Innehållsförteckning för 2013 - Special från ArtAsiaPacific

It is December 13. Only eight days before the end of the world, according to some.Thousands of people around the world are preparing for the sky to fall, for the outbreak of a deadly plague, and for the invasion of Planet Earth by zombies—as predicted in the ancient Mayan “Long” calendar, which purportedly concludes on December 21, 2012. In Melbourne, the founder of the website Survive2012.com Robert Bast has spent more than USD 350,000 in anticipation of the “big day.” He bought 75 acres of land that sits 1,500 feet above sea level and built a house there with a fully equipped bunker. In China, two men are constructing their own souped-up boats to provide sanctuary for their families when the killer floods ravage the land. Mother Nature Network provides…

Illustrations by Belinda Chen Koji Wakamatsu Koji Wakamatsu, the Japanese filmmaker who made over 100 films, died in Tokyo in October at the age of 76. He became a filmmaker after being arrested for political protest as a youth. With film, Wakamatsu discovered a new, though no less direct, way to assault authority. Beginning his career in Japanese soft-core pornography, his work would later make bold critiques of militancy, nationalism and class struggle, while also reflecting on internal rifts within Japan’s radical left. Two weeks before his death, Wakamatsu was named Asian filmmaker of the year at the Busan International Film Festival. Minoru Mori Minoru Mori, the Japanese real-estate magnate who expanded both the skyline and the art scene in Japan, died at the age of 77 in Tokyo. A…

This past year, cities around the world vied for the title of “global art hub.” Now boasting over one hundred contemporary art museums, China’s cities certainly enhanced their credentials. Shanghai opened two particularly ambitious museums in October, both reutilizing spaces from the 2010 World Expo. The 166,000-square-meter China Art Palace in the former China Pavilion shows Chinese modern art from the late Qing dynasty to 1980, while the Nanshi Power Plant was converted into the first state-run contemporary art museum, the 41,000-square-meter Power Station of Art, comprising 12 sprawling exhibition halls. Singapore concentrated its energy on developing commercial spaces, opening the Gillman Barracks in September. The former British military compound launched with 13 commercial galleries. More are coming in 2013, while a Centre for Contemporary Art with artist residencies is…

For those who think art is only about passion, check out these numbers. According to “The International Art Market in 2011: Observations on the Art Trade over 25 Years,” a study commissioned by the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF Maastricht), the global art market is worth over USD 60 billion. The report, which was published in March 2012, also revealed that China has become the biggest art and antiques market, its share of sales expanding from 23 percent in 2010 to 30 percent in 2011. Despite the growing list of uncertainties, from falling off a fiscal cliff to border conflicts in the South China Sea, not to mention minor annoyances such as periodic hurricanes and military conflagrations, collectors seem unfazed, happy to continue their extravagant spending. In May, American financier…

Each year in this section of the Almanac, ArtAsiaPacific’s editors select five artists who have had an outstanding year, plus one figure whose star is rising and is poised for a breakout year. In our selection process, we consider artists at all stages of their careers: those who have won major international prizes, held solo exhibitions at leading institutions and participated in the major festivals of the year. As practitioners from across Asia are increasingly visible on the world stage, ubiquity and prestige remain important criteria, yet some of our choices run counter to trends in the commercial sector. Instead, we focus our attention on those whose work left an indelible impression on the places where it was shown and on the communities from which they originate—as well as on…

The photography of Daido Moriyama provides a raw and restless image of city life and its inhabitants. Moriyama began his career in the mid-1960s documenting the seedy streets of the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. His personal style of are, bure, boke (“grainy, blurry, out-of-focus”) lends a sense of rawness and immediacy to the cast of provocative characters and objects that dominate his photographs. Since the 1960s, his work has received international recognition, as well as numerous awards, including this year’s Lifetime Achievement award from the International Center of Photography in New York. This year, Moriyama’s photographs were featured in several exhibitions across the globe. “Fracture” (4/7–7/31), held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, included the artist’s iconic black-and-white photographs, as well as an installation of new and recent…

The universe of Tala Madani’s paintings is populated by members of a demented, sadomasochistic fraternity. Beginning with “Smoke and Mirrors,” her first solo exhibition, held at New York’s Lombard-Freid Projects in 2007 shortly after she finished graduate school, Madani has portrayed men behaving badly—in that series, at a birthday party—rendered in a cartoonish, ham-fisted painting style mirroring the odd blend of dark humor and perversity found in the works. These burly, uncouth figures return in series after series, inflicting senseless violence on one another, engaging in bizarre, creepy rituals that veer from juvenile to suicidal. Taken as absurdist allegorical scenes, we begin to glean her wariness at the inane but violent tendencies of secretive organizations—whether political, military or religious is not clear, though many of these works are redolent of…

The former Soviet state of Armenia holds an influential position internationally on account of the nation’s rich culture and history, as well as the reach of its diaspora. Within the region, however, relations remain tense with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory. In September, Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev pardoned an Azeri soldier who had been sentenced to life in prison for killing an Armenian military officer in Hungary, causing protests to erupt in Armenia. International mediators have expressed concern that this decision will set back peace negotiations. The capital Yerevan has a strong Soviet ethos, but its cultural foundations are improving. The National Gallery of Armenia presented “The Arutchyan Anniversary Exhibition” (10/6–31) in celebration of Mikael, Sergey and Ruben Sergey Arutchyan, a three-generation family of Armenian graphic artists. Yerevan’s main…

In oil-rich Brunei, citizens enjoy high living standards; yet to prepare for the eventual diminishment of its natural resources, the government is pursuing plans to diversify the economy. This year the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports hosted the Creative Industries Forum (5/28–30) in the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, to begin formulating a developmental policy for the nation’s creative sectors. The ministry also operates the Brunei Young Artists Space for local art activities and exhibitions. “One Artist One Art” (3/6–4/6), held at Bandar Seri Begawan’s Waterfront Art Gallery, showcased 70 paintings and mixed-media works by Bruneian and international artists drawn from its permanent collection. In July, an open art competition and exhibition for local artists took place to commemorate the sultan’s 66th birthday. The group show “Art Warisan, Heritage Seni”…

The youngest nation in the Asia-Pacific region, Timor-Leste, better known as East Timor, celebrated its tenth birthday in 2012. The country has gradually progressed over the last four years, diversifying its economy and reducing human-rights violations. However, Timor-Leste still has limited cultural funding, although international organizations, such as AusAID, UNESCO and Timor Aid, organize and sponsor events. In the capital Dili, the heart of Timor-Leste’s contemporary art scene is the nonprofit Arte Moris, which was founded in 2003 by Swiss artist couple Gabriela and Luca Gansser. This school works closely with the community, offering free art education, hosting lectures and staging exhibitions with the support of government and private donors. Chilean artist Rocio Alcaman exhibited artworks produced during her stay in the city (9/5–10/6). In the second-largest city, Baucau, the…

The former British colony has thrived since 1997 as a self-governing Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, but waning export demand in 2012 has left growth rates hovering a little over one percent—the lowest since the 2008 financial crisis. Despite this, funding for the arts has increased and Hong Kong’s status as a prime destination for the art market, indicated by Art Basel’s acquisition of the Art HK fair in 2011, has been reinforced by the arrival in 2012 of several leading multinational galleries and auction houses. Government funding for the arts, excluding capital works, comes through the Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) and totals HKD 3.09 billion (USD 399 million), including HKD 87 million for the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC), the major funding body for contemporary art. In…

With ten thousand years of culture, full of poets and philosophers, with a population of 70 million encompassing a diverse group of ethnicities, and with a significant modern history, Iran is today acultural powerhouse in the region. However, fracturing geopolitical conditions—in particular international sanctions applied by the United States and allies over Iran’s nuclear activities—have had a growing impact on the economy and on the arts. Iran’s strict policy of censorship is overseen by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which keeps a tight rein on all exhibitions, events and performances. Official censorship and restrictions are growing but can often be defeated by individual endeavors. While alternative filmmakers such as Jafar Panahi are still banned from making films, traveling abroad and talking to the press, A Separation by Asghar Farhadi…

