Win your very own copy of Museums & Galleries: Displaying Korea’s Past and Future, published by Seoul Selection in collaboration with the Korea Foundation. This new guide has an entire chapter dedicated to the country’s top art institutions.

Museums & Galleries: Displaying Korea’s Past and Future

According to a review of the publication by the The Korea Herald, published in December of 2011,

The chapter [on major art institutions] intelligently delves into how the emergence of these galleries is deeply linked to Korea’s modernisation and industrialisation which took place in the last fifty years.

We have one copy of Museums & Galleries: Displaying Korea’s Past and Future to give away for our January/February 2012 Flash Reward. All you have to do is leave your answer to the question below in the comment section of this post, or leave a message with your answer on our Facebook page or Twitter account. We will draw the winning name randomly on Wednesday 29 February 2012 and the winner will be contacted by email shortly after.

The question: What South Korean public institution or gallery showing contemporary Asian art do you most enjoy visiting? (You can just name the institution, but if you want to, feel free to tell us why, too. And if you cannot think of just one, name a few!)

So, leave a comment below or head to Art Radar on Facebook or Twitter and leave your answer there. Winning is as easy as that!

KN

Related Posts: Korean contemporary artists, Korean art happenings, museums

Related Topics:

• Seeking Korea artist residency? International opportunities at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon - January 2012 – a focus on reviving abandoned and idle buildings into venues for artists
• Follow “The Penguin” to the mountain – Tobias Berger on the NJPAC show - August 2010 - an exhibition of contemporary art by young and emerging Korean artists
• Korean National Museum of Contemporary Art Young Korean Artists retrospective spans 30 years - May 2010 – reflection on the museum’s oldest and most representative show
• Art about curators: Korean artist Yang Ah Ham’s No Nonsense solo show - April 2010 - Netherlands-based Korean artist Yang Ah Ham turns her focus on the art world itself
• Touring Taiwan: 50 of Taiwan’s top artworks on display at the Busan Museum of Arts, Korea - January 2010 - Taiwan’s top painters represented

Subscribe to Art Radar for more free art stuff!

Pieces from rising artist Hajra Waheed’s “Antranik Anouchian Passport Portrait Drawing series” were recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In the series, the artist reflects on experiences had while growing up on a Saudi Arabian oil compound.

Hajra Waheed, 'Antranik Anouchian Passport Portrait Drawing series (Women with Headscarves)', 2010, pencil drawing on paper. Image courtesy Green Cardamom.

Waheed was inspired by passport photos taken by Armenian photographer Antranik Anouchian between 1935 to 1970. As she explains in an artist statement,

As a result of living in Saudi Arabia, a country that forbid any use of public photographic/video documentation, the only images permissible were that of the passport photo. As a woman, I was only able to leave the city and travel within the country with written permission from my father and the accompaniment of an Iqama or in-country passport. Consequently, the passport photo not only identified me but came to represent the opportunity to exist as a somewhat free individual.

In total, there are 198 drawings in the series, 99 men and 99 women.

Hajra Waheed, 'Antranik Anouchian Passport Portrait Drawing series (Men in Uniforms)', 2010, pencil drawing on paper. Image courtesy Green Cardamom.

Hajra Waheed was born in Calgary, Canada to Muslim-Indian parents, but she grew up in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, within the gated headquarters of Saudi Aramco, a state-owned oil corporation. As the largest oil exporter in the world, Saudi Aramco controls around a quarter of the world’s oil supply, and as a result, the community was subject to stringent access regulations.

Waheed’s work comments on the disjoints that arise within this kind of living situation, and she also examines the complex dynamics of power and privilege that still pervade cross-cultural encounters in the globalising world. Waheed’s practice, however, is more personal than political, and her assemblages of found notes and stationery, architectural schematics and cyphers of her own design read like an intimate journal.

