA Lingli(b. 1989), SHIH Yung Chun(b. 1978), Aokizy(b. 1988), Yohan HÀN(b. 1983), and Buen CALUBAYAN(b. 1980) at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026. Through the multilayered practices of these Asia-based artists, the gallery will showcase the complexity and expanded horizons of contemporary Asian art on the international stage.
Address
Booth 1D19, Convention & Exhibition Centre, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, ChinaArtist
Aokizy, BEAK Jungki, Buen CALUBAYAN, CHEN Yujun, HU Yun, Kohei NAWA, LEE Jinju, LEE Ufan, MA Lingli, PARK Wunggyu, SHIH Yung Chun, Yohan HÀN, Yuki SAEGUSAExhibition Dates
March 27 – 29, 2026Website
https://www.arariogallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/arariogallery_official/Contact
info@arariogallery.com(Text and images courtesy of Artists and ARARIO GALLERY)
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Interview | Hangzhou-Based Artist Liu Yi
Liu Yi, born in 1990 in Ningbo, Zhejiang, graduated from the China Academy of Art in 2016 with a master’s degree. She currently lives and works in Hangzhou. Working primarily with ink animation, she integrates video installation, music, and theatrical elements to explore how the language of ink can be transformed within contemporary visual technologies and perceptual structures. Her practice focuses on the subtle and often concealed interactions between individual perception and the surrounding environment, investigating emotional rhythms and psychological states that lie beneath everyday experience—frequently overlooked yet widely shared. Through nonlinear, slow, and repetitive image structures, she dismantles linear narratives and singular subject perspectives, revealing the interwoven relationships among time, memory, and reality.
In recent years, her research has expanded toward non-human life forms and ecological systems. Through sustained investigations into fungi and subterranean ecologies, she reflects on how life continues through symbiosis and collaboration under conditions of uncertainty and disorder, thereby constructing a perceptual space that exists between reality and dream, and between the surface and the underground.
Her video and installation works have been exhibited at major museums and institutions worldwide, including Tate Modern (London), Seoul Museum of Art, Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Ichihara Lakeside Museum (Japan), Messe Basel (Switzerland), Tai Kwun (Hong Kong), the Nieuwe Instituut (the Netherlands), Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Macao Museum of Art, venues in Tallinn (Estonia) and Nicosia (Cyprus), New Chitose Airport (Japan), CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, Hong Kong), Zhejiang Art Museum, and Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Art Museum, among others.
In 2025, Liu Yi was commissioned by the Nieuwe Instituut (the Netherlands) to create the work “Matsutake Lead the Way”. In 2024, she was specially commissioned by the Ichihara Lakeside Museum (Japan) to produce the ink animation short “Nice to Meet You はじめまして”. Also in 2024, When I Fell Asleep, “My Dream comes” received the Best Animated Work Award in the Mini Film Unit of the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival. “The Earthly Men” won the Gold Award of the UOB “Emerging Artist of the Year.” In 2017, following its selection and screening at the Holland Animation Film Festival, “A Crow Has Been Calling for a Whole Day” received the Jury Special Recommendation Award at the Huashidai Global Short Film Festival. In 2018, she was invited by the Seoul Museum of Art to participate in the “SeMA Nanji” artist residency. In 2019, she was invited to an artist residency at the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud in France, served as a jury member of the Cyprus Animation Film Festival, and completed a solo residency exhibition in Cyprus.
Her works are held in the collections of institutions including the ASE Foundation, the White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), the East Asia Library of Stanford University, M+ Museum (Hong Kong), and the Power Station of Art (Shanghai).
Matsutake Lead the Way, 2025, Single-channel animation, ink animation, 9 minutes 30 seconds Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
I entered the Affiliated High School of the China Academy of Art and went on to complete both my undergraduate and graduate studies at the China Academy of Art. During those years, many influential contemporary artists came to teach at the academy, and I was continually exposed to new ideas, media, and ways of thinking.
The most important turning point came in my sophomore year, when Professor Yang Fudong assigned us a class project: to draw the storyboard for the film Infernal Affairs. It involved more than 800 frames, all to be completed within just three days. I chose to execute it in ink painting, and the result received high praise. Encouraged by my teacher, I then began experimenting with my first ink animation, Origin of Species, which also became my undergraduate graduation project and received very positive feedback. After that, I went on to create a series of ink animation works, including Chaos Theory, The Earthly Men, and A Travel Inward.
Ink animation is a particularly fascinating medium to me because it allows painting to enter the dimension of time. From there, my practice gradually expanded into animation, video, and installation, with space itself becoming part of the narrative.