In the two years after the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns on March 11, 2011, Japan has experienced a new, politically charged era. In some of the largest demonstrations since the American-Vietnam war, tens of thousands of antinuclear protesters—outraged at the government’s and power company’s decision to resume the use of nuclear reactors in the wake of the meltdown at the Fukashima Daiichi Nuclear Plant—gathered on June 29 in Tokyo. Meanwhile, diplomatic tensions with China soared over several islands west of Okinawa claimed by both countries. Along with human casualties and widespread destruction, the events of “3/11” damaged several cultural institutions in the region and compelled many artists to make commemorative projects. At the badly damaged Sendai Mediatheque, which reopened its doors on May 3, Lieko Shiga displayed starkly…

Low-lying Kiribati, along with Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, is likely to become uninhabitable in the near future due to rising sea levels associated with global warming. In March, preparing for the worst-case scenario, the Kiribati cabinet approved a plan to buy up to 5,000 acres of land in Fiji to relocate part of its population if necessary. These costs divert government money from other forms of public spending, including cultural funding. At present, the Ministry of Internal and Social Affairs operates Kiribati’s primary cultural institutes, which are located on Tarawa atoll: the National Cultural Centre and Museum (Te Umwanibong) in Bikenibeu and the recently opened National Art Gallery in Bairiki. At the Local Artists’ Corner of the National Cultural Center and Museum is a permanent display of works by…

Home to a vibrant art scene in the 1960s and 1970s, Kuwait was ahead of other Arab nations when it created the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCCAL) in 1974. The royal family of Kuwait continues a tradition of patronage by supporting various projects. The National Museum, which has been under renovation for many years, will use two buildings to display work from the al-Sabah Collection of Islamic art—currently displayed by the cultural organization, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) has a permanent collection of Kuwaiti and Arab modernists. The primary independent organization that supports artists is the Kuwait Art Association, which organizes the Kuwait Creative Art Festival (2/12–29). Taking on more adventurous projects is the one-year-old Contemporary Art Platform (CAP), which held a retrospective of…

In the absence of national support for the arts and with lingering political tensions dating back to the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), the revival of the country’s art scene has been spearheaded by a small group of resilient individuals and organic initiatives. The postwar generation concerned itself mainly with memory, trauma and the veracity of images and documents. Due to their work, Lebanon has emerged as a key player in the regional art scene since the mid-1990s. In recent years, the arts in Beirut have seen infrastructural developments as a local culture of philanthropy develops and international funding surges. In 2012, opportunities for younger artists increased, as did endeavors to preserve, document and narrate Lebanon’s art-historical legacy. The only art museum in Lebanon, the private Nicolas Sursock Museum, which holds…

In early February, the first democratically elected presidentof the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, resigned following weeks of protests that involved members of the police and military, as well as hard-line Islamist groups. The coup d’état affected the arts community. In mid-February, the two-year-old Maldives National Museum, located in Male and administered by the Department of Heritage, was attacked by religious extremists. Priceless artifacts from the nation’s pre-Islamist era, including Buddhist statues, were destroyed, and museum officials have stated that much of the damage is beyond repair. Also in Male is the National Centre for the Arts (NCA), which promotes Maldivian cultural events at home and abroad and administers the National Art Gallery (NAG). In March, in collaboration with the Japan Foundation, the NCA organized “Breathing Atolls: Japan-Maldives Contemporary Art Exhibition” (3/20–4/19)…

Nestled between the industrial powerhouses of Russia and China, Mongolia is expected to grow economically as it feeds its mineral riches to its two hungry giant neighbors. However, contemporary Mongolian art has yet to be considered a natural resource at home, and the small art community, centered in the capital Ulaanbaatar, receives varying degrees of support from governmental, corporate and private sources. The leading NGO, the ten-year-old Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM), focuses on cultural advocacy, education and heritage-conservation programs. It also runs the Red Ger Art Gallery, which exhibited abstract paintings made up of small animal figures by Berlin-based painter and gallerist Ershuu Otgonbayar in “Otgo Art” (10/12–25). Khan Bank, an ACM supporter, also hosts exhibitions in the gallery. Mongolia has two state-run museums that periodically host contemporary exhibitions:…

Political turmoil continues to plague this small Himalayan nation. In November, months after a special constituent assembly failed to prepare a new constitution, president Ram Baran Yadav called for the replacement of Baburam Bhattarai—Nepal’s fourth prime minister since 2008. With the government a revolving door of leaders, the small but growing art scene relies primarily on private support. The main arts organization, the Nepal Association of Fine Arts (NAFA), is run by the Department of Arts and Crafts at the Royal Nepal Academy in the capital Kathmandu. NAFA oversees the National Birendra Art Gallery, with a permanent collection, rental exhibition space, a library and artists studios. Also located in the capital is the Siddhartha Art Gallery (SAG), Nepal’s leading commercial art space. Their exhibition lineup included shows by Korean artist…

The tiny island of Niue is an autonomous protectorate of New Zealand, and all Niueans are given joint citizenship. The population is now less than 1,300 and has been in decline since 2004 when Cyclone Heta ravaged the island’s infrastructure, including its National Museum and the Huanaki Cultural Centre. The island did manage to send a delegation of 20 traditional artists to the Festival of Pacific Arts (7/1–14) in Honiara, Solomon Islands, and in the coming year will host its third biennial Niue Festival of Arts and Culture (4/20/13–4/26/13). New Zealand is home for the majority of émigrés, and this is where most Niuean contemporary art is being made. A national touring survey of Niue’s most celebrated cultural figure, Auckland-based artist-poet John Pule, organized by City Gallery Wellington, made its…

The widening gulf in Pakistani society between social classes, and secular and Islamic factions, was evident in September’s violent protests over the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims and, just weeks later, the Taliban’s shooting of 14-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai, who ran an education c&aign for girls in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. In the wake of this, former cricketer Imran Khan’s political party, the PTI, has seen support decline over what many see as its conciliatory stance toward the Taliban as the country gears up for elections in 2013. With the opening of new Islamic art wings at the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and with other museums, including the Guggenheim and several British institutions, looking to expand their contemporary South Asian holdings, 2012 saw…

The most populous island nation in Melanesia is highly diverse, with more than 800 languages and 1,000 ethnic groups. State infrastructure and support for the visual arts is meager with most artists practicing self-reliance. The National Museum and Art Gallery in the capital, Port Moresby, repository of 55,000 anthropological and archaeological artifacts and 7,000 contemporary works, is beleaguered by corruption and disrepair. However, the appointment this year of Cambridge-educated Andrew Moutu as director could lead to the institution’s revival. The University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in Port Moresby and University of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands, where performance artist and academic Dr. Michael Mel is pro-vice-chancellor, are the main providers of tertiary art education and both occasionally hold contemporary art exhibitions. Art Stret, the nation’s first and only commercial…

Although Saudi Arabia has suppressed any hints of social dissent in the last two years, the Arab Spring continues to have an impact. As the regional leader of Sunni Islam, the government has sent money and arms to rebels in neighboring Syria. At home, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has offered minor, liberalizing concessions, including permitting women greater employment opportunities and the possibility of both running for political office and voting in the 2015 local elections, although they are still not allowed to drive. Slow shifts in Saudi Arabia’s ultraconservative Wahhabist culture are mirrored in the art scene. Many artists still tend to work in abstract styles to avoid conflicts with official censors over figurative works—nudes are banned—but often show more provocative works abroad. Government patronage is negligible and there is…

Since the end of a 26-year civil war between the government and Tamil separatists in May 2009, Sri Lanka has had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with significant development in tourism in particular. Governmental support for the arts is slowly improving—in November, at a children’s art festival organized by the Ministry of Culture and the Arts, first lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa declared, “The young generation who areto take over the country’s future should be well-versed in the arts.” Despite such official lip service, Sri Lanka’s visual-arts scene is supported primarily by private organizations. In the capital Colombo, the government-run National Art Gallery (NAG), which houses a permanent collection of traditional Sri Lankan paintings, does occasionally hold temporary exhibitions of more contemporary art, including one display of more than…

With a small economy based primarily on agriculture, Tajikistan is still recovering from the civil war that raged from 1992 to 1997 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is little funding for the arts and a negligible art market. Traditional Tajik culture, with its Persian roots, was overlooked during Soviet times, and remains under-researched by scholars. The country’s contemporary art infrastructure is limited to a few independent and educational institutions supported by international NGOs in the capital Dushanbe, and most programs are part of broader Central Asian initiatives. The national art collection is located in the Bekhzod National Museum, which exhibits archaeological and natural history artifacts but does not show contemporary art. The Bactria Cultural Center, established in 2001 in Dushanbe, with the help of the French NGO…