Hajra Waheed, 'Scrapbook page 12', 2010-11, mixed media. Part of the exhibition "The Scrapbook Project". Image courtesy Green Cardamom.

“The Scrapbook Project“, a solo exhibition of Hajra Waheed’s most recent work and the artists first in the UK, will be on display at Green Cardamom in London until 9 March 2012. Her artwork can  also be seen in a Green Cardamom-organised group exhibition called “Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space“, on at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art until 1 April 2012.

PR/KN

Related Topics: collage, drawing, pencil, globalisation of art, acquisitions

Related Posts:

• Post-disaster reflections in Japan-Australia art exhibition “Alternating Currents” – December 2011 – another exhibition that examines Asian cross-cultural engagement
• Words in Art: How Indian-born painter Sujata Bajaj uses Sanskrit on canvas – December 2011 – a different collage method by a contemporary Indian artist
• Young Indian artists struggle under veteran legacy – November 2011 – Indian artists face challenges in integrating into the art market
• 2 Indian photographers shortlisted for Canada’s 2011 Grange Prize – September 2011 – Indian artists recognised by a major international prize, to be decided by public vote
• MOMA acquires Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner video Moby Dick – April 2009 – another major acquisition for MoMA’s increasingly comprehensive contemporary Asian art collection

Subscribe to Art Radar for more acquisitions of art by major museums

The third edition of ArtBatFest is set to run in Almaty, Kazakhstan, from 25 to 27 May 2012. The theme of this year’s festival is “2012: The Beginning of the World”, and the organisers of the event are calling for artists who are experienced in creating art for public spaces.

Logo of the 2012 ArtBatFest. Image courtesy ArtBatFest.

From the PDF download on the ArtBatFest website,

The 1st Contemporary Art Festival ArtBatFest was organised in 2010 by a local initiative group of artists and businessmen. In 2011, the festival achieved international scale. The Festival’s direction – Public Art – includes such categories as installations (site-specific art), paintings and graphics, photo and video art, theatre, performance, various music styles. In 2011, the initiative group created the public association Eurasian Cultural Alliance, which will be an official organiser of future ArtBatFest Festivals.


Potential participants: artists, artistic projects from all around the world.

What: open air events: installations, contemporary visual and performing arts, music concerts, etc.

Where: parks, squares, pedestrian streets in Almaty.

When: opening of the Festival will take place May 25 – 27, 2012.


Installations will be placed all over the city between 25 May to 25 June, 2012.


[The Festival] will select participants from all around the world, and underwrites production expenses of installations, as well as accommodation and meals for the participants. Participants should send us an application and their works/projects.


For installations [the event] offers two options for participation:

• participants provide the festival with the installation’s production specifications (distant participation).
• participants arrive in Almaty and make installations by themselves.

Please find an application form, terms of participation and installation production requirements on the website of the festival.

PR/KN

Related Topics: art festivals, Kazakhstani art, public art

Related Posts:

• Curators announced for Central Asian Pavillion, 54th Venice Biennial – October 2010 – how the curators of the 2010 biennale presented Central Asian contemporary art
• Curator Rosa Maria Falvo on emerging Central Asian art scene – interview – December 2009 – an interview with an eminent curator and critic of Central Asian art
• East of Nowhere, important exhibition of rare post Soviet Central Asian art in Italy, 2009 – September 2009 – Central Asian artists explore their roots in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse
• Art from Kazakhstan will take your breath away – video – April 2009 – link to a video about the Kazakhstani contemporary art scene
• Central Asian art joins mainstream market – December 2008 – an early look into a still nascent art world

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on contemporary art festivals in Central Asia

With the repositioning of its ASIA ONE section into the centre of the fair for 2012, ART HK, now led by MCH Group, the owners of leading international fair Art Basel, is attempting to assert its “unique” position as the “only world class art fair to have a 50/50 balance of Asian and Western participation”.