So for me, becoming an artist was never the result of a single decision or moment. When observing, expressing, and recording gradually become part of one’s daily rhythm, making art becomes a process that unfolds naturally.
When I Fall Asleep, My Dream Comes, 2023, Single-channel animation, 4 minutes 15 seconds What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?
In my practice, I have long been concerned with the hidden and subtle relationship between individual perception and the surrounding environment. I am particularly interested in the emotional rhythms and psychological states that lie beneath everyday experience—those that are often overlooked, yet widely shared. More often than not, these states do not emerge in dramatic form; rather, they seep quietly and gradually into daily life. Through my work, I hope to make this faint yet persistent vibration visible.
I am interested in how time is perceived, rather than how it is recorded. In my work, time often appears as cyclical, overlapping, or even suspended; memory and reality are layered onto one another, while past and present continuously permeate each other.
Another central theme in my practice is non-human life and ecological systems. Through my ongoing research into fungi and subterranean ecologies, I have begun to reflect on how life continues through symbiosis and collaboration under conditions of uncertainty, and even disorder. The underground mycelial network has offered me a new structural imagination: it has no center, yet remains highly interconnected; it is concealed, yet constantly at work.
When I Fall Asleep, My Dream Comes Animated Original Script, 2023, Ink on Xuan paper, original painting from animation video, ink on Chan Yi Chinese rice paper, light box, 20.5(H) x 35.5 x 5 cm, 2 pieces | IMAGE 20 x 34 cm What inspired you to use Chinese mythology as a framework for your work?
What draws me to Chinese mythology is not its decorative significance as a cultural symbol, but the worldview embedded within it. It does not rigidly separate humans, nature, animals, mountains, rivers, and the cosmos; instead, it places all things within a fluid and mutually permeable network of relations—a way of “touching” the universe through the body and the imagination.
Morning and Dusk, and No More, 2019 ~ 2025, Single-channel animation, 20 minutes What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?
In the early stages, I usually enter a relatively structured process of reading, research, interviews, scriptwriting, and storyboarding. Once I move into the actual making, however, the rhythm becomes quieter and more personal. Painting and frame-by-frame animation require intense concentration and repetitive labor; in itself, this is a state close to a kind of daily practice or discipline. Many images, sounds, or spatial arrangements are not precisely planned in advance, but gradually emerge during the process of making. I am willing to follow these shifts, because they often lead to more truthful results.
Nice to Meet You, はじめまして30, 2024, Ink on silk, 26(H) x 36 x 7.5 cm (in 2 pieces) Your practice engages ideas of liberty, inclusivity, and multiplicity. How do these concepts take shape in your work?
What concerns me more is how to leave space for the viewer. For me, freedom first takes shape in form: I try to avoid offering clear conclusions or a single fixed interpretation. I am drawn to open endings, and I like to let the viewer complete the work within silence. That kind of unregulated way of seeing is, in itself, a form of freedom.
As for inclusivity, I believe everyone can find their own place within a work. I pay attention to ordinary people, everyday moments, and subtle emotions. Precisely because these things are not exaggerated, they are often more easily understood by people from different backgrounds. A work does not need to speak on behalf of the viewer; it only needs to leave room for them to enter.
Multiplicity, meanwhile, comes from reality itself. Reality is never singular. A scene can contain both sorrow and humor at once; a conversation can be both genuine and performed. I often blur the boundary between documentation and fiction, allowing different layers of reality to coexist at the same time. Life itself is multiple; I simply try not to reduce it.
I want space, silence, and uncertainty to become part of the work itself. Freedom, inclusivity, and multiplicity often emerge naturally within these gaps.
Origin of Species, 2013, Single-channel animation, 5 minutes 5 seconds What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?
One of my current major projects, Matsutake Lead the Way, was created in collaboration with anthropologist Shiho Satsuka. Commissioned by the Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands, it is currently on view in the exhibition FUNGI: Anarchist Designers. The project was developed with guidance from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Feifei Zhou, and scientist Toshimitsu Fukiharu.
The work centers on how matsutake mushrooms shape landscapes. Matsutake cannot be artificially cultivated, yet they form symbiotic relationships with Japanese red pine in disturbed, nutrient-poor soils, helping to drive forest regeneration. From the perspective of matsutake, the history of Japanese forests can be understood as a recurring cycle of disturbance and recovery. Matsutake are not only participants in the ecosystem; they also reveal the complex and fragile symbiotic relationships between humans and non-humans.
The work is currently on view at the Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands, and I warmly welcome visitors to see it.