A secular democratic state with an observant Muslim middle class, Turkey has been led by prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Islamic-inspired party for a decade. In that time, the country’s economy has stabilized and grown rapidly. However, fighting with militant Kurdish separatists in the southeast has grown increasingly violent, and throughout 2012 the conflict in Syria threatened to spill over the border. Though fairly tolerant, Turkish censors remain sensitive to certain topics, including the 1915 massacre of Armenians, criticisms of the government or the state’s founder Atatürk. The country’s premier art event is the Istanbul Biennial, established in 1987 and now administered by the 39-year-old Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). Fulya Erdemci, former Istanbul Biennial director (1994–2000) and current director of the public-art initiative SKOR in…

Located between South Asia, Africa and West Asia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a key business center whose economy has grown rapidly in the past 30 years. Since the early 2000s, the UAE has also endeavored to become a center of tourism and culture, flaunting grand ambitions and lavishing outsized budgets on arts infrastructure and museum building. As a result, the UAE is now a regional destination for galleries, auction houses and art fairs, and also has a modest but notable community of Emirati artists. The UAE’s art scene is guided by a predominantly regional cultural sensibility that abides by Islamic customs. Arts leaders must negotiate between conservative attitudes and the enforcement of political censorship. In general, this is balanced by a progressive approach to exhibition-making, as well as…

Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party introduced market-led reforms in the late 1980s, and now presides over a growing economy. However, state censorship of culture, media and political dissent remains. State-owned museums contend with government restrictions and limited funding. At the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum (HCMCFAM), “Her Presence in Colours” (6/21–27), co-organized by the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Association (HCMCFAA), showcased the work of 212 female artists from 23 countries. The annual HCMCFAA exhibition (8/27–9/8) featured 186 painters and sculptors. This year the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi hosted “Riverscapes in Flux” (4/12–29), comprising photographic and multimedia works by artists from six Southeast Asian countries. The exhibition also showed in Ho Chi Minh City (5/13–26), and will tour major cities in the region until…

I am more and more convinced: the best metaphor for describing Hong Kong’s unique character is limbo. Then it is a matter of mood or ideology whether you want to use the word in a Catholic sense—as a no-man’s-land between Heaven and Hell—or prefer to think of the lustful dance of the Caribbean. Hong Kong is in-between, like a constitutional and cultural version of Alain Robert, the “human Spider-Man” who scales the empty spaces outside high, shiny edifices. It is between East and West; one party rule and democracy; state capitalism and the “purest” of market economies—only toes and fingertips use the walls for support, but dependence on this support is absolute. The cultural ecology in such a place is precarious and easy to destabilize. And that destabilization is happening…

At some point around 2010, while witnessing the dramatic degradation of educational structures in Georgia, including those called for by the so-called Bologna Agreement (to promote equal standards for education across Europe), I decided to establish a long-term project focused on art education. There is so much rhetoric about the importance of education, but the art context, even internationally, does not feature prominently enough in this conversation. In the spring of 2011, Henk Slager, as a curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, visited Tbilisi. Henk’s previous projects on art education, such as Agonistic Academies, a publication resulting from a series of three conferences held from 2008 to 2010 about the pedagogy of contemporary art, inspired me enormously, and I asked him to co-curate a large upcoming…

Perhaps it’s too much to ask, but we can still hope that this was the year that the mega-exhibition as we know it—a hastily organized, mass survey involving a few samples from dozens, if not hundreds, of global artists yoked under a nebulous theme—was finally retired and reinvented for a new era of artistic and curatorial production. The problems with the biennial format are legion and have been well discussed in curatorial circles in recent years: that governments often co-opt these mass exhibitions as city- or even national-branding opportunities and as tourist attractions; that art fairs mimic their format such that the two events have become, at times, almost aesthetically identical; that the biennial enterprise is bound up with the discourse of “globalization” and the spread of neoliberalism to every…

Blum & Poe Los Angeles “Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha” was a cogent study of the Mono-ha (“School of Things”) movement, highlighting its influence in both Japanese and Western contemporary art history. Consisting of over 50 works by ten artists, the exhibition included major pieces by Nobuo Sekine, Kishio Suga, Lee Ufan and others, focusing on the merging of the industrial and the natural. In their sculptural works—using materials such as stone, wood and cotton in their unadulterated states in conjunction with wire, light bulbs, glass and steel plates—Mono-ha artists presented objects just as they were in the hope of transcending materiality, and called for a break with past forms of representation. Galleria Continua San Gimignano Kolkata-born, Mumbai-based artist Nikhil Chopra used the town of San Gimignano,…

Surrounded by the hunched majority dexterously fingering their digital devices, the self-conscious reader may feel increasingly awkward—paleo-geeky even—thumbing through a bound, paper book. In a futile attempt to guard the venerable art-book object, ArtAsiaPacific blows against the winds of technological progress. Don’t mistake us for Luddites. We are closer to being religious fanatics. Isn’t there, after all, something profane about an e-book? The amalgamation of millions of books into a single microchip is like the loss of a body for a soul. This year we’ve chosen a dozen books published in 2012 that are worth holding, sniffing and perusing. There are exhibition catalogs and artist’s monographs, a brilliant academic book or two, plus one screed. Monographs from Singapore, Iran, New Zealand, Turkey, Japan, Palestine and India offer views into the…

This past summer, it was not the ever-vigilant Chinese Communist Party but the Indian government censoring art in the Middle Kingdom. India’s Ministry of External Affairs demanded in late July that a four-minute film by Tejal Shah, I Love My India (2003), investigating the mass bloodshed during the 2002 Gujarat riots, be pulled from “India Highway” at Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, citing its “politically controversial overtones.” Attracting around 10,000 visitors over the opening weekend, the show was the largest display of Indian art to date in China, but Shah’s film had already been suffering from “technical difficulties” when the Indian ambassador arrived to open proceedings on June 23. On March 30, art shippers landed in jail after custom officials raided the Beijing offices of European-owned Integrated Fine Arts…

As the protests that began in Syria in 2011 transformed into a bloody civil war by early 2012, fighting, fleeing, destruction and resistance spread to all corners of the country. Few communities or families have been spared in a conflict that has already killed more than 40,000 people. The country’s communications infrastructure is severely hobbled, and the whereabouts of many individuals remain unknown. However, word reached the world that several artists were among those who have died. In Homs, Mathna al-Ma’sarany, a painter and sculptor who created decorated glass, was killed by a sniper in February. In late April, 23-year-old Nour Hatem Zahra, an activist and graffiti artist in Damascus, was hit in the leg by a bullet and bled to death. In July, the 46-year-old sculptor Wael Qastun was…

The Vietnamese-Berliner Danh Vo won the 2012 Hugo Boss Prize, administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, receiving a USD 100,000 award and a solo exhibition in spring 2013 at the Guggenheim, New York. Another Vietnamese-born artist, the photographer An-My Lê, won a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship—the so-called genius grant, which includes a $500,000 award from the US foundation. Daido Moriyama, possibly Japan’s most celebrated photographer, touched down in New York in May between major openings in Los Angeles and Amsterdam to receive the Lifetime Achievement Infinity Award from New York’s International Center of Photography. Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang was the winner in the painting category of the Praemium Imperiale Arts Award, given by the Japan Art Association in September, collecting an impressive JPY 15 million (USD 182,000). In Hong Kong,…

Parallel Universe As China’s growth cooled to 7.7 percent in 2012, it wasn’t just the proletariat wondering where the world’s second-largest economy was heading. Among the countries fretting about a future without the red-hot Chinese economy were those heavily dependent on exporting natural resources and luxury brands. In November, with Barack Obama elected president for a second term, the United States inched toward the dreaded “fiscal cliff,” and France’s credit downgrade became yet another reason for European Union angst. Against this backdrop, art buyers seemed to be acting with impunity, or perhaps oblivion, in a parallel universe. The starkest examples of this alternative reality arose at auctions. Despite the weak economy and the once-in-a-decade leadership change in China, in October Sotheby’s Hong Kong found Chinese buyers willing to shell out…

Dealing with the experience of Indigenous Australians in his paintings, Gordon Bennett has never allowed himself to be stereotyped as an “Aboriginal artist.”Works that Bennett produced in the late 1980s and early 1990s evoke his rage at the colonial framework of Australian history and the essentialization of Aboriginalism, which have constrained people’s perceptions of the identities of Bennett and others of Aboriginal heritage. Bennett’s Self Portrait: Interior/Exterior (1992), an empty, black-paint-covered box that has been cut to expose lashes of red paint underneath, is one example of the violent “welt paintings” that have resulted from these concerns. In 2007–09, Bennett received widespread recognition in Australia when the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne opened a retrospective of his work, which then traveled to Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, and to the…