From the press release,

ART HK 12 will also see the return of ASIA ONE, a section which debuted at the fair in 2011. Forty-nine galleries from across Asia will exhibit a solo presentation by an artist of Asian origin. ASIA ONE offers an international platform to Asian artists and their galleries and provides a unique opportunity for visitors to experience a diverse view of the Asian art scene. In keeping with the Fair’s encouragement of cross-cultural exchange, ART HK recently announced the repositioning of ASIA ONE into the heart of the fair.

In the same release, ART HK 12 also announced their 266-strong gallery list. Top participants from Asia include,

Long March Space and The Pace Gallery from Beijing; Vitamin Creative Space from Guangzhou; Ben Brown Fine Arts and Hanart TZ Gallery from Hong Kong; Nature Morte / Bose Pacia from New Delhi; Kukje Gallery from Seoul; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery from Sydney; Eslite Gallery from Taipei and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE from Tokyo. New additions include de Sarthe Gallery from Hong Kong, Gallery Koyanangi from Japan and three galleries from Mumbai: Chemould Prescott Road, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke and Volte.

Click here to view the complete list of galleries attending ART HK 12 (PDF download).

PR/KN

Related Topics: art fairs, Hong Kong art venues, Asia expands

Related Posts:

• Hong Kong Contemporary: Hotel art fair to piggyback ART HK 12 – February 2012 – a second contemporary art fair to run in tandem with ART HK 12
• What art fairs will contemporary galleries be heading to in 2011 – July 2011 – different galleries consider their increasing art fair options
• Art Basel takeover of ART HK: What did dealers at ART HK 11 say? –  June 2011 – gallerists weigh in on the new ownership of ART HK
• ART HK 11 top topics media round-up: Ai Weiwei, Gao Weigang, ASIA ONE and gallery sales – June 2011 –  the most talked-about issues of ART HK 11
• ART HK 11 Hong Kong art fair: Gallery sales – ART FUTURES and ASIA ONE sections – June 2011 – gallerists respond to new additions to the ART HK format

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on contemporary art fairs in Asia

In January 2012, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Siu Li Tan, an assistant director and curator for the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), who talked about the importance of private collectors and their unique role in shaping the Asian art community.

Sheba Chhacchi, 'Winged Pilgrims II', 2006, mixed media. Part of "The Collectors Show: Chimera" exhibition of contemporary Asian art at the Singapore Art Museum. The exhibition will end on 25 March 2012.

From The Wall Street Journal,

I [Siu Li Tan] have been watching with interest the recent mushrooming of private museums and art foundations across Asia. Some of these have been established with very clear aims and ambitions in mind: Besides serving as an exhibition platform for new art forms, these private museums or foundations are also committed to nurturing an appreciation and understanding of contemporary art with their education and outreach initiatives.


At the same time, however, a number of other private museums exist purely to house their founders’  expansive collections, and are not exactly accessible to the public. This is where an institution like SAM can play a role in bringing together, in a single venue, important or interesting works of art drawn from these private collections.


It remains to be seen how this recent trend of private museums develops in this region, for it has enormous potential to shape the contemporary art scene, given the lack of public art institutions with the means and/or inclination to exhibit contemporary art. I can’t help but think about the FACE (Foundation of Arts for a Contemporary Europe) model, where an alliance of art foundations established by private collectors organises exhibitions which draw on works from their collections and which travel around the different country venues. Imagine what a similar model could do for contemporary art in Asia.

Tan goes on to comment that museums are largely priced out of contemporary art acquisitions, which greatly affects institutions in Asian countries where art philanthropy and donation are less common. However, collectors are adapting to this non-traditional situation and are finding ways to provide access to their collections and their wealth. In China, leading contemporary art collector Uli Sigg founded the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards to provide stronger institutional support for contemporary artists in the country, and Art Radar also noted the increase in private museums in Asia as part of our contemporary Asian art trends series.