A Travel Inward, 2015, 4 minutes 30 seconds Text and photo courtesy of Liu Yi
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liuyiart/
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Tang Contemporary Art Presents The Garden of Humans: Gao Hang Solo Exhibition
Poster credit: Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok In Christian art and literature, the garden is a sacred space. From the Garden of Eden in Genesis, it serves as a complex symbol concerning the origin of human existence, the awakening of knowledge, moral choice, eternal loss, and spiritual return. In the modern era, the garden motif continues to embody the enduring pursuit of beauty while also becoming intertwined with critiques of social class. However, as Yi-Fu Tuan argues, the garden is by no means a gift of nature or divine providence, but rather a man-made creation. Its seemingly harmless, playful atmosphere, exquisite aesthetics, and religious connotations successfully conceal its reliance on power.
Gao Hang creates paintings using an airbrush, blending visual styles such as 3D-rendered models, low-pixel aesthetics, and vector polygons. On fluorescent, solid-colored canvases reminiscent of system default backgrounds, he simulates the aesthetic texture of early digital screens. Titled The Garden of Humans, the exhibition literally showcases Gao Hang’s observations of contemporary humanity: a vibrant collection of self-presentations in which people on social media compete for attention like flowers vying to outshine one another. It is also a virtual garden, a hybrid space interweaving diverse cultural objects and specimens from art history. The gallery itself becomes a simulator that emphasizes the garden’s artificiality, attempting to alert viewers to the underlying power structures within the digital realm while prompting reflection on propositions of authenticity and truth in the construction of civilization and technological development.
Within the exhibition space, Gao Hang’s figure paintings each occupy their own territory on the walls, displaying their postures to the fullest extent. From the fashionable fusion of traditional Asian medical treatment and modern mental illness within a Western social context depicted in Acupuncture Cures Depression, to the sexualized display of the body in Angel of the Day, the gallery embodies the artist’s abstract insights into mass behavior on social media: “In this infinitely expanding network volume, radiant personalities with ‘fluorescent colors’ compete for attention, using exaggerated and peculiar postures to retain fleeting traffic.” This phenomenon corresponds to what Byung-Chul Han calls a “carnival of display”: in a display society driven by traffic, individuals who appear to be freely expressing themselves are, in reality, engaged in voluntary self-exploitation and compulsive performances of “authenticity.” When people constantly require recognition from others to validate their own existence and value, display itself becomes alienated into a form of performance and labor. The stiff, sharply defined figures in Gao Hang’s works are products of this “compulsion for authenticity.” The incongruity and affectation revealed in their movements stem from the distortion caused by friction between individual vitality and digital discipline. This garden of humans thus becomes a microcosm of contemporary meritocracy: seemingly vibrant flowers bloom, yet each is invisibly pruned by the shears of an algorithmic gardener, forming a lifeless, plastic flowerbed. As the boundary between displayed life and real life becomes increasingly blurred, the very concept of reality itself grows ever more suspect.
Gao Hang’s Garden of Humans is also a site where time and space intermingle. Different historical periods intersect with fragments of contemporary life, assembled and displayed within imagined scenes. Continuing his core concept of “Digital Primitivism,” the artist employs the visual language of the early stages of virtual civilization. Through a process that resembles archaeological excavation and parody within art history, the visual archive of human emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and desires, he attempts to unearth obscured clues about the human condition in contemporary life. Viewers navigate hybrid samples from different stages of civilization from a perspective akin to a 3D game: Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon transformed into Les Demoiselles d’Playstationtwo; ancient sculptures unearthed in early modern Italy reappearing in So Ancient Romans Don’t Have Noses; and microcosms of contemporary culture concerning youth, race, and sociality interwoven throughout. This approach reminds us that art history itself is a constructed and critiqued artifact, one that systematically integrates continuity within change and difference, while also attempting to explain change through continuity.
An Ancient OX offers a direct representation of Gao Hang’s “cave painting for internet civilization.” The hunting scenes on the walls of the Lascaux caves mirror humanity’s primal impulse for new modes of expression. It is precisely during moments of technological rupture or transformation in painting methods that humanity’s most authentic needs and responses are revealed. Here, art history and the history of technological development intertwine, compelling viewers to return to Gao Hang’s civilizational self-awareness, termed “Digital Primitivism”: how do new technological media shape our ways of seeing, understanding, and representing the world? Can the legacy of early digital culture become a vessel for reflecting on contemporary technological alienation? In today’s era of rapidly evolving AI technology, Gao Hang endows the history of digital civilization with a cultural-anthropological dimension, attempting to preserve the pioneering spirit and primal passion of early technological development within the broader understanding of civilizational progress.
