ArtAsiaPacific - Jan - Feb 2014

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In each edition of the Almanac, now in its ninth year, we provide annual reports about the 67 countries in the region—including Bhutan, Myanmar, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Qatar and Uzbekistan, among others—and track a year’s worth of controversy, scandal, career moves, awards and other major headline news.
We also invite influential art-world figures to reflect on the major cultural events of the past year and the year to come. Aida Mahmudova, artist and founder of Yarat Contemporary Art Space in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Mella Jaarsma, artist and co-founder of Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, are each very proud to find their respective country’s art communities launching vital new initiatives. From geographically distant perspectives, the Sharjah Art Foundation’s president Sheikha Hoor al-Qasimi and Samoan interdisciplinary artist Shigeyuki Kihara reveal details of their busy schedules, recalling many of the year’s best moments on their global tours of their own art worlds. Chinese-Indonesian collector Budi Tek, who will be unveiling the second branch of his Yuz Museum in 2014, discusses the need for a higher standard of professionalism in China in an age of museum building. And from Kolkata, Prateek Raja of Experimenter gallery points out the continuing dynamism of India’s art scene in spite of, or perhaps because of, a market slowdown.
The Five Plus One section, in which our editors select five artists who have made a significant impact in 2013 and one who promises to do so in 2014, features profiles of artists as varied in outlook as Richard Bell, Shilpa Gupta, Lee Mingwei, Shinro Ohtake, Sopheap Pich and Simon Fujiwara. The editors also pick the ten best gallery and museum shows of the year, the exhibitions on our radar in 2014, and twelve of our favorite books.