Asia Society to Honor Hon Chi Fun, Kimsooja, Rashid Rana and Hiroshi Sugimoto at Asia Arts Awards Gala in Hong Kong
HONG KONG, March 14, 2017 — Asia Society will honor four groundbreaking artists at the signature Asia Arts Awards Hong Kong, an annual gala celebration honoring the Asia Arts Game Changers during the week of Art Basel in Hong Kong. Major art collectors, artists, gallerists, art world dignitaries, and Asia Society supporters will gather to celebrate the contemporary arts in Asia and honor artists and arts professionals for their significant contributions to contemporary arts.
This year’s event honors artists Hon Chi Fun, Kimsooja, Rashid Rana and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
The awards will be held on Thursday, March 23, at the JS Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 pm. A cocktail reception and auction artwork viewing will be followed by the awards ceremony, dinner and auction. All proceeds from the Asia Arts Awards Hong Kong event will support Asia Society Arts and Culture initiatives. Asia Society’s Asia Arts Awards Hong Kong is co-organized by Asia Society Museum, New York, and Asia Society Hong Kong Center.
For more than twenty years, Asia Society has been a pioneer in identifying and fostering the latest contemporary Asian artists and engaging new audiences for their work.
Past honorees include: Cai Guo-Qiang, Bharti Kher, Lee Ufan, Liu Guosong, Nalini Malani, Nyoman Masriadi, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Shahzia Sikander, Do Ho Suh, Wucius Wong, Xu Bing, Zeng Fanzhi, and Zhang Xiaogang.
Find out more about purchasing tickets and the awards here.
About the 2017 Honorees
Hon Chi Fun is one of Hong Kong’s most respected visual artists, best known for his abstract paintings and serigraphic prints that reflect his interest in Taoism and phenomenology through the expression of circles. In 1958, he co-founded the Modern Literature and Art Association to promote local public interest in literature and art. He was among the first in Hong Kong to be awarded a Fellowship by John D. Rockefeller 3rd Foundation in 1968. He has been the recipient of solo exhibitions at Hong Kong Museum of Art (2005) and the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong (1988). In 2013, he received the Medal of Honor from the Hong Kong SAR Government in recognition of his outstanding artistic achievements.
Kimsooja is an internationally acclaimed multimedia artist whose videos, installations, and performances poignantly address issues relating to culture, politics, history, and identity, especially with regard to the displaced self. The artist’s conceptual, aesthetic, and structural investigations of performance through immobility in her practice inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant auteur. Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2016); Centre Pompidou-Metz (2015); Reina Sophia, Madrid (2006); MoMA PS1, New York (2001); 24th São Paulo Biennial (1998); the 48th, 49th, 51st and 52nd Venice Biennales. In 2013 she represented Korea at the 55th Venice Biennale.
Rashid Rana is known for his conceptual sculptures, videos, and photo composite collages that provocatively deconstruct social histories and cultural disjunctions to reflect the duality of our time. He has participated in major exhibitions including My East is Your West, a collateral event at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi (2013); Cornerhouse, Manchester (2011); Asia Society Museum, New York (2009); and Musée Guimet, Paris (2010) among others. Rana was recently appointed the artistic director of the 2017 Lahore Biennale. He is also the founding faculty member and current Dean of the School of Visual Arts and Design at the Beaconhouse National University in Lahore.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s singular practice spans the mediums of performing arts, photography, sculpture, installation, and architecture. His art deals with history and temporal existence through a variety of subject matter issues surrounding time, empiricism, and metaphysics that bridge Eastern and Western ideologies while examining the nature of time, perception, and the origins of consciousness. Sugimoto’s work has been presented in numerous international solo and group exhibitions among them The J. Paul Getty Museum (2014); 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010); Yokohama Triennale (2001); 3rd Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon (1995); and Carnegie International (1991). The artist received the Order of Arts and Letters (2013) from the French government; the Praemium Imperiale Painting Award (2009) from the Japan Arts Association; and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2001).