In his new work Head Study, Gao Hang introduces the act of drawing, juxtaposing rough, multi-angle 3D-rendered heads with blurred handwritten marks. The former is generated by algorithms, while the latter constitutes the physical trace left by the artist’s repeated contemplation and experimentation. This contrast gives rise to a sharper existential inquiry concerning our credence in the world we inhabit. As the very existence of truth has been challenged by thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard and Nick Bostrom, viewers are confronted with a fundamental question: is the reality we perceive, and the life we live, merely part of a grander simulation? As the world on screen evolves from crude representation to verisimilitude, Gao Hang perceives that both technology and painting, in this context, become tools, or byproducts, of self-exploration. Even if our world were merely a virtual construct created by a higher life form, this paradoxically renders “the world before our eyes” sufficiently real: it is the only world accessible to us, and therefore deserving of deep study and understanding. Through this lens, we may recalibrate our credence in the nature of reality itself. Gao Hang’s virtual garden of spectacle, a hybrid space of cultural codes, is inherently absurd and playful, like a glitch flashing within consistency and continuity. By deliberately creating these subtle ruptures, the artist allows viewers to glimpse a space closer to the harsh truths underlying the development of technological civilization.
Venue
Room 201 – 206, River City Bangkok, 23 Soi Charoenkrung 24, Talad Noi, Sampantawong, Bangkok, 10100Artists
Gao HangExhibition Dates
7 March – 19 April, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.tangcontemporary.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/tangcontemporaryartbangkokContact
bkk@tangcontemporary.comAbout the Artist
Gao Hang
b. 1991, Bao Ding, ChinaGao Hang (Born in 1991) is a Chinese artist now living and working in Houston, TX. Gao illustrates modern human online behaviors with a sense of humor and absurdity while ironically commenting on people’s need for constant gratification on digital screens. His recent solo exhibitions were shown in major galleries in America, Asia, and Europe, including The Hole Gallery in New York, US; Waluso Gallery in London, UK; Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing, China; Pulpo Gallery in Murnau, Germany; and L21 Gallery in Palma, Spain. Gao’s artworks and articles were covered in global publications such as L’Officiel, Art Forum, The Art News, Art in America, Hypebeast, VICE and RADII.
About Tang Contemporary Art
Since its founding in Bangkok in 1997, Tang Contemporary Art has opened 8 spaces in Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul and Singapore to promote the development of experimental art in different regions. In the past 28 years, Tang Contemporary Art has organized groundbreaking exhibitions in its gallery spaces, and also cooperated with important art institutions in China and abroad to accomplish outstanding art projects. The gallery strives to initiate dialogue between artists, curators, collectors and institutions working both locally and internationally. A roster of groundbreaking exhibitions has earned Tang Contemporary Art internationally renowned recognition, establishing its status as a pioneer of the contemporary art scene in Asia.
As one of China’s most influential contemporary art platforms, Tang Contemporary Art maintains a high standard of exhibition programming. Tang Contemporary Art represents or collaborates with leading figures in international contemporary art, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan, Zhu Jinshi, Chen Danqing, Liu Qinghe, Liu Xiaodong, Chen Shaoxiong, Wang Yuping, Shen Ling, Shen Liang, Wu Yi, Xia Xiaowan, He Duoling, Mao Xuhui, Wang Huangsheng, Yang Jiechang, Tan Ping, Wang Du，Yan Lei, Yue Minjun, Wang Jianwei, Yangjiang Group, Zheng Guogu, Lin Yilin, Sun Yuan&Peng Yu, Qin Ga, Wang Qingsong, Yin Zhaoyang, Feng Yan, Guo Wei, Chen Wenbo, Ling Jian, Qin Qi, Yang Yong, Peng Wei, He An, Zhao Zhao, Xu Qu, Chen Yujun, Chen Yufan, Xue Feng, Cai Lei, Li Qing, Wang Sishun, Xu Xiaoguo, Lí Wei, Liu Yujia, Wu Wei, Yang Bodu, You Yong, Li Erpeng, Jade Ching-yuk Ng, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Adel Abdessemed, Niki de Saint Phalle, AES+F , Michael Zelehosk, Jonas Burgert, Christian Lemmerz, Michael Kvium, Sakarin Krue-On, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Natee Utarit, Kitti Narod, Gongkan, Entang Wiharso, Heri Dono, Nam June Paik, Park Seungmo, Jae Yong Kim, Diren Lee, Dinh Q. Lê, Rodel Tapaya, Jigger Cruz, Ayka Go, Raffy Napay, H.H.Lim, Etsu Egami, etc.