Combining historical research and cultural criticism, Akram Zaatari’s practice looks at Lebanon’s complex society. The photographs and films by the Beirut-based artist often spring from his research for the Arab Image Foundation (AIF), which he co-founded in 1997 to collect, preserve and study images from the Middle East. In one such series, exhibited this year at Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg (1/21–4/23), Zaatari reproduced photographs from damaged negatives shot by a Lebanese studio photographer in 1948. While these images of young, brawny weightlifters—balancing in handstands, lunging with barbells—remain unaffected by time, the poorly stored negatives have suffered the years’ passage. Speckled and deteriorated, the texture evokes the bodies, we might imagine, of the aged or passed subjects. In a series also included at the Sfeir-Semler Gallery show, “Another Resolution” (1998), Zaatari restages…

In the very same week in November, the world’s greatest liberal democracy and the world’s greatest authoritarian regime chose “new” leaders, the former following a record-breaking binge of campaign spending and the latter accompanied by revelations of fabulous wealth and profound corruption among the candidates and their forerunners. Sadly, in the aftermath of these results, there is not much to look forward to, on either front. Economic problems continue to plague Europe and the United States, while China showed slower growth and endemic inequalities of income, as well as an increase in public demonstrations in factories, cities and villages. On the other side of the Asian continent from Beijing, just as Yasser Arafat’s corpse was being exhumed for an autopsy, a war broke out between Hamas in the Gaza Strip…

The largest country in the Pacific, Australia is home to a relatively small population of 22.7 million, most of which hugs the continent’s coasts in highly developed urban clusters. Drawing from rich Indigenous, colonial and migrant histories, the arts in Australia reflect the population’s diverse cultural connections. Australia’s strategic position in the Pacific also guides political policy-making. The primary governmental arts-funding and advisory body, the Australia Council for the Arts—known as the Australia Council (AC)—oversees the country’s sizeable, complex network of museums and noncommercial galleries. In August, the minister for the arts, Simon Crean, announced that the AC would assume increased responsibility for a broader range of arts funding programs. This announcement was one step toward reforming the AC as part of a new, wider National Cultural Policy, the first…

For the past three decades, Cambodia has struggled to recover from the genocidal social policies of the Khmer Rouge (1975–79). The kingdom has only recently achieved a moderate level of political stability and economic growth, accompanied by a subsequent influx of foreign investment. In recent years, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, formerly the “keeper of Cambodian traditional arts,” has started to support contemporary art. The government-run Department of Plastic Arts is led by artist Suos Sodavy, who organizes periodic exhibitions. The National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, which houses traditional Khmer artifacts and antiques, holds temporary exhibitions that focus on the nation’s cultural heritage. The Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA), provides tertiary education in the visual and performing arts and operates Char Studio, the nation’s first…

Fiji is governed by a military regime and suffers from a slow-growing economy. Nonetheless, a significant emphasis is placed on cultural heritage, and the Ministry of Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts (DNCHA) has benefited from an increased budget in 2012. The DNCHA administers annual grants to the Fiji Museum and the Fiji Arts Council (FAC), the two primary government-backed sponsors of the arts. The FAC coordinates Fiji’s participation at regional and international festivals, sending a 100-plus delegation this year to the 11th Festival of Pacific Arts in Honiara, Solomon Islands (7/1–14). The Fiji Museum in the capital Suva hosted John Bryan Mausio’s brightly colored paintings at its temporary exhibition space in “Who Will Fight for Me” (6/13). While visual-arts degrees are not offered at Fiji’s universities, academic institutions contribute…

India is home to extensive art scenes in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as growing art communities in Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata. India’s second-tier cities, including Kochi, Pune and Coimbatore, are also developing art initiatives. In the face of minimal government support for the arts, galleries, nonprofits and foundations are increasingly collaborating to support experimental artistic and curatorial practices. However censorship, corruption, right-wing political activism and sedition charges still impede arts initiatives across the country. Although the government lags behind the private sector, in recent years national museums have begun to host contemporary art exhibitions. Local state governments have offered support to initiatives such as the inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale and the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, due to open in 2015, in various ways. These new public-private initiatives appear…

The US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the years of ensuing sectarian violence have decimated the nation and its cultural community. Once home to many galleries and respected art schools, Baghdad was a regional art capital. Today, most Iraq’s artists live in exile in neighboring countries, and fewer than ten galleries remain, most with limited operations. During the worst years of conflict, Baghdad’s National Museum of Modern Art lost 7,180 artworks to looting and damage. There are international efforts to recover the work, but the majority remains missing. The museum, directed by artist Salam Atta Sabri since 2009, has reopened three galleries. Baghdad’s gallery activity is h&ered by security enforcement, as the city is divided into heavily guarded compounds accessed through checkpoints. Prominent galleries include Hewar, run by…

Known for its relative political stability but also for the political apathy of its citizens, Jordan has experienced an upsurge in sociopolitical consciousness that has invigorated the arts. In 2012, many exhibitions, events and artworks responded to the political developments in the region, or pondered art’s role in social change. The country’s only art museum, the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, continued with its unremarkable programof monthly exhibitions. The center of the art community in the capital Amman is the nonprofit Darat al Funun (DF), which presented the first solo exhibition by Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif (1/17–3/29), followed by a tribute to the late Egyptian artist Amal Kenawy (9/4–10/4). In October, the independent Makan, a venue for exhibitions and events in Jabal al-Weibdeh, launched “The River Has…

Now under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of the late Kim Jong-il, the Democratic People’s Republic ofKorea (DPRK) remains one of the most isolated countries in the world. The country has been ruled by the autocratic Kim family since 1948, and its newest “supreme leader,” who is believed to be 30 years old and seems to enjoy Disney icons and amusement parks, continues to develop the nuclear-weapons program inherited from his father. In early December, the DPRK launched a three-stage rocket, exacerbating regional tensions. All artists working in the DPRK must enlist as an “official artist” in the guild-like Korean Artists Federation (KAF), and produce work in government-approved studios, receiving monthly salaries to create propaganda art. Artists are required to receive formal training before being admitted into…

Dogged by political corruption throughout its short history, the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan saw violent riots in April 2010 in Talas and the capital, Bishkek, leading to the overthrow of president Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his replacement by foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva. The turmoil spread to the southern city of Osh, where ethnic clashes between majority Kyrgyz and minority Uzbek groups resulted in the displacement of 300,000 people, many of whom fled to Uzbekistan. Under a new constitution, presidential elections were held in October 2011 and, against expectations, the election of president Almazbek Atambayev was the first peaceful transition of power since the country gained independence in 1991. Contemporary art activity is centered in Bishkek, which has a lively, growing scene. The Gaspar Aitiev National Museum of Fine Arts houses…

Despite stagnating tourist numbers in 2012, gambling revenue in Macau, a special administrative region of China, continued to rise. Macau is the world’s largest center for the gaming industry, and this provides much of the government’s income. Most cultural activities are funded through the Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB), although occasional funding is available through Portuguese NGO Fundação Oriente, the independent Macau Foundation and the Fok Ying Tung Foundation. Perhaps the most noteworthy innovation at the Macau Art Museum (MAM), the main venue for contemporary art, was the “MacauArt Window” series launched in April. This showcase for six local artists kicked off with an exhibition dedicated to artist, graphic designer and photographer Fortes Pakeong Sequeira (4/18–5/20). Later iterations included the acerbic work of Russian-born painter Konstantin Bessmertny (7/7–8/19), who has been…

A protectorate of the United States, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is heavily supported by annual US grants as well as by monetary and developmental assistance from Taiwan. For the largely resourceless RMI, revenues from tourism remain the best hope for achieving financial independence. As for many Oceanic states, the sale of art and crafts is an important money earner within the tourism industry. Art initiatives in RMI concentrate on revitalizing the country’s traditional heritage. Of the two major cultural institutions, the Marshallese Cultural Center (MCC) on Kwajalein Island organizes events and exhibitions to promote local cultural awareness. The highlight of the MCC’s yearly programming is its “Jaki-ed” exhibition and auction of traditional woven mats, part of the annual cultural festival Lutok Kobban Alele that takes place during…