PR/KN

Related Topics: collectors, museum collections, museums

Related Posts:

• New private contemporary art museum for Dubai – December 2011 – a new museum housing the collection of arts patron Ramin Salsali
• What motivates billionaire collector Victor Pinchuk? The Art Newspaper – November 2011 – how one Ukrainian mogul has created a private collection empire
• Provocative agenda at huge Australian collector-owned museum – November 2011 – David Walsh’s private museum goes for eccentricity over familiarity
• Which museums are collecting Chinese contemporary art? New database just revealed – November 2009 – an online resource from the AW Asia gallery to track museum acquisitions of contemporary Chinese art
• Singapore Museum Guide – November 2009 – a run-down of museums in Singapore and what they exhibit

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on collectors of contemporary Asian art

Meet the Art Radar team in Spain in February 2012! Kate Cary Evans, Executive Editor and Founder of Art Radar, is participating in a Casa Asia-organised panel event at ARCOmadrid, one of a number of public sessions being held as part of the fair’s annual forum.

Inside a past edition of ARCOmadrid. Photographer: Hector Mediavilla.

The talk, part of a programme of “professional meetings” called Asian Maps that is in its ninth year, will be held on Sunday 19 February 2012, running from 4:00 to 5:30pm, and is open to members of the public. Other participants include representatives from Asia Art Archive, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Alternative Space Loop, Para/Site Art Space and artist Wang Zhiyuan.

Click here for more information on the ARCOmadrid Forum 2012 including session names, dates, times and location details.

We encourage friends of Art Radar to come along to the panel event to hear our views and those of other participants on the development of contemporary art in the Asian region, and to meet with Kate Cary Evans and Art Radar Editor Kate Nicholson at the close of the talk. Those interested in meeting with the Art Radar team at another time during the fair are encouraged to send an email with their contact details to stories.artradar@gmail.com.

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on contemporary art from Asia and beyond

Since our last poll of Art Radar‘s most-searched artists, published in August 2011, Chinese artist-dissident Ai Weiwei has taken the number one spot from compatriot Tsang Kin-wah, and South Korean artists have seen a spike in popularity.

Lee Yong-Baek, 'Angel Soldier_Photo - No. 1', 2011, C-print. Lee's "Angel Soldier" series was featured in the Korea pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

The list picks up from our last update in 2011, and covers the period from July through to December 2011. We cannot claim that this list is a reliable proxy for the most-searched Asian contemporary artists on the Internet overall (take a look at our disclaimer at the bottom of this article for more on why), however, we do think the list throws up some fascinating data, particularly when compared with our previous lists. For the data from 2010, click here, and for the data from 2009, click here.

The list…

Art Radar 16 most-searched Asian contemporary artists to December 2011

Ai Weiwei reigns in 2011

Red-hot Chinese artist Ai Weiwei claimed the top spot left vacant by Tsang Kin-wah’s precipitous drop to number 14. This comes as no surprise, given the artist’s vocal press and social media outreach conducted in defiance of the terms of his release from custody on 22 June 2011. Ai was the subject of a watershed retrospective at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum that ran from 29 October 2011 to 29 January 2012, which included his famous Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads bronzes. He was also a runner-up for Time magazine’s person of the year and topped ArtReview‘s Power 100 list of the most influential people in the arts.

South Korean artists on the rise

Perhaps the most surprising development on the list was the increase in South Korean artists, who overtook Chinese artists to occupy more spots than any other single country on the list. Newcomers included Lee Yong-baek, the artist chosen to represent South Korea at the Venice Biennale from 4 June-27 November 2011 with his pavilion The Love is gone but the Scar will heal. Also new to the list was Park Sung Tae, whose first New York solo exhibition in early 2011 made for a striking picture feast. Returning from the previous list, Kim Joon jumped nine spots to crack the geographically diverse top five. These are all signs that the art world may be embracing South Korea as the next big wave in Asian contemporary art.

