When the Hong Kong police first used tear gas and rubber bullets on the crowd of young and unarmed demonstrators in front of the government building on Hong Kong island—the moment the so-called Umbrella Revolution started in earnest—I was just arriving in the lovely hutong hotel I would stay at in Beijing. The loveliness of my surroundings, a renovated traditional courtyard home in an old area...
In an unassuming location next to a bus station and a shopping arcade in the huge Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is Vitamin Creative Space, an experimental art space created to engage with contemporary China but “inspired by the confrontation between contemporary Chinese life and traditional Chinese philosophy.” Founded in 2002, Vitamin is part independent art space, part commercial gallery,...
The 5th Yokohama Triennale closing ceremony ended with the burning of the specially created book, “Moe Nai Ko To Ba,” ironically titled “Words That Can’t Be Burned,” an homage to Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451. This custom one-of-a-kind book was a centerpiece of the exhibition featuring collections of rare documents and visual work, printed by every imaginable mechanical and manual...
While contemporary Chinese artists such as Ai Weiwei and Cai Guo-Qiang often grab international headlines with their projects and exhibitions, there are very few women among them. Lin Tianmiao is one of the few. That is very much due to the strength of her work, the power of its imagery, which is at once bold and delicate, and of its message, which is female-centric if not what she would call...
In case you didn’t notice, Hello Kitty invaded Los Angeles in November. If you were anywhere near Little Tokyo, you could scarcely escape the impression that not only that neighborhood, but half the population of LA’s downtown and east side had been initiated into the cult of the bow, cat-ears and whiskers. Hello Kitty has been a merchandising phenomenon for some decades now (four, to be...
Installation—often understood as the act of locating, positioning and inserting—has, in Nari Ward’s exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Los Angeles, intersected with the examination of founding American democratic principles. This combination of past works and...
In his kinetic objects and interactive environments, Nick Dong combines the simple, fractal serenity of Buddhist design with the quirky warmth of Victorian curio cabinets, as well as a refined yet theatrical sense of surprise. Across a handful of discrete objects and...
The very model for a great photographer in the post-World War II era was Henri Cartier-Bresson, a cosmopolitan heir to a fortune who was a co-founder of the photographic cooperative Magnum and traveled the world taking photographs with his hand-held Leica camera. His...
The sculptures in Dozie Kanu’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles flirt with functionality but refuse to reveal a clear purpose. Instead, these stylish hybrids possess the elegance of aspirational interior design and the subtle menace of dystopian relics. Many of...
It’s hard to imagine another time in my life when the word “home” will carry so much weight. The past year has redefined it for all of us. Home has become more vital than ever, yet home is more unstable than ever. Home is where we were told to stay, but home has been...