After consolidating political power in the widely contested 2010 elections, Myanmar’s military junta made promising moves this year, releasing hundreds of political prisoners, lifting press censorship and holding parliamentary by-elections. In April, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy to victory in the by-elections and secured seats in parliament. In recent years, the junta has become more amiable toward the international and local communities, permitting cultural and academic exchange programs, and contemporary art activities are flourishing in the former capital Yangon. However, the cultural community is still heavily monitored and censored. National art institutions remain limited in their activities. The National Museum of Myanmar (NMM) in Yangon held no contemporary art events this year. Budgetary constraints have put the NMM’s proposed site in the new capital…

A semi-autonomous territory of France with one of the largest economies in the Pacific Island region,New Caledonia has a resilient GDP per capita because of its vast nickel reserves. New Caledonia’s close relationship to France ensures strong funding for its cultural programs. The centerpiece of New Caledonia’s small but active cultural scene is located eight kilometers northeast of its capital Nouméa—the Renzo Piano-designed Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre operates under the auspices of the Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture (ADCK). It holds a permanent collection of over 800 contemporary artworks, organizes touring exhibitions around New Caledonia and the Pacific, and hosts artist residencies at two studios. Highlights from 2012 were the tribute exhibition to Wifredo Lam and Aimé Césaire by two young Kanak artists Paul Wamo and Teddy Diaïké…

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is a trust territory of the United States, with a special status in regard to immigration and labor laws. Since the CNMI’s founding in 1978, this unique status has led to labor violations. Despite funding from the United States, the decline in tourism since 2009 has coincided with a tightening cultural budget. As a result, the Commonwealth Council for Arts and Culture (CCAC), a subdivision of the United States’ National Endowment for the Arts, did not send a delegation to the Solomon Islands for the 11th Festival of Pacific Arts (7/1–14). However, thanks to a number of business sponsors, the CCAC did hold CNMI’s largest cultural celebration, the Flame Tree Arts Festival (4/20–22). The festival invites delegations from the Micronesian region to…

Enjoying a per capita income twice that of the Philippines, citizens of Palau (often spelled “Belau” following local pronunciation) have one of the highest living standards in greater Micronesia. The country is in the process of developing a cultural policy. Public arts funding is limited to the Bureau of Arts and Culture (BAC), which promotes indigenous culture as well as contemporary art. The BAC maintains Belau National Museum (BNM) in Palau’s former capital Koror. Established in 1955, the museum is Micronesia’s oldest and contains more than 30,000 traditional artifacts. During the annual Olechotel Belau Fair (9/27–30), artists and cultural leaders gathered for an arts symposium at the BNM. It is also a host institution for the United Artists of Belau, which puts together public exhibitions several times a year. Another…

Home to the al-Jazeera news service, Qatar established itself on the international cultural map with the inauguration of the IM Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art in 2008, the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in 2010. Sheikha al-Mayassa Bint Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, a daughter of the emir, is the chairperson of the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), which oversees museum building and collection acquisitions, and has emerged as one of the world’s premier buyers of modern and contemporary art. The National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage administers cultural development. Located on the fringes of Doha in Education City, Mathaf hosted a major survey by Chinese sculptor and pyrotechnist Cai Guo-Qiang, “Saraab” (12/5/11–5/26), with newly produced pieces about trade and culture connections between…

Known for its strict political and moral censorship laws, as well as its tight control of the media, Singapore—which has been under the same political regime since independence in 1965—has been relaxing certain regulations in an attempt to become a globally competitive creative capital since the launch of its “Renaissance City” initiative in 2000. In 2010, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) initiated the Arts and Culture Strategic Review, which seeks to grow local audiences for art. This community-based reorientation of state policy had several major repercussions in 2012. A parliamentary reshuffle of institutional responsibilities was enacted in November. MICA was restructured so that much of its arts purview was transferred to the newly inaugurated Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), which will oversee the National…

Protests against Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in March of 2011 in the southern city of Dara’a, before spreading throughout the country and provoking a brutal government crackdown. The situation has worsened this year. Damascus was once home to many influential 20th-century Arab artists and poets, but the National Museum does not exhibit contemporary works, although it has a strong modern art collection. Before the uprisings, Syria’s art scene had undergone a recent reinvigoration, led by the nonprofit AllArtNow, launched in 2005 by Abir and Nisrine Boukhari. However, the interruptions caused by the violence have limited their activities; the Boukharis are currently developing a virtual art space to present projects and support artists. In the previous five years, the commercial art market had grown considerably; however, most galleries have now closed…

After more than half a decade of chronic political outbursts and natural disasters, the year 2012 was relatively stable. In arts and culture, many ASEAN film festivals, academic conferences and art exhibitions took place throughout the year to encourage cultural understanding and collaboration, including the group exhibition “Riverscapes: In Flux” (6/22–7/22) at Srinakharinwirot University’s g23 gallery, organized by the Goethe-Institut. Featuring 17 artists from six Southeast Asian countries, “Riverscapes: In Flux” traveled among five ASEAN nations: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Another group exhibition in response to AEC was “Traces” (7/12–10/31) at the Jim Thompson Art Center, featuring video and photography by Singapore’s Ho Tzu Nyen, Myanmar’s Moe Satt, Vietnam’s Nguyen Trinh Thi and Thailand’s Sompot Chidgasornpong, among others. After last year’s management reshuffle, the most visible transformation…

Since president Kurbanguly Berdymuhamedov came to power in 2006, natural-gas-rich Turkmenistan has A opened up to international trade. However, travel abroad by Turkmen artists is largely restricted, leading to their exclusion from most regional and international exhibitions. Art activity in the former Soviet state is confined almost entirely to the capital Ashgabat. In 2011, the president officially inaugurated the new district of Art City, where artists live and work and where the State Institute of Culture and the National Conservatoire are now located. The country’s main arts venue is the Museum of Fine Arts. The highlight of the year was “The Life of Turkmen Women Through Art and Photography” (3/16–23). In February, the National Museum of Turkmenistan organized an exhibition of Korean applied arts and artworks depicting its landscape (9/5–8).…

Despite a rich Islamic cultural heritage and historical connections to the Russian avant-garde, Uzbekistan still struggles to distance itself from its Soviet past. The government enforces strict censorship over the media and controls the country’s arts organizations, which are concentrated in the capital Tashkent. State institutions remain Soviet in form and content. The State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan holds one of the largest collections of art in Central Asia, with both regional and Western works of applied and fine arts. The Gallery of Fine Arts, opened in 2004, showed more than 20 artists in “Melodies of Home Place,” held in celebration of Independence Day. The Uzbek president’s daughter and possible successor, Gulnara Karimova, oversees cultural policy as the chairperson of the Forum of Culture and Art of Uzbekistan Foundation,…

Despite the election of a new president in February to replace the autocratic ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen remains a country deeply divided and hobbled by poverty, starvation and drought, as well as an al-Qaeda insurgency that dominates parts of the country’s south. In September, anger over an American-produced film criticizing the Prophet Muhammad led to an attack against the United States Embassy. Widespread violence and social unrest in past years has crippled the art scene in the capital Sana’a. The National Museum houses an impressive collection of antiquities but is located in the Old City of Sana’a, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which was shelled by progovernment forces to deter protesters in 2011. As in Egypt, street art has taken on a new importance, as in a project by…

2012 was an important year for me and for many artists in Saudi Arabia. We decided to return to the original movement in contemporary art that we started in my hometown of Abha over 10 years ago, and to return to the source and foundation of our original inspiration—namely, our role in this society. By instinctively doing this, we were unconsciously reacting against the pressures of the growing Middle Eastern art market, with its desire to develop the art scene for commercial reasons, treating our practices as a means to a commodity, and transforming our visual languages and aesthetics into identifiable and inflexible brands. In any actual advance toward a new understanding, the artist positions him or herself so as not to be bent backward by the prevailing current, leading…

As the scale of the latest financial crisis made itself felt on the arts across the world, and as CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) announced “Museums Beyond the Crises” as the theme of its 2012 annual conference in Istanbul, Australia began to feel like “the lucky country.” In August 2011, the government released its first national arts policy in nearly 20 years (though no sign of implementation as of yet!). A network of independent spaces such as Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Artspace Sydney and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts continued to thrive. Alternative publications such as Das Superpaper and Runwaysupported emerging voices, and artist-run spaces proliferated. Performance Space in Sydney had a particularly energetic program under the direction of Jeff Khan…