(Text and images courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art)
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Asian Art Contemporary Presents Group Exhibition: Time Lag
Poster credit: Asian Art Contemporary Time Lag indicates the interval between one arrival and the not yet arrival of the next. It is a common calculation among the travelers, especially those crossing borders, literal and metaphorical; the expected synchronization that never fully arrives. It is not simply a depiction of “in-betweenness,” nor is it emphasis of difference. It reflects a quasi-arrival yet a keen desire for complete transition, colliding with the ambiguity and disorientation derived from a partial absence.
The exhibition, Time Lag, traces three stages of this longing: the liminality between dreams and reality, between collective memory and individual diasporic narrative, and between the rationality and chaos.
Dream and Reality: From The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean, where a poor rural boy trades his only cow for a handful of magic beans that grow into a beanstalk reaching the clouds, to Sigrid Qian’s thorned stalk canvases, in which goose-yellow yet mysterious forms stretch toward interstellar space. In essence, this section opens a threshold between fantasy and materiality. The works resonate with the sensation of an arrived reality shadowed by vague delusions that repeatedly surface in the subconscious. Surreal imagery and fragmented narratives challenge our understanding of what it means to arrive.
Collective Memory and Individual Narrative: The artists in this section present aspirations and struggles embedded in transitional phases of cultural hybridity. Rooted in the Asian art diaspora, the exhibition carries forward narratives shaped by collective memory and mother tongue yet refracted through individual experience. Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s video work presents the crucial and provocative process through which society “tames” the gendered body, symbolized by the saddle-like braided hair. In Yezi Lou’s canvases, gazes turn back toward lived experience and childhood imagery—Pokémon and Ultraman—now estranged and alienated. Hannah Bang’s performance also reveals the presence of creativity within her embodied experience as she navigates new environments and communities. What remains is an embodied sensation of displacement, a condition in which, like many in the Asian diaspora, is persistently regarded as the perpetual foreigner.
Rationality and Chaos: Time Lag also moves beyond temporal transition to examine spatial perception. Material and geometric objects exist within rational space, yet perceived space becomes unstable and disordered. Through works by Shuai Xu, moments of geometric clarity coexist with fragmented installations, reflecting a world that oscillates between order and disorientation.
The exhibition begins at Sasse Museum, yet its inquiry extends far beyond the site. It invites viewers to look back at the transitions unfolding in the present, between arrival and absence.
Text by Huixian Dong, Ph.D.
Exhibition Dates
March 4 – 31, 2026Venue
300 South Thomas Street, Pomona, CA 91766Curator
Huixian Dong, Ph.D.Artists
Hannah Bang, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Yezi Lou, Sigrid Qian, Shuai XuCuratorial Assistant
Xinyue Zhang, Jianing LuProducer
Webson JiGallery Hours
Friday – Sunday | 1 PM – 4 PMSupport
Asian Artists Center, Sasse Museum of ArtWebsite
https://asianartcontemporary.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/asianartcontemporaryContact
info@asianartcontemporary.comFurther read
(Text and images courtesy of Asian Art Contemporary)
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Interview | Seoul and Edinburgh-based Artist Dakyo Oh
Dakyo Oh is an artist based in Seoul and Edinburgh who explores the relationship between nature and human existence through the primordial medium of soil. Her practice began with an interest in the cosmic depth and energy she perceived in the soil of a small flowerpot while tending to plants.
For Oh, soil is more than just a material; it is the foundation of a cycle where all life originates and returns, as well as a condensation of accumulated time. By layering and scraping materials such as soil, sand, and mineral pigments onto the canvas, she captures the rhythm of nature as it forms and dissolves shapes over time. Vivid scenes sensed in daily life, such as the traces of waves or the reflection of a forest on damp ground, are translated into a visual language that is both tactile and serene through the texture of earth. Recently, she has been observing the shifts in nature amidst climate change, delicately recording the finite beauty of life as it transforms and fades through the temporality and locality of soil. Through this process, Oh invites us to recover the natural senses we have lost and opens a window through which we can breathe with the world.
Oh received her BA in Plastic Arts from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and her MFA in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University. Her major exhibitions include the solo shows Earthlike (Carin Gallery, 2024), Undine (Seojung Art, 2023), and am is are (Pipe Gallery, 2022). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Even on the Day the Waiting Ends (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, 2025), and A Sonnet for the Earth (Seongnam Cube Art Museum, 2024).
