ArtAsiaPacific: Nalini Malani

Published March/April 2019 issue of ArtAsiaPacific. To read the full article, click here.

“This modern folktale, part of a stop-motion animation series that Nalini Malani calls her “#MalaniNotebooks,” distills into a 40-second video humanity’s penchant for possessiveness and division, as evidenced in historical events such as the Partition of India, which the artist herself experienced as a young child in 1947 and that haunts her photograms, reverse paintings, shadow-play installations and videos. Drawn on Malani’s iPad, Can You Divide the Clouds (2018) is a fleeting philosophical rumination, expressed in an exercise—as in the daily drawings or paintings of artists—that she shares with her followers on her Instagram account.”

ArtAsiaPacific: Patrick Sun

Published March/April 2019 issue of ArtAsiaPacific. To read the full article, click here.

“In a painting by Qian Hui’an (1833–1911), two young boys share a white-fleshed watermelon. At their back is a rock wall; in front is another melon, this one unsplit, its curves mimicking the fluid lines of their embracing, huddled figures. The dress of one of the figures—a loose, red sash around the waist, the same shade as the scarlet of their lips—and a bamboo fan evoke the canicular heat . . .”

ArtAsiaPacific: Li Yian

Published Mar/Apr 2019 issue of ArtAsiaPacific. To read the full article, visit the magazine's Digital Library.

“A CRT video projector imported from Italy screens short vignettes of characters in a small room conversing in the Yangjiang dialect of Cantonese about the history of a family-run cinema . . .”

ArtAsiaPacific: Review of Cao Fei

Published Nov/Dec 2018 issue of ArtAsiaPacific. To read the full article, visit the magazine's Digital Library.

“Although the premise of the film—ultimately an inverse of Tai Kwun’s own history—is intriguing, its plot is mostly powered by saccharine, pseudo-philosophical ruminating (“So what kind of prison do you want to live in?” “How [sic] does your ideal prison look like?”) with inclusions of quotes by Albert Camus, clips of past riots in Hong Kong and even sly in-jokes about contemporary art . . . Another reading of the film, with its profuse footage of Tai Kwun’s grounds, is as an advertisement, thinly veiled as a documentary, on the complex’s history as a colonial police station, court and jail.”

ArtAsiaPacific: Sam Samiee

Published Nov/Dec 2018 issue of ArtAsiaPacific. To read the full article, visit the magazine's Digital Library.

“In these abstract paintings, which he drapes from walls, the Tehran-born artist simultaneously mocks, and attempts to revise, our crude, capitalist obsessions with object valuation, suggesting that these canvases of fuzzy-edged, peach, blush and cerulean markings on similarly pastel-hued backgrounds—which are ultimately meaningless gestures—can be stand-ins for cold, hard cash.”