ArtAsiaPacific Magazine - ArtAsiaPacific Issue 146, Nov/Dec 2025

In this issue

ArtAsiaPacific’s latest issue turns its gaze toward Southeast Asia—not as a fixed category but as a living, breathing constellation of practices forging new paths amid the flux of globalization. Our cover spotlights Amanda Heng, whose practice is discussed in Patrick Flores’s manifesto “To Curate a Region.” His proposal is more than a call for contextual sensitivity—it is a blueprint for a curatorial ethics grounded in respect for local knowledge, political complexity, and active negotiation of difference. For our second Feature, Sophia Powers looks at the evocative works of An-My Lê, whose photographs traverse contested terrains, weaving the landscapes of Vietnam and beyond into narratives of memory and migration. In Up Close, we highlight works by Thảo Nguyên Phan, Hu Xiaoyuan, and Pan Daijing. For Profiles, we traveled to Bangkok to speak with Miwako Tezuka, the inaugural director of Thailand’s long-awaited, highly ambitious private museum, Dib Bangkok, while for Where I Work, Tiffany Leung visited Dutch-born artist Mella Jaarsma’s studio in Yogyakarta. Elsewhere in this issue, Valerie Nikolay files a Dispatch from her hometown, Chiang Mai, and Beverly Young pens an Essay on Kuala Lumpur’s Ilham Art Gallery. As new art festivals pop up across the globe, Béatrice Grenier considers how the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah opted to pull apart and reassemble an established canon, while for Inside Burger Collection, Stuart Horodner reflects on the transformative work of Jack Whitten, on the occasion of the artist’s recent landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Finally, for One on One, Yu Cheng-Ta reminisces about stumbling into Ming Wong’s Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, “Life of Imitation,” which is based on Douglas Sirk’s 1959 film Imitation of Life. Ultimately, this issue is an invitation to embrace complexity, to move beyond reductionist frameworks, and to listen closely to the vital, nuanced voices shaping contemporary art today.