Love all dying things II – VI, 2024, Soil, sand and pigment on hemp cloth, 194 x 131 cm (each), Courtesy of Seongnam Cube Art Museum Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
Looking back at my childhood, I remember myself spending hours alone in a quiet room with a view of the mountains. Whether I was playing the piano or painting, immersing myself in those emotions felt less like loneliness and more like an exciting journey. A particularly special encounter with art happened during elementary school, when my homeroom teacher, a master of intangible cultural heritage, taught us the Four Gracious Plants (Sagunja) every morning.
Around that time, I began to feel a deep sense of wonder at the fact that while I could see everyone else’s face, I could never directly see my own. This visual limitation of not being able to essentially face myself led to an exploration of the roots of existence. It brought me face-to-face with fundamental questions about memories before birth and the boundary between life and death. I have lived with a constant inquiry into where I came from, where I am going, and the very nature of being.
While studying art history and philosophy in college, I realized that these ontological explorations from my childhood, once dismissed as mere eccentricities, were actually the source of inspiration in the world of art. I became convinced that the act of questioning and this inherent disposition would serve as the foundation to sustain and expand my path as an artist, which has allowed me to continue my work to this day.
Even on the day when waiting ends, 2025, Installation view at Gyeonggji Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Photo by Bak Hyongryol, Courtesy of GMoMA What inspired you to use earth as a material for thinking about life, time, and return?
Gardening is one of my hobbies, so I’ve always had many pots on my desk. One day, while repotting, I looked down into a pot filled only with soil, without a plant. The color and texture of the earth, which I had usually regarded as mere dust, felt exceptionally deep. I was struck by a sense of wonder at the invisible power of the earth that nurtures countless forms of life.
This thought connected with the biblical passage that humans were made of dust, leading me to see earth in a new light as the material of the Creator. I was more interested in the earth that contains a living spirit rather than the earth itself. Just as plants and animals return to the ground when life fades, I believe earth is a material with deep layers that embrace the beginning and end of all existence. Seeing how the earth silently accepts even the ugliness of the world, I felt a sense of anticipation for what unexpected things this material would produce. To me, earth is like a vessel for life. I began my work because I wanted to capture the invisible traces of the soul through this medium.
Reflective I, 2023, Sand, charcoal and pigment on hemp cloth, 194 x 131 cm, Courtesy of Artist You often work with sand, mineral pigments, charcoal, and other natural substances—how does your process unfold from beginning to end?
The work begins with sourcing soil from a specific region. I sift coarse soil by hand to prepare it evenly. Then I secure hemp cloth or linen onto a sturdy canvas or wooden panel as a support. For mixing materials, I use agyo, which is a traditional medium in East Asian painting. This natural adhesive extracted from animal bones firmly bonds the earth or pigments to the surface. I melt the glue on the prepared support and apply a thin mixture of soil, sand, charcoal, and pigments. Sometimes I scratch the surface with nails or spatulas, building up layers through this repeated process of painting and scratching.
Installation view at Eoul Art Center, 2025, Daegu, Courtesy of Eoul Art Center In your recent works, you respond to changes in nature shaped by climate conditions. How have these transformations influenced your perspective as an artist?
Actually, I did not start working on themes related to the climate crisis from the beginning. I simply loved nature and expressed the meaning and naturalness of natural materials, but receiving an exhibition proposal from a museum became a turning point. My work on nature naturally aligned with the discourse on the climate crisis, and this prompted me to contemplate the topic more deeply.
However, as an artist standing before this huge theme, I honestly felt a great sense of helplessness. I wondered what impact my work could have when everyone already knows about the crisis, and I worried about creating more waste. During that time, I happened to reread the poems of Yun Dong-ju, whom I have always admired. His heart, feeling ashamed of poems written easily during the tragic colonial era and vowing to embrace all dying things, resonated deeply with the small light within my helplessness. I felt that his sincere sensitivity reaching us today provides as much resonance as a struggle, even if it was not a direct visible action. Based on the inspiration from the poet’s attitude, I started the work titled Love All Dying Things, which became my own perspective on the climate crisis.
I consider recording the unique appearance of this era amidst a rapidly changing nature as a small mission, much like the poet writing his verses with a humble heart. With the thought that the nature we face now might be the last, I am archiving with a heart that treasures every moment in the face of an uncertain future.
Detail of Framed, 2025, Soil, sand and pigment on hemp cloth, frame, 196 x 99 cm, Courtesy of Eoul Art Center What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?