9/7–11/11 “Roundtable” If democracy is the most chaotic form of social organization, then the biennial hosted by the hometown of Korea’s 1980 democratization movement was true to its roots. Six co-curators, six subthemes, 90-plus artists, more than 200 artworks: the 2012 Gwangju Biennale was many things all at once, but it was never a coherent experience. A grand experiment, it necessitated substantial amounts of negotiation and dialogue, much of which was made public in conversations and e-journals in the run-up to the opening. While this discourse tended to be insular and tedious—at best, curatorial professionals talking shop about ideas and formats; at worst, a hotbed of brazen competitiveness—at least there was some effort at organizational transparency. The six artistic directors—Nancy Adajania, Wassan al-Khudhairi, Mami Kataoka, Sunjung Kim, Carol Yinghua Lu…

Walker Art Center Minneapolis With an activist’s verve and post-’68 sensibility for disruptive interventions in the urban sphere, Minouk Lim stages what she calls “performance documentary theater.” Among the three projects shown in Lim’s first US solo exhibition was New Town Ghost (2005), starring a slam poet, megaphone in hand, rapping on the back of a truck that toured through one of Seoul’s “new town” developments. S.O.S. – Adoptive Dissensus (2009) is a three-channel recording of a light and sound performance on a cruise ship along Seoul’s Han River, with onshore interludes by activists, a former political prisoner and a pair of lovers. In The Weight of Hands (2010), infrared-camera footage shows a drum-beating figure marching through a construction zone; later a singer is carried on her back by bus…

Yale University Press Pamela McClusky, Wally Caruana, Lisa Graziose Corrin, Stephen Gilchrist At first sight, this is a gorgeous book to behold and the proper tribute to over 100 Australian Aboriginal paintings and sculptures given to the Seattle Art Museum by Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan. After an Australia Post courier car struck Levi, she and her husband spent the settlement funds on developing this superb collection. The impressive, full-page illustrations are accompanied by four erudite essays that nobly strive to be heard above the din of verbiage already written on the genre. The essays draw attention to the pictographic, illustrative and cartographic nature of this art—a point that is reinforced by the helpful visual glossary of Australian flora and fauna. The catalogue entries, cheeky at times, remain enthusiastically didactic.…

Some curators and directors moved across the world for their careers in 2012; others merely shuffled across town. In the United States, Donald Rubin, co-founder and chief executive of the Rubin Museum of Art—the only US museum to focus on arts of the Himalayas and India—stepped down, leaving a USD 25 million good-bye present. Patrick Sears, former chief operating officer, was promoted in his place. Asia Society in New York said farewell to its long-time director, president and chief executive Vishakha Desai. Under Desai’s tenure, Asia Society opened new facilities in Houston, Hong Kong, Seoul and Mumbai. More change came to Asia Society with the appointment of Michelle Yun as curator of modern and contemporary art, while its associate director of cultural programs, Helen Koh, was appointed executive director of…

It is no mirage. Christo, the artist known for collaborating with Jeanne-Claude on wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and installing 7,500 cloth gates along the paths of New York’s Central Park, confirmed his next project: The Mastaba, originally conceived in 1977, is intended to be his only permanent large-scale sculpture. The 150-meter-tall, trapezoidal structure will preside over the desert 160 kilometers outside Abu Dhabi. The estimated construction cost, USD 340 million, would make it the most expensive public artwork in history, if completed. The Bulgarian-born American artist claimed the project would be financed “independently” and opted not to disclose the names of its investors. Christo, however, was careful to note to the press that the 410,000 multicolored oil-barrels were chosen for practical reasons and did not imply criticism of the…

London bookies take bets on the Turner Prize, but gazing into the crystal ball to divine the art world’s future is like trying to find a perfect circle in a Yayoi Kusama “Infinity Net” painting. Yet certain stops on the merry-go-round are all but inevitable, and no event can match the hoopla of the Venice Biennale. Massimiliano Gioni’s “The Encyclopedic Palace” is named, rather idealistically, for self-taught artist Marino Auriti’s 1950s imaginary museum to house humanity’s achievements and knowledge. The prospect seems to have scared off Singapore’s National Arts Council, which canceled its pavilion, but there are several new pavilions, including the Maldives (organized by curatorial collective Chamber of Public Secrets), Indonesia, Bahrain and Kuwait. Mixing it up a little, the four artists in the Germany pavilion will include Ai…

In an art market that seems to have entered a new gilded age, in which prices for contemporary art appear to have no limits, art fairs are wising up to the game that auction houses have perfected. Fair owners and organizers are learning to diversify, embracing “recession-proof” works and seeking out new pockets of wealth. Out of the nearly 200 art fairs operating around the world that vie for collectors’ attention, the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF Maastricht), Art Basel and Frieze Art Fair lead the pack, each of them striving to retain their respective pole positions. The grande dame is the 25-year-old TEFAF (3/16–25)—and not just because it goes beyond modern and contemporary to embrace the entire history of art from all points on the map. This ten-day Dutch…

Most years have, in his unfussy way, been busy ones for Amar Kanwar, the 48-year-old filmmaker from New Delhi. This one was no different. At Documenta 13 (6/9–9/16)—his third consecutive appearance at Kassel—he showed an excerpt from his ongoing research project in Orissa, The Sovereign Forest (2010– ), which investigates, in his meditative, multilayered style, the impact on both people and terrain of the destructive metal mines in the area. In addition, among other group shows, his work was included in “Lines of Control” (1/21–4/1) at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, and “Newtopia: The State of Human Rights” (9/1–12/10) at Visual Art Flanders, while the traveling “Indian Highway” show (6/24–8/26) arrived at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, and “Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India”…

In his ongoing project We the People (2011), Vietnam-born Danh Vo evinces an intense fascination for United States history. The Berlin-based artist has spent the last two years having the Statue of Liberty replicated piece by piece in a Chinese factory using the exact same technique of copper repoussé as the original. These fragments—Liberty’s torch, fingers, toes—have been distributed around the globe, from the Tuileries Garden in Paris and the Fridericianum in Kassel in 2011, to New York’s New Museum Triennial, “The Ungovernables” (2/15–4/22), the Shanghai Biennale (10/2–3/31/13) and the grounds of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago, which, in conjunction with the Renaissance Society, held “Uterus” (9/23–12/16) of Vo’s recent works. There, the artist furthered his interest in revealing contradictory moments at which the American…

At a summit in May, NATO endorsed an exit strategy to hand over control of allcombat missions in Afghanistan to Afghan forces by mid-2013, and for the majority of foreign troops to withdraw by the end of 2014. Yet Afghanistan still faces an uncertain future as it struggles to rebuild its decimated economy and social structures. Two decades of conflict have devastated the cultural infrastructure. During the Taliban’s rule (1996–2001), sieges of the capital led to repeated bombings and lootings of the Kabul Museum, also called the Afghan National Museum, which once housed important antiquities collections. In July, it was reported that the British Museum had assisted in the return of 843 stolen artifacts, including ex&les of first-century Begram ivory carvings. Afghanistan’s art community has grown slowly but significantly over…

The democratic government of the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan measures the success of its activity in terms of the happiness it produces for its citizens. With cultural preservation as one of the pillars of Bhutan’s commitment to “Gross National Happiness,” government funding is focused on three institutions showcasing traditional Buddhist art: the National Museum of Bhutan, the National Folk Heritage Museum and the National Textile Museum. Though the secluded state has increasingly embraced modern culture in recent years, the development of Bhutan’s small contemporary art scene still relies heavily on the support of private organizations. The leading venue for contemporary artists is the nonprofit Voluntary Artists’ Studio Thimphu (VAST), formed in 1998 by a group of artists including Kama Wangdi in the nation’s capital Thimphu. VAST kicked off the year…

Before convening its once-a-decade Central Committee to appoint new members to the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) was rocked by several scandals involving high-level politicians, exposing serious rifts about the party’s direction. The most notorious of these took place in Chongqing, where rising politician and regional boss Bo Xilai was brought down when his top lieutenant sought asylum at the American consulate in Chengdu, leading to the revelation that Bo’s wife had ordered the fatal poisoning of a British businessman and close associate. As Xi Jinping took charge of the CCP in November, he vowed a crackdown on corruption; Xi will officially become the country’s president in March 2013. Tensions within society, between classes and with ethnic minorities and religious groups, as well as with regional neighbors,…

