In this issue

AAP’s Issue 114 reflects artists’ diverse interests and concerns. Our cover Feature delves into the practice of Patty Chang, who, through her work, has mourned the demise of human civilization due to anthropogenic intervention and navigated ideas of filial debt and repayment with the maternal medium of breast milk. Our second Feature is a conversation between two artists and cinephiles, Mochu and Lantian Xie, who discuss the phenomenon of amphibian or shape-shifting characters in popular cinema as a stand-in for figures who are “at home with opacity, ambiguous translucencies and other metamorphic states.” In Essays, Patricia Chen analyzes the factors that led to the controversial appointment of Eugene Tan as director of the Singapore Art Museum when he already occupies the position of director of the National Gallery Singapore. Antony Dapiran’s essay examines what Chinese contemporary art looked like in the 1990s before China exploded into the juggernaut art market of today. Our Profiles section features artist Seulgi Lee; Beijing-based artist and curator Long Xinru; and Mohammed Rashid al-Thani, founder of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art. Elsewhere, in One on One, Pio Abad traces the career of Filipino-American minimalist Leo Valledor who was present at seminal postwar cultural moments on both coasts of the United States. In a Dispatch from Los Angeles, Danielle Shang writes of the internationalization of the Southern Californian art scene. On a recent trip to Istanbul, Chloe Chu visited the studio of Burçak Bingöl, whose ceramic works explore materiality, cultural identity and heritage. In the Point, Andrey Alekhin and Misha Libman, co-founders of Snark.art, an “art production platform and laboratory that uses blockchain as a creative medium,” point to the ways that the digital database technology can revolutionize the way we collect, view and manage artworks.

ArtAsiaPacific Magazine Description:

For 20 years, ArtAsiaPacific Magazine has been at the forefront of the powerful creative forces that shape contemporary art from Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East. Covering the latest in contemporary visual culture, ArtAsiaPacific is published 6 times a year in Hong Kong, with editorial desks in 25 countries around the world. Our special annual issue, the ArtAsiaPacific Almanac, published in January, covers the major art events of the past year and forecasts the key trends of the year to come.
The dominant artistic influence in the world today - and for many years to come emanates from the vast territory that lies between Turkey and the Pacific island of Tonga that we call the Asia-Pacific. This territory includes India, China, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Pakistan, New Zealand, Korea and Indonesia, whose combined populations make up an amazing half of the world's total population. Also included are Burma, Cambodia, Kiribati and Uzbekistan - places hitherto overlooked, but which like their gigantic neighbors, are producing cutting-edge art of stunning and unexpected quality.
ArtAsiaPacific is authoritative, accurate, even-handed, exact and essential. Included in each issue is an up-to-date directory of the major galleries, not-for-profit organizations and museums with a focus on contemporary art from our geographical footprint. ArtAsiaPacific offers thoughtful reportage, analysis, comment and criticism to its readers made up of collectors, gallerists, curators, artists and those who want and who need to know the latest developments in the fastest-growing and most astonishing region of the contemporary art world.