Since the experiences of viewers are infinite, I do not want to set a fixed answer. However, speaking from my experience, I learned a perspective to look at humans and nature more beautifully through the works of artists like Claude Monet, Agnes Martin, Rinko Kawauchi, and Rei Naito. Just as they opened a new window to the world for me, I hope my work serves as an opportunity for viewers to awaken a deep sensitivity in their lives. It would be my greatest fulfillment as an artist if I could open a perspective to face nature not just as a matter but as an intimacy with vitality beyond it.
Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, 2025, Earth from Gyeonggi-do on wooden panel, 181 x 227 cm, Photo by Bak Hyongryol. Courtesy of GMoMA, This work is commissioned by Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in 2025 What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?
Moving my base to the UK recently has had a great impact on my work. The nature I encounter here has a very different palette from Korea. Compared to Korea’s nature with distinct seasons and high saturation, this place has frequent rain and gradual weather changes, so plants have low saturation and deep earthy tones. That is why I am focusing on the original color of the soil rather than adding pigments these days. I am capturing the seasons of this place by borrowing the diverse raw colors of the soil itself.
At the same time, I am deeply considering ways to minimize carbon emissions in my creative process. While my work does not place a heavy burden on the environment, I still felt a lingering discomfort even when crafting wooden canvases. Based on these reflections, I am researching production methods that are carbon-neutral, such as recycling waste paper. I am striving to ensure that the act of documenting nature does not end up harming it.
Text and photo courtesy of Dakyo Oh
Website: https://www.dakyooh.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dakyo.oh/
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KOTARO NUKAGA Tennoz Presents what we told ourselves, a Solo Exhibition by Keita Morimoto
Night Shift, 2025, Acrylic and oil on linen, 162.0 x 130.3 cm KOTARO NUKAGA Tennoz is pleased to present Keita Morimoto’s solo exhibition ‘what we told ourselves‘ from January 17 to March 7, 2026.
Keita Morimoto has continuously referenced baroque paintings and early 20th-century American realism in his work, depicting artificial sources of illumination, such as streetlights, neon signs, and the glow from a vending machine in dramatic chiaroscuro. His juxtaposition of light and shadow pins down the ephemeral narratives hidden within everyday landscapes of the contemporary city. After two and a half years since his previous solo exhibition at KOTARO NUKAGA, ‘A Little Closer’—in which the artist captured a more intimate atmosphere by tightening the distance between himself and his subjects—Morimoto’s gaze once again turns to the street corners of the city, transforming seemingly unremarkable locations into sites where the complexities of contemporary society intersect.
The following text was written for this exhibition by Yumiko Nonaka, Senior Curator at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the site of Morimoto’s 2025 solo exhibition ‘what has escaped us’.
Beneath a familiar light, 2026, Acrylic and oil on linen, 162.0 x 130.3 cm Keita Morimoto moved to Canada when he was 16 years old, and returned to Japan after turning 30, in 2021—during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since his return, his principal motifs have been the nocturnal city and the young people who gather there. His paintings all draw from photographs of scenes from the night, dawn, and twilight that he has personally accumulated through fieldwork. At times, he depicts scenes from the city as they are, while at other times, he aggregates elements from several different locations to create a single space. Within these settings, he selects models from among photographs he has taken of close friends, and places them within his compositions, bringing real landscapes and people together like a cut-and-paste collage. The artificial lights in the city illuminate the young people who spend their nights as they please, while phone booths, now dwindling in number, and vending machines emit a glow in the dark and appear to float within the darkness. The human figures and machines are zoned in on as entities that both seem to hold a certain energy within the night.
Morimoto’s paintings, with their realistic depictions and seemingly perfect compositions, may seem impeccable—and yet, they evoke a lingering eeriness. The seemingly perfect, yet somehow unnatural paintings he renders have continued to occupy my mind. I believe this is precisely why his work is so appealing.
Morimoto has said that he seeks to create a source of unease in his works—portraying people who could potentially be there, but are not in reality. He has also spoken about always feeling a dissonance between himself and the places he occupies, and how this lies at the root of his perspective and artistic practice. For Morimoto, who moved to a place with a different language and culture at the formative age of 16, a sense of discordance and misalignment must have been constant, and after spending many years away from Japan, he must have inevitably felt a degree of disjunction in his everyday life upon returning to Japanese society. This personal experience of difference undoubtedly influences his work, more fundamentally, the artist’s own disposition—that he by no means pursues stability—also seems to significantly inform his creations.