Since the Rose Revolution in 2003, the former Soviet state of Georgia has undertaken significant reforms to modernize and improve its economy. On the cultural front, there are increasing opportunities for Georgian artists to exhibit at home and abroad. The capital has a handful of state-sponsored museums and galleries that show contemporary art. The Georgian National Museum (GNM) co-ordinates a national network of museums, which was started in 2004 to upgrade institutional management and coordinate cultural activities. The GNM hosted “Intoxications and Inspirational Errors: Volume 2 – Eden Lost” (6/29), featuring an interactive installation by Konstantin Mindadze. The Tblisi History Museum hosted a solo exhibition of photojournalist Giorgi Tsagareli (6/10–13) as part of the international Kolga Tbilisi Photo Festival (6/7–13); the show was repeated later in the year (11/9–20). The…

The world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia is also home to Christian, Hindu and Buddhist communities, 300 ethnicities and 700 languages. A prosperous, secular republic, Indonesia is struggling to combat corruption, unemployment and a rise in right-wing fundamentalism. Artist communities, found mainly in the cities of Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung and Bali, offer artists a chance to express their views, although most art remains a luxury pursuit for the elite. Artists contend with a number of censorship laws, including a 2008 antipornography bill that was widely contested due to its vague provisions. Another law, passed in 2009, prohibits depictions of drug use and gambling, and requires filmmakers to have their scripts approved by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Many fear an era of scrutiny by “morality police” that will threaten…

Despite unstable regimes in neighboring Syria and Egypt, and an ongoing debate over Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions, a dull soberness prevailed for much of the year in Israel. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s solidly neoliberal path was hardly disturbed. In mid-November, a weeklong conflict with militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which included missiles launched at Tel Aviv, broke the calm. Under the current government, freelancers and artists continued with the little governmental support they received in the past, as state-funded and nonprofit institutions grew ever more deprived. Influenced by its neighbors in the Middle East, though perhaps not as fully affected, Israel’s economy entered a phase of recession from which it has not yet recovered. The country’s media has suffered: Ma’ariv, one of Israel’s three leading newspapers, shut down its print…

Home to a multifaith, multiethnic population, Kazakhstan faces challenges as president Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country’s first and only post-Soviet leader, tries to maintain social and economic stability. Although Kazakhstan has a rich cultural tradition in applied arts and music, fine arts were only introduced under direct Soviet rule (1936–91). Today, the government offers limited support for contemporary artists, who largely show abroad. The Soros Center for Contemporary Art, the primary organization supporting artists, closed in 2009, limiting the local art scene’s activities. The biggest art institution in the cultural capital of Almaty is the Kasteev State Museum of Arts, which is known for its collection of Kazakh fine art and applied art from China, Japan and India. After undergoing a much-needed renovation in recent years, the museum reopened in February…

The most Web-connected nation in the world, South Korea is at the forefront of technological innovation. The economic policies that kick-started South Korea’s four decades of rapid economic growth were formulated under the autocratic rule of Park Chung-hee in the 1960s and 1970s before democracy arrived in the late 1980s. But South Korea’s fraught relationship with North Korea—the two sides are technically still at war—periodically threatens to derail the country’s stability. In 2012, relations between the two Koreas remained relatively placid, a welcome relief after a series of military clashes in 2010 and initial fears that the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il in late 2011 would lead to a power struggle while his son Kim Jong-un assumed the leadership. Since conservative president Lee Myung-bak took office in 2008,…

One of the few remaining one-party communist states, Laos lags behind its regional neighbors in physical infrastructure. To spur economic development, the government has embarked on plans to build a series of large dams along the Mekong River to produce electricity, mostly for export to Thailand, but concerns about potential environmental and social impacts have been raised by riverside communities living downstream in neighboring Cambodia and Vietnam. Though the autocratic government controls the media, and the majority of cultural funding is devoted to the preservation of ancient Buddhist heritage, Laos is also increasing support for living artists. This year the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism launched its draft five-year development plan for 2011–15, with more than LAK 400 billion (USD 50.2 million) earmarked for new projects to promote traditional…

Malaysia, with its substantial Chinese and Indian minorities, is one of Southeast Asia’s most culturally diverse and tolerant nations, but tensions in the country have risen in recent years over impending reforms to long-standing social policies that privilege ethnic Malays. In recent years, the state has begun to coordinate support for the visual arts. The 2011 National Visual Arts Development Board Bill encourages bilateral activities with foreign countries and conservation at leading art institutions. Under the bill, the National Art Gallery, the most prominent state-funded institution, changed its name to Balai Seni Visual Negara, or the National Visual Arts Gallery (NVAG). The highlight of the NVAG’s calendar was “Pertarungan (Battle)” (2/15–8/27), a retrospective of senior Malaysian painter Amron Omar, who is inspired by traditional Malay martial arts such as silat. In…

The 607 vastly dispersed islands that comprise the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) form a sovereign state in a Compact of Free Association (COFA) with the United States. The biggest obstacle facing FSM’s American-style government is ending economic dependence on annual US compact grants by 2024. Cultural preservation activities are strongest in the state of Yap. Aided by a grant of 60,000 euro (USD 78,500) from the French government, the Yap State Historic Preservation Office and Yap Visitors Bureau collaborated in constructing the new Yap Living History Museum in the state capital Colonia, which opened its doors on December 7, 2011. The museum, based on the model of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, displays traditional arts and organizes programs in areas such as traditional dance, storytelling, canoe…

Nauru had the world’s second-highest per capita GDP until the 1980s thanks to over a century of reckless phosphate mining, which devastated the local ecosystem and left only the steadily eroding coast of the 21-square-kilometer island habitable. Nauru’s economy now depends heavily on foreign aid and the scant revenue from its depleted phosphate mines. As of August, in a bid to secure economic aid from Australia, Nauru has reopened its offshore processing facilities for asylum seekers under Australia’s revived “Pacific Solution” policy. Traditional Nauruan culture also took a blow during the phosphate bonanza, with indigenous crafts all but abandoned and forgotten. Today, the Arts and Crafts Center, operated by the National Tourism Office, preserve the country’s traditional handicrafts. Nauru’s second art institution, the National Museum, displays a permanent exhibition of…

Aotearoa New Zealand is a bicultural nation and home to an active art scene made up of residents with diverse Pacific, Asian and European heritages. In addition to indigenous Māori art, New Zealand is the center for contemporary art from the Pacific as the country has a history of migration from many Pacific Islands. New Zealand’s economy has achieved some limited growth of late, but its second-most-populous city, Christchurch, is still in the process of recovering and rebuilding after two major earthquakes that caused significant damage in 2010 and 2011. Major arts funding comes from the national arts council, Creative New Zealand, which distributes an annual average of NZD 4.5 million (USD 3.8 million) for visual arts-related projects, organizations, publications, spaces, research and travel. A variety of new funding initiatives…

The once-stable Sultanate of Oman faces serious economic challenges. In 2011, Arab Spring-inspired protests prompted an army-led crackdown, and Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said subsequently promised more state-sector jobs. But unemployment remains at 24 percent and, with a deep dependence on its oil sector, Oman experienced labor strikes again this year. Beginning in May, security officials embarked on a c&aign of arrests of social activists for comments posted on social-media sites or sent via text messages that supposedly criticized the sultan. Considerably quieter on the cultural front than its Gulf neighbors, Oman is home to just a handful of recognized artists who exhibit regularly at home and abroad. The Omani art scene remains small and underfinanced, and currently revolves around four art spaces in Muscat, the capital: Bait Muzna Gallery,…

On November 29, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of upgrading Palestine to become a “non-member observer state,” granting the occupied Palestinian territories new legitimacy as a state. Thousands of people gathered in central squares in West Bank towns, waving flags and singing along to nationalistic music to celebrate the occasion. Yet, after more than 64 years of Israeli occupation, Palestinians still do not have their own passport or airport, are heavily taxed on basic resources and face constant threats by settlers and the Israeli military. Two weeks before the UN vote, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip came under a heavy attack by the Israeli military, with Gaza militias responding by launching missiles at Israeli cities and even Jerusalem, before a cease-fire was negotiated. Despite the adverse conditions,…