First appearance for Cai Guo-Qiang, Manuel Ocampo, Silas Fong

While Chinese artist Li Hui dropped off the list from his number five spot, mega-artist Cai Guo-Qiang made his first ever appearance on the list at number six. His solo exhibition at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art opened on 5 December 2011, his first show in the Middle East. Also new to the list was Manuel Ocampo, who in late 2011 participated in Contemporary Art Dublin in addition to holding a solo exhibition called “The Beer Belly Masculinity Intensification Program” at Melbourne’s KALIMANRAWLINS gallery. The only young artist to make the list was Hong Kong’s Silas Fong, who in 2011 participated in the Seoul International NewMedia Festival, capping off several prolific years in the Hong Kong arts scene.

How does our list match up to your expectations? Leave us a comment and tell us who you think should be on the list.

Disclaimer: This list is not a reliable proxy for the most-searched artists on the Internet overall. If we have not written a post on or tagged an artist, search engines will not bring us traffic for this search term and it will not appear in our traffic analysis statistics. Art Radar is still young, having just celebrated its third birthday, so it is quite possible that we have not yet covered some higly-searched artists. Even if we have referenced an artist on our site and the artist is highly searched, the searcher will not come to us unless we have a high page ranking for the story on search engines. For example, if the post is, say, after page four of search engine results, the searcher is not as likely to find our post and the search term will not appear in our stats. Finally, even if we have written a post on a searched artist and that post is ranked highly, it may be that other stories on the same page are more alluring than ours and readers do not find their way to us.

PR/KN/HH

Related Topics: Ai Weiwei, Korean artists, list posts

Related Posts:

• Will Ai Weiwei rebuild Shanghai studio in Ghent? – November 2011 – the artist contemplates rebuilding his destroyed studio in what would be an elaborate performance piece
• Modernity through the eyes of 8 South Korean photographers – October 2011 –  profile of a diverse set of Korean photographers who exhibited at Galerie Paris-Beijing
• Art Radar 20 most-searched contemporary Asian artists to June 2011 – August 2011 – the previous search results included a strong performance by New Zealand artists
• Ai Weiwei’s anthropomorphic army: 12 Zodiac Heads storm Somerset House London – June 2011 – a landmark touring artwork that comments on China’s foreign relations
• Korean artists: 4 top posts from 2010 to 2011 – June 2011 – an overview of Art Radar‘s coverage of important new Korean art

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on contemporary Asian artists

Science and magic make for a dynamic partnership in collaborative art project Migrant Ecologies. Art Radar talks to one of the artists involved, Lucy Davis, about creative tension and the relationships that exist between both science and art, and nature and humanity.

Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Singaporean woodcut movement inspiration for Migrant Ecologies

A visual artist, art writer and Assistant Professor at the School of Art Design and Media (ADM), Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Lucy Davis’ engagement with the Migrant Ecologies project began with her fascination with the modern woodcut movement in mid-twentieth century Singapore. Originating in Shanghai in the 1930s, the movement expanded via Chinese immigrants to Singapore. The woodcutters in Singapore carved out a place for themselves, quite literally, through their art, shaping a sense of residency in their new city out of wood-blocks.

Davis thought of using woodcutting techniques to investigate issues related to environmental sustainability. However, she soon discovered that the wood blocks used by artists were made from jelutong, a timber used extensively for pencils and art supplies, which is associated with deforestation. This led her to search for other materials on which to carve the journey of wood. Davis expanded on these developments in two exhibitions in 2009 and 2010, held in Singapore, and Migrant Ecologies grew out of these explorations.

Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Founded in 2010, the project is described by its founders as an inquiry into “human relationships with trees, forests and forest products in Southeast Asia, explored in terms of materials, metaphors, magic, ecological resources and historical agency.” As part of the project, which is set to continue until 2013, artists Davis and Shannon Lee Castleman, developed Jalan Jati, or Teak Road in English, which involved conducting DNA testing on wooden objects. This link between art and scientific research has resulted in the development of works which include photography, animation and woodcut prints.

