Longform explorations of recent art in Asia, archives, art histories, urgent preoccupations, and other areas of interest

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On Stalling and Turning: A Wayward Genealogy for a Binary-Abolitionist Public Toilet Project

Susan Stryker considers concepts of transness in relation to spatial configurations, and imagines other arrangements of space, time, and social interaction

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Perforated Islands: A Proposition in Co-Sensing with the More-Than-Human

Joella Q. Kiu writes about artistic collaborations, spirit histories, and urban redevelopment

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once more with feeling

Karen Cheung and Paul C. Fermin write about outsiders, love letters, abjection, reality TV, temporal vibes, art theory babes, etc.

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Afro-Asian Feminist Art: Futurist Genealogies

Tao Leigh Goffe and Andrea Chung consider art’s ability to critique traditional histories and envision otherwise futures

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Acts of Viewing and Performativity in (Un)Periodicals

Noopur Desai examines the ephemerality and performativity of the little magazine movement in India

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Coincidence and Re-collection; Lateness and Insight

Lee Weng Choy writes about memory; exhibitions histories; and the forms, practices, and practicalities of the biennale

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The Wall of Blankness

Koel Chu examines how woodcut printmaking holds space for catharsis and nuanced narratives in uncertain times

Image: Sung Gi Kim, <i>[Public, Market]</i>, 2019.
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for those of us who cannot leave or stay—

Eunsong Kim interrogates the labour and material processes of aesthetics, and asks whether art and writing are even necessary

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On Art Education through the Story of Six Artists from China

Anthony Yung and Ozge Ersoy ask whether artistic attitude can be taught or passed down from one generation to another

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Past and Present Alternatives: Artist-Run Spaces in the Philippines

Ringo Bunoan reflects on the development of artist-run spaces in the Philippines, from the 1990s and beyond

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Public Appearance as Art as Protest as Event: Yoko Ono’s Events with John Lennon

SooJin Lee uses a Fluxus lens to consider Ono and Lennon's playful use of the public gaze

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You Are Here

Jennifer Deger on the limits of modernist cartographies, and how art and anthropology might speak to the environmental crises of our time

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The Thoughtful Dissemination and Archiving of Japanese Moving Image Works

Ann Adachi-Tasch reflects on her engagement with Japanese experimental moving image works of the 1950s to 1980s

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Hong Kong: A Curatorial Journey for an Identity

Oscar Ho narrates his shift from seeking a distinctive cultural identity for Hong Kong, to working to dismantle this very concept

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The International Student as a Term of Art

David Xu Borgonjon discusses the racial politics of art school recruitment, and its structural effects on contemporary art

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The Aesthetic Project of Remaking “Yellow” Identity

Mimi Wong explores the slippery notion of an "Asian aesthetic," and the many ways it can manifest in East Asian and diasporic art

Image: Cover detail of Trisha Low's <i>Socialist Realism</i>, 2019. Courtesy of Coffee House Press, Minneapolis.
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From Within the Fog

Trisha Low’s lyric ruminations on art writing, gestures of refusal, and the unresolvable desire for shared utopia amidst crisis and collapse

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Yellow Skin, White Gold

Anne Anlin Cheng reconsiders Asiatic femininity, racialised embodiment, and the confusion between persons and things

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Is It Socially Engaged Art?: The Debate over “Art Projects” in Japan

Yeung Tin Shui traces alternatives to Eurocentric conceptions of art projects in Japan

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Women, Handicrafts, and Entrepreneurship in the Postcolonial World

Annemari de Silva addresses the gendered and postcolonial valuations of "art" and "craft" in Sri Lanka

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Setting the Stage: Korean Women Artists on Performance and Beauty

So-Rim Lee examines how two emerging feminist artists stage and politicise a hair salon and a cosmetics store

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Line Form Colour Action

Chuong-Dai Vo uses Lee Wen’s notebooks to explore his work as performance and process

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Tomorrow Girls Troop: A Fourth-Wave Feminist Art Collective

Reflections on activism, gender equality, and visual representation in Japan from an emerging feminist art collective

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Ren Hang in the Global City

Nicholas Gamso considers Ren Hang’s engagement with urban space and queer body politics

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Motherhood, Motherland: Photography, Representation, and Agency of the Filipina Overseas Worker

Alice Sarmiento asks whether exhibitions and artist-led initiatives can change how we connect space, citizenship, and acts of caregiving

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Gendering Her Art: The Category of “Woman” in the Art History of Hong Kong

Christina Yuen Zi Chung looks at gender-themed art exhibitions and their relation to feminist discourse in Hong Kong

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On Ha Bik Chuen: Collection and Collage

Leo Li Chen explores how Ha Bik Chuen’s collection opens up new ways to understand Hong Kong art history

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Practicing Friendship: Respecting Time as a Curator

Zoe Butt considers the significance of friendships for artistic languages and forms

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Notes on the "Vernacular" Milieus of Art Writing

Sneha Ragavan questions the dominance of English in India’s art historiography and criticism

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17 Lost Art Exhibitions

Jack Persekian documents a global pattern of loss for Palestinian art

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44 Tonnes

Clare Butcher on reconstructing the histories of the dehistoricised

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Elision, Excess, Parody, Disavowal: Justine Frank in the Museum

Roee Rosen discusses the challenge of allowing fiction to overwhelm through its excess

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In Defence of the Art Mall

Seth Denizen explores the art in art malls and competing claims to public spaces

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Notes from the Field: Navigating the Afterlife of The Other Story

Rasheed Araeen's critical challenge to art historical narratives through art curation

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Publics, Histories, Value: The Changing Stakes of Exhibitions

Note from the Editors

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Sites of Construction and Political Dissent: Central Asia Pavilions in Venice 2005–2013

Georgy Mamedov provides a critical overview of the politico-economical context of Central Asian art history

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The Problems of Digital Utopia: Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries on the Web

Ahyoung Yoo discusses the playful masking and unmasking of potential digital utopias

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The Unsettled Pleasures of Viewing: Exhibition as a Meeting Point Between Our Bodies and Artwork

Biljana Ciric discusses images as intimate, fragmented readings of exhibition experiences

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Art Writing and Its Circulation: Three Moments in Hong Kong

Michelle Wong looks at three instances of art writing and their relationship with Hong Kong

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A Short Story of Bagyi Aung Soe in Five Images

Yin Ker discusses the transformation of desire through meditation on desire

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Atlas of Asia Art Archive

Map Office explores how Asia is a point of arrival and departure