Samoa, not to be confused with neighboring US territory American Samoa, in 1962 became the first Polynesian nation to attain independence. In 2012, a year-long program of festivities took place to celebrate the 50th anniversary of independence and the Treaty of Friendship with New Zealand. The National Culture Centre, opened by the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture in 2011, oversees the country’s museums. In the capital Apia, on Upolu Island, the Museum of Samoa opened a new theater in September, but no contemporary visual arts exhibitions took place at the institution in 2012. In Apia, the Leulumoega Fou School of Fine Arts is the country’s sole institution providing tertiary arts education. Apia’s nonprofit Tiapapata Art Center offers community workshops in printmaking, ceramics, and wood and bone carving. The National…

The population of the Solomon Islands is a culturally rich mix of Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian people, together speaking more than 70 languages. In 2012, the Solomon Islands hosted the 11th Festival of Pacific Arts (FOPA) (7/1–14) in the capital Honiara. Despite struggling with preparations, thanks to the financial support of other members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu), and of New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan, the 2012 FOPA was the largest in the event’s 40-year history. In Honiara, the Solomon Islands National Museum, in cooperation with the Solomon Islands Artist Association (SIAA), organizes the occasional contemporary art exhibition. In 2012, SIAA held an exhibition of paintings on canvas, tapa cloth, small stone carvings, jewelry and other crafts at the Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre (5/25–6/1)…

Despite the economic downturn that overshadows the United States and Europe and threatens mainland China, Taiwan’s economy remains relatively healthy, aided by calm in the property market and the relatively robust nature of its democratic institutions. In the political and cultural capital, Taipei, the private sector has stepped up funding of alternative art spaces just as public museums have become mired in bureaucracy and scandal, and the private gallery system continues to expand. Taiwan’s government has long offered considerable support for arts and culture, and effective from May 2012 reorganized its executive branch to formally establish a Ministry of Culture (MOC). The new ministry is considered an “upgrade” of an earlier arts funding body, the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA), although there seems to have been a slight decline in…

The only Pacific nation never to have been colonized, Tonga held historic elections in 2010 paving the way for its transition to a fully constitutional monarchy. The Ministry of Education, Women’s Affairs and Culture organizes public cultural programs, including the annual national heritage festival, Heleila (7/16–28). Because of the government’s investment in expanding the tourist trade, Tonga has a well-developed system of cultural institutions centered in the capital Nuku’alofa, but none exhibits contemporary works of art. The Langafonua Women’s Handicraft Association and Gallery supports Tongan craftswomen, and in 2011 opened its Royal Art Gallery, which showcases historical royal items donated by Princess Pilolevu and Princess Nanasipau’u Tuku’aho. Tapa makers from the association assisted New Zealand-based artists Robin White and Ruha Fifita (who is of Tongan heritage) in creating a bark-cloth…

Tuvalu is a tiny cluster of nine islands with a total landmass one third the size of Manhattan located halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Like many small Pacific Island nations, Tuvalu is challenged by limited resources, geographical isolation and the threat of rising sea levels. The country survives on a combination of foreign aid and royalties from leasing its highly marketable “.tv” internet domain. After a severe drought in 2011, the government has set its priority as developing its Sustainable and Integrated Water and Sanitation Policy. Preoccupied with combating the effects of climate change, the islands that comprise Tuvalu have no contemporary art institution. Lacking a national policy on culture and operating on a minimal budget, the Department of Culture is staffed by a single officer. It carries out programs…

Vanuatu’s economy has grown since the mid-2000s thanks to its tourism industry. The nation’s major public arts institution, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VCC), is located in the capital Port-Vila and serves as the current home of the Pacific Islands Museums Association. In September, at a meeting to map out projects over the next five years, the Vanuatu National Cultural Council and VCC laid down plans to erect a National Centre for Art and Culture of Vanuatu for the promotion of artistic production in the country. The National Museum initiated a series of exhibitions by local artists in May with a showing of expressionistic paintings by Red Wave Arts Association member Matthew Abbock. The French Embassy Exhibition Hall and Alliance Française, both in Port-Vila, also host regular cultural events. Several private…

As in past issues of the Almanac, we have invited commentaries and impressions on the year in contemporary art from curators, patrons, artists and museum directors active across the Asia-Pacific region. Our six contributors offer frank and personal responses, from meditations on the challenges facing artists working in rapidly developing societies, to personal reflections on the challenges that lie ahead, even for well-funded art scenes. This year in particular, with the emergence of many new centers for contemporary art, our contributors consider their own newfound positions in the world. Together, these reflections provide a spectrum of perspectives on where we are at the beginning of 2013.…

The recent years of rapid economic growth in the East have had a major impact on the Asian art scene. Several nonprofit art institutions, museums and foundations have been formed in the region in the last decade to support the arts. Museums and institutions from the West have started looking seriously at the East, and this has created its own overall impact on the arts of the region. But, compared to such prime examples as China, India and Pakistan, Bangladesh is lagging behind. Bangladesh has about 20 commercial galleries, and these regularly organize exhibitions, but unfortunately most of the shows focus on commercial and established art. The gallery system is not institutionalized and therefore lacks a certain professionalism, which has prevented the international market tapping into contemporary Bangladeshi art. This…

In Myanmar’s new era, now complete with a partially elected government, censorship has eased to a significant degree, although this is more evident for print media than for films or the visual arts. As a consequence of these new, relaxed conditions, artists are now more willing to tackle issues around politics and society that were previously considered untouchable. Nyo Win Maung’s Recycled Thinker (2012), derived from the famous Rodin sculpture and made from old state-owned newspapers, hung from the ceiling at nonprofit Next Window’s exhibition at Lokanat Galleries in July, with a hollowed-out space where its brain should have been. A statement about the mindlessness of the country’s daily news in the past, the work also alludes to the current regime’s empty heads. This brainlessness is epitomized by the reaction…

Over the course of a year looking at artworks, experiencing them or participating in them, particular themes, motifs and interests begin to recur, leading to thoughts as to why—even in disparate corners of the world—certain images, ideas and strategies become timely and evocative when they do. On the eve of the 5,125-year-long Mayan calendar’s conclusion—and thus the world’s prophesied destruction—in true post-postmodern or alter-modern style, many of this year’s currents were in fact historical, as long-destroyed or lost objects, artists’ careers and even whole artistic movements were reborn for the contemporary moment. The old as new, the new as old—cultural amnesia, ignorance and selective memory make for endless (new) opportunities, providing every (contemporary) generation with the opportunity to rediscover the (modern) past anew, again. Although it’s been 12 years since…

Louvre Museum Paris 1/17–4/8 Walid Raad approaches the field of Islamic arts for the first chapter of a three-year project with the Louvre. Inspired by the museum’s collections, its scientific documentation and its architectural and museographic designs, the exhibition will include 
a new installation and a series of images derived from the Louvre’s photographic inventory. Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven 1/26–4/28 Korean artist Jewyo Rhii’s sprawling, makeshift sculptures and installations recall elements of Arte Povera and 1990s appropriation art. The most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date, this show will feature a selection of her recent works along with site-specific installations produced during a four-month stay in Eindhoven. Beirut Art Center Beirut 2/7–4/16 The solo exhibition of Iraqi-born Jananne al-Ani surveys her oeuvre since 2004. Al-Ani’s photography and film examine…

5–27 Sydney Festival 24–27 Los Angeles Contemporary 24–27 Art Stage Singapore 1–3 India Art Fair, New Delhi 
2/8–3/2 Perth International Arts Festival 13–17 ARCO, Madrid 1–-3 Art13 London 7–10 The Armory Show, New York 3/13–5/13 Sharjah Biennial 15–23 Asia Week, New York 15–24 TEFAF, Maastricht 20–23 Art Dubai 22–24 Art Fair Tokyo 
23–24 G-Tokyo 2–6 CIGE, Beijing 19–22 Art Cologne 29 GEISAI, Tokyo 4/30–5/3 Art Beijing 5/10–8/11 Auckland Triennial 10–13 Frieze Art Fair, New York 17–19 Young Art Taipei 17–27 Homeworks, Beirut 23–26 Art Basel in Hong Kong 6/1–11/24 Venice Biennale 11–16 Liste, Basel 13–16 Art Basel 26–28 New Zealand Art Show, Wellington 7–11 Auckland Art Fair 8/10–10/27 Aichi Triennale 12–16 Korea International Art Fair, Seoul 13–15 SH Contemporary, Shanghai 9/14–11/10 Istanbul Biennial 14–17 Istanbul Art International 19–22 Beirut Art…