AAA’s Curatorial team introduces key ideas behind Countering Time through a series of exhibition walkthroughs. The tours will delve into the exhibition’s curatorial process and newly commissioned artworks, which explore the tension between the precision and elusiveness of time to counter strict chronologies in the archive.

Countering Time has grown out of discussions with four artists and writers over the course of six months. The exhibition presents new works by Merve Ünsal, Simon Leung, Gala Porras-Kim, and Lee Weng Choy, who speculate on the immeasurability of time. Merve Ünsal uses her body to record a centuries-old sinkhole where human and geological time collapse. Simon Leung bends and folds the afterlives of a moment captured in a 1967 photograph from Hong Kong. Gala Porras-Kim traces recollections of lost works and archives. Lee Weng Choy uses personal annotations to mark time. Together, they tune in, refract, exhume, and annotate artworks, archival records, and past events, demonstrating how archives are sites of imagination instead of final resting places of historical records.

The exhibition is on view until 1 March 2025.

Exhibition Tour Schedule

Tue, 26 Nov 2024, 12:30–1:30pm (English) & 6:30–7:30pm (Cantonese) 
Tue, 17 Dec 2024, 12:30–1:30pm (Cantonese) & 6:30–7:30pm (English) 
Tue, 21 Jan 2025, 12:30–1:30pm (English) & 6:30–7:30pm (Cantonese) 
Tue, 18 Feb 2025, 12:30–1:30pm (Cantonese) & 6:30–7:30pm (English)

Free and open to the public with registration.

Image (<i>front to back</i>): Gala Porras-Kim, <i>Catalog of destroyed artworks</i>, 2024, embossed sticker; and Simon Leung, <i>Scattered Speculations on the Question of… (1–4)</i>, 2024, photographs (set of four), 70.2 x 93.6 cm. Installation view, <i>Countering Time</i>, CCG Library, Asia Art Archive, 2024. Photo: South Ho.
Image (front to back): Gala Porras-Kim, Catalog of destroyed artworks, 2024, embossed sticker; and Simon Leung, Scattered Speculations on the Question of… (1–4), 2024, photographs (set of four), 70.2 x 93.6 cm. Installation view, Countering Time, CCG Library, Asia Art Archive, 2024. Photo: South Ho.

Countering Time is curated by Özge Ersoy, Rebecca Tso, Ruby Weatherall, and Lily Wong, with support from Paul C. Fermin, Christopher K. Ho, Hazel Kwok, Christy Li, Sneha Ragavan, and Anthony Yung. We would like to thank our Curatorial Intern Ember Ye.

Graphic Design: MAJO

Media Partners: ArtReview and Mousse

The exhibition is generously supported by Mimi Brown & Alp Erçil, Eunei & Ron Lee, Tracy Li, and Virginia & Wellington Yee.

Merve Ünsal’s research and production is supported by Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity and Kenneth R. Corday & Family Endowment in Writing for Television & Film, University of California, Santa Cruz.

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