Science and the magic of art

Jalan Jati, the most recent production in the ongoing Migrant Ecology Project, involved taking samples of wood from a 1950s teak bed in Singapore in order to test the DNA and trace where the bed had come from. Through this scientific process, and with the technical assistance of Double Helix Tracking Technologies, the team identified that the bed had mostly likely originated in Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. Tracing this thread, the artists and other project members then conducted fieldwork in the area.

Samples from a teak bed. Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Shankar Iyerh from Double Helix extracting samples from a teak bed to be sent to the University of Adelaide for DNA testing, 2010. Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Working with DNA testing led to tension between the scientific process of gathering factual information and the creative output. While the scientific research relied on hard data, the creative process followed a more subjective, intuitive approach. Davis’ work, in particular, delves into magical realist elements, exploring relational and symbolic connections. “As artists, and particularly as artists working with contemporary ways of looking at the world, we’re used to not wanting truth,” she explains. “We want multiple answers. We want things to open up … and DNA … is so positivist, it’s like the absolute source, … and that tension is something that’s still there with the project.”

Nature and man

The relationship between humanity and nature is a theme that is unravelled throughout Jalan Jati, and the conflict and co-dependence of this contact was something that the project’s participants saw clearly demonstrated in the environment of Southeast Sulawesi.

In their field work, Davis and Castleman were taken to plantations that were considered to be haunted. Imported plantation trees battled for space with twisted Banyans, the seeds of which had been dropped by migrating birds. Davis used this experience to construct a metaphor for one sequence of a stop-motion animation called A Bed remembers an Island, which she created as part of the project. In the segment, called ”Banyan battles with teak, magic battles with science”, spidery depictions of the trees, imported by man and by bird, tussle with each other for dominance.

In Castleman’s photographic piece, titled Tree Wound Portraits, she explores the command man has over nature. The artist documents the gradual cuts inflicted on teak trunks by local villagers, who are slowly cutting the trees down, “giv[ing] a tree one cut with an axe after another … until finally [after months] the tree falls or dies and no-one is to blame [for the illegal felling].”

Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Another concept that exhibits elements of magical realism is the assertion that it was teak that conquered Southeast Asia, carried along with other items brought by the humans that migrated to and colonised the region. Davis explains that this concept reflects the reciprocal relationship between nature and humanity. Objects, or nature, can have a value and can affect the actions we take. This relationship between humanity and nature, often referred to as ‘naturecultures’, is a theme that permeates Davis’ work in this project.

Nature does things to us as much as we do things to nature…. It’s not just about us dominating everything, … nature has always intervened in the ways in which we construct the world.

Can art really make a difference?

Migrant Ecologies is a project that approaches issues of environmental sustainability, and in particular tries to expose the origins of the materials that we use every day, but is it possible for art to really make a difference in this field? While Davis admits that this project, by itself, may not change the world, she hopes that the new approach taken by the Migrant Ecologies participants can provide a unique outlook that inspires audiences to stop and think. As an example of this dedication to spreading ideas and information, Davis and Castleman make use of the factual data collected during their investigation of the natural environment to create, in collaboration with local university students, educational animations that present information on the growth processes and the study of plants. This educational material is made available online and shown alongside the artwork when it is exhibited.

Lucy Davis, "A Bed Remembers an Island. An Island Remembers a Bird" (stop motion), Zai Kuning & Zai Tang (composers), raw stills of woodprints and charcoal, 2011. Image courtesy Lucy Davis.

Future directions for Migrant Ecologies

Migrant Ecologies will show next from 1 to 31 May 2012 at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space in Bandung, Indonesia, where it will be part of a group exhibition called “Still Building: Contemporary Art from Singapore”. Held in collaboration with Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore, the exhibition is aimed at mapping out the development of contemporary art in Singapore.