Where the light disappears, 2026, Acrylic and oil on linen, 130.3 x 162.0 cm Morimoto decided to leave Japan when entering high school because he felt fear and hopelessness in the predictable future of going to high school, then university, and eventually employment in the same country. When he closed the 15-year chapter of his life in Canada, he says that it was because his future there had also begun to feel predictable. Humans usually seek stability and comfort, but there is nothing usual about Morimoto. His works are driven by an exploration of and curiosity toward a world beyond the scope of his own imagination: a self as yet unknown, a future as yet unimagined, a world as yet unseen.
The sense of dissonance, of something being slightly off about his surroundings, led to Morimoto’s discovery of the concept of “heterotopia,” proposed by Michel Foucault—a significant theme within the artist’s work. Heterotopias describe specific spaces that exist in reality but function as counter-sites within dominant social norms. Foucault provides several specific spaces as examples, among which his discussions of the mirror and the boat are particularly fascinating when considering Morimoto’s work.
With a mirror, everything it reflects is unreal. This illusory image enables the viewer to grasp themselves and their surrounding world within a place where they are, properly speaking, absent. It is an unreal space, or utopia, and at the same time an “other” space, or heterotopia. Mirrors not only exist in reality but also act upon the real world through the virtual space beyond them. The “I” who sees them grasps their own position and the surrounding space, thereby reconstituting themselves. Morimoto’s paintings, too—like mirrors—make the viewer aware of that fictional self, the self that might have been.
Moreover, at the end of Foucault’s text on heterotopias, he states that, a boat is “the greatest reserve of the imagination,” describing it as a “…the greatest reserve of the imagination” and “a floating morsel of space, a placeless place—that lives by itself, that is closed in on itself and is at the same time delivered to the infinity of the sea and [goes] from port to port, from run to run… in search of that which is most precious…（1984）.*1” Morimoto, as if floating in a vast sea, drifts within the city, depicting places that have no place, the unseen, and the moments that pass by unnoticed, creating alternate realities by deliberately failing to fully grasp the world. Like a boat, Morimoto’s paintings become a reserve of imagination.
The peculiar sense of dissonance I have felt upon encountering Morimoto’s paintings stems from the deliberate gaps and margins that he consciously creates. These simultaneously prompt an experience of sympathy or exchange between the viewer and the work. The meticulous rendering of landscapes, the realistic depiction of figures, the dramatic play of light—though the scenes appear as if based on specific stories or events, his paintings contain nothing of the sort. Morimoto’s works do not seek to convey anything in particular; rather, they exert an influence on the viewer, prompting the subject—the “I”—to project themselves onto the painting. And so, we begin to imagine the story of an “other” self.
*1 Michel Foucault, “Des espaces autres,” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46–49; English translation by Ben Cagan (unpublished).
Stories we told ourselves, 2026, Acrylic and oil on linen, 218.2 x 291.0 cm Yumiko Nonaka（Senior Curator, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa）
This exhibition, ‘what we told ourselves‘, features large-scale paintings alongside Morimoto’s first venture into installation art. The exhibition space extends his work into the real world, aiming to offer a more immersive experience of the sensation he portrays: that of having deliberately failed to fully grasp the world. As viewers engage with the work, they may get the sense that something is escaping them. This experience also exposes the stories and fictions we construct and in which we believe as a way of filling the gaps of what we’ve overlooked—“what we told ourselves.”
Venue
1F TERRADA Art Complex II, 1-32-8Artists
Keita MorimotoExhibition Dates
January 17 – March 7, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11:30 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://kotaronukaga.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/kotaro_nukaga/Contact
info@kotaronukaga.comAbout the Artist
Keita Morimoto（born 1990, Osaka, Japan）is a Japanese artist renowned for his cityscapes and portraits. He immigrated to Canada in 2006, earned his BFA from OCAD University in 2012, and returned to Japan in 2021. Now based in Tokyo, Morimoto engages deeply with the techniques and themes of Baroque lighting, early 20th-century American Realism, and pre-modern Genre Painting. By referencing these historical movements, he reimagines contemporary urban life, transforming ordinary streets into extraordinary narratives. Through the symbolic use of light, he merges its sacred and natural connotations with the stark realities of consumerism and industrial culture, creating works that resonate with both historical depth and modern complexity. Morimoto’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, K 11 Musea, Powerlong Art Museum, Art Gallery of Peterborough, The Power Plant, and Fort Wayne Museum of Art. His pieces are part of the permanent collections at the Shiga Museum of Art, Arts Maebashi, High Museum of Art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and ICA Miami.
(Text and images courtesy of KOTARO NUKAGA Tennoz)