CW/KN/HH

Related Topics: environmental art, art and science collaborations, photography, curatorial practice

Related Posts:

• Post-disaster reflections in Japan-Australia art exhibition “Alternating Currents”- December 2011 – read about six contemporary Japanese artists and their reflections after the Tōhoku earthquake
• Sand-covered Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang’s Phnom Penh lake performance - August 2011 – Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang questions urban development
• Words in Art: Australian artist Josephine Starrs maps rivers with poetry - March 2011 – connecting words, art and climate change
• Video artists raise awareness about water conservation in China - January 2011 – video and new media artists address the issue of water
• Taiwan eco-art exhibition Going Green tours America - curator interview – January 2011 – interview with curator of “Going Green”, environmental art in Asia

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on art and environment projects in Asia

Early in February 2012, FICA (Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art) announced that New Delhi-based art collective WALA had been awarded their 2011 Public Art Grant. The group won with their performance-based project titled Kachra Seth’s Observatory.

Image courtesy: Kachra Seth, WALA, 2010.

From the FICA press release, sent out on Saturday 4 February 2012,

FICA is pleased to announce the recipient of the Public Art Grant 2011 – WALA for their project titled Kachra Seth’s Observatory.


‘Kachra Seth’s Observatory’ is a performance based project, exploring the city of Delhi, addressing its relationship with itself, its people, the present structures, what is meant by ‘wastes’, with fiction and realism interspersed in productive ways. The WALA is a Delhi-based collective formed in 2009 by Akansha Rastogi, Sujit Mallick and Paribartana Mohanty.


The Public Art Grant 2011 jury consisted of artists Monica Nirula and Atul Bhalla, and filmmaker Rahul Roy. The project was chosen for its provocative use of performance in the public domain in a manner which is both poetic and political. Seen as a series of performance-based interventions across Delhi it also had the potential to investigate the idea of ‘publics’ in an urban context, histories of locations, and engage with the city from various proximities.


Kachra Seth’s Observatory revolves around the fictional figure of Kachra Seth, and his observatory which is a real-fictive location. It expands upon the idea of an observatory which can range from a laboratory for performance to a site of data collection and its dissemination. WALA proposes five performance-situations during the one-year grant period. These five events will further explore the questions that were raised by Kachra Seth’s first performance (20 September 2010 at Seemapuri New Delhi), and evolve a dissipation and consummation process for the character. With each event/performance the simple act of walking through different sites of the city (Delhi) transforms, heightens and investigates the relationship between the fictional character and the city, simultaneously shaping the political subjectivity of the character (that appears and disappears in many avatars, himself becoming the site of performance of other’s desires/play). The project engages with different registers of public/audience – the invited ‘art-fraternity’, the incidental public, ready-made audience, wherein the performance translates into ‘tamasha’ or ‘a festival/celebration’ or ‘a non-event’.


WALA is a Delhi-based collective formed in 2009. Drawing from people who are known by their professions such as kabadiwala, ice-creamwala or paaniwala, the deliberately missing prefix of WALA allows inhabiting multiple forms of belonging, associations and affinities. WALA sees itself as producer of situations, encounters, devices, formats that allow dialogues to occur with or without artists’ presence. WALA has been engaged with performance art and community art projects. As part of the one-year CALENDAR PROJECT, WALA had made a calendar containing collages of personal photographs of twelve families residing in D-1 block of DLF Dilshad Garden Extension, New Delhi. Dedicating a month to each of the 12 families the twelve exclusive calendars were gifted to them with the intention of playing with past, present and future on one surface, and encourage a different learning of each other in a neighbourhood.


Akansha Rastogi is a researcher working on Indian modern and contemporary art. She is currently an Associate Curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. She was the recipient of IFA-Khoj Curatorial Residency 2011.


Paribartana Mohanty is an artist, working in multiple mediums of video, performance, painting and sculpture. He was the recipient of FICA Emerging Artist Award 2010 and ‘City as Studio-1′ Sarai-CSDS Media Lab Associate Fellowship 2010.


Sujith Mallick is an artist, working between performance and painting. He is the recipient of ‘City as Studio-2’ at Sarai-CSDS Media Lab Associate Fellowship 2011-12 and Inlaks Fine Arts Award 2012.

FICA presents contemporary artists working in India with a number of annual awards, fellowships and grants, including the Emerging Artist Award, the Public Art Grant and the Research Fellowship.

KN/HH

Related Topics: Indian artists, art prizes, performance art

Related Posts:

• Young Indian artists struggle under veteran legacy – The Economic Times - November 2011 – on trying to break free from legacy left by India’s pioneer artists
• Charmi Gada Shah recipient of FICA Emerging Artist Award 2011 - October 2011 - a jury that included Bharti Kher and Sunil Gupta selected installation artist Gada Shah as winner
• 2 Indian photographers shortlisted for Canada’s 2011 Grange Prize - September 2011 - Gauri Gill and Nandini Valli selected
• Art collective Raqs predict future in latest Indian solo – picture feast - March 2011 - an interview for our “Words in Art” series
• Collateral damage: Indian artist Sheela Gowda burns installation in UK gallery - March 2011 - Sheela Gowda, in conversation with Grant Watson, curator of her first UK solo

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on visual art grants in Asia

The royal family of Qatar recently purchased Cézanne’s The Card Players for more than USD250 million, the most expensive art acquisition in history. With the purchase, Qatar continues to position itself as a leading international art centre.

Paul Cézanne, 'The Card Players', 1893, oil on canvas.

As reported by Vanity Fair,

The tiny, oil-rich nation of Qatar has purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, ‘The Card Players’, for more than USD250 million. The deal, in a single stroke, sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art and upends the modern art market.


If the price seems insane, it may well be, since it more than doubles the current auction record for a work of art. And this is no epic van Gogh landscape or Vermeer portrait, but an angular, moody representation of two Aix-en-Provence peasants in a card game. But, for its USD250 million, Qatar gets more than a post-Impressionist masterpiece; it wins entry into an exclusive club. There are four other Cézanne ‘Card Players’ in the series; and they are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay, the Courtauld, and the Barnes Foundation. For a nation in the midst of building a museum empire, it’s instant cred.


The Cézanne sale actually took place in 2011, and details of the secret deal are [only] now coming out….

The previous record was set by Jackson Pollack’s ‘No 5′ in 2006, which sold for USD140 million. The painting will likely join Qatar’s other modern and contemporary masterpieces, including works by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, and a rumoured eleven pieces by Mark Rothko, acquired in 2009, in the Qatar National Museum, set to reopen in 2014. As Art Radar noted in August 2011, Qatar’s spending has made the tiny Gulf nation the world’s single biggest art buyer, with purchases in excess of USD428 million between 2005 and April 2011.

On 9 February 2012 the Takashi Murakami exhibition “Murakami – Ego” opened at Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art, presented by the Qatar Museums Authority, Qatar’s premier cultural institution. It is chaired by the emir’s daughter, Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani.

PR/KN/HH

Related Topics: Qatar art happenings, art market watch, globalisation

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• Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum 2012 adds days and cities to schedule – event alert – February 2012 – Art Dubai expands its discussion forum, Doha added
• Qatar top contemporary art buyer internationally, reports Art Newspaper – August 2011 – some implications of this major regional shift in art collection
• Financial Times discerns new collector type from BRIC, Middle East – July 2011 – up-and-coming collectors from developing nations are defining the contemporary art market
• Art Observed reports on Mathaf Arab art museum inauguration and preview – January 2011 – a report from the groundbreaking new museum dedicated to modern Arab art
• Sotheby’s to hold first ever international auction house sale of calligraphy in Doha – July 2010 – a major art auction held in Doha highlights the importance of the Middle East as art centre

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