Asia Society To Present Second Asia Arts Game Changer Awards in India
Arpita Singh, Kochi Biennale Foundation (Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu), Sun Xun, and Benitha Perciyal To Be Honored February 8, 2018, in New Delhi
NEW DELHI, January 24, 2018 — Asia Society’s second annual Asia Arts Game Changer Awards India will honor Arpita Singh, Kochi Biennale Foundation (Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu), Sun Xun, and Benitha Perciyal. These artists will be celebrated for their significant contributions toward the development of modern and contemporary art in the Asia region at a gala in New Delhi on February 8, 2018.
This signature event—held on the eve of the India Art Fair taking place on February 9–12—brings together Asia Society trustees and patrons, and major art collectors, artists, gallerists, and dignitaries from the art world to honor and celebrate artists and arts professionals for their contributions to contemporary art.
Asia Society India will also present, for the first time in India, the work of one of the 2017 honorees, the Tokyo-based artist collective teamLab, at the India Art Fair.
Arpita Singh, Bose Krishnamachari, and Riyas Komu will receive the Asia Arts Vanguard Awards recognizing senior visual artists who have served as pioneers and mentors over their careers. Benitha Perciyal and Sun Xun will receive the Asia Arts Future Awards recognizing innovators broadening the current understanding of contemporary art.
The awards acknowledge and celebrate the work of eminent artists whose practices have brought a deeper understanding of the region to the people of Asia and beyond. The inaugural Asia Arts Awards India in 2017 celebrated Abir Karmakar, Krishen Khanna, and teamLab.
“This is an exciting time for contemporary art in Asia, with hubs of creativity and artistic ferment emerging all over the region,” says Boon Hui Tan, Vice President of Global Arts & Cultural Programs and Director of Asia Society Museum. “Our Asia Arts Game Changer Awards in India, growing from our related platform in Hong Kong, recognizes that India and South Asia are a crucial part of the new exciting world of contemporary art that is being built by artists from this region.”
“Building on the success of last year’s awards, the Asia Society India Centre is delighted to be honoring an extraordinary group of artists again this year, while celebrating a wider community of artists, art supporters, and enthusiasts, and fostering the development of contemporary art in the continent,” says Bunty Chand, CEO of Asia Society India Centre.
Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changer Awards India is co-organized by Asia Society Museum, New York, and Asia Society India. Find out more about the awards and read bios of the artists being honored this year here.
The Asia Arts Game Changer Awards India are part of a larger Asia Society initiative— the Asia Arts Game Changer Awards—now in its sixth year, to recognize and honor ground-breaking Asian artists. The India edition of the Awards reflects the diverse and multiple sources of artistic creativity across Asia. An awards ceremony is also held in Hong Kong during the week of Art Basel in Hong Kong, celebrating contemporary arts in Asia and honoring artists and arts professionals for their significant contributions to contemporary arts. The Asia Arts Game Changer Awards Hong Kong will be held on March 29, 2018.
For more than twenty years, Asia Society Museum has been a pioneer in identifying and fostering the latest contemporary Asian artists, and engaging new audiences for their work. The Museum presents a wide range of traditional, modern, and contemporary exhibitions of Asian and Asian American art in New York, taking new approaches to familiar masterpieces and introducing under-recognized arts and artists. In fall of 2018, Asia Society Museum will present the exhibition The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India.
Asia Society India is a part of Asia Society’s global network of twelve offices. Inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2006, Asia Society India aims to be a key forum for catalyzing connections and exchange across and within Asia. It seeks to connect India with the Asia-Pacific community by promoting mutual understanding, generating new ideas, and fostering collaborative action across the fields of arts and culture, and policy and business.
A not-for-profit institution that has undertaken a special interest in presenting an array of perspectives on the arts and culture of modern Asia, its recent art programs have included:
- A panel discussion titled Community Arts: Interpretations & Approaches where a variety of community arts practitioners from India and Australia—including Navjot Altaf, Sanjna Kapoor, and Deepika Sorabjee—came together to discuss the value of engaging with local communities through the arts;
- The symposium Past Modern: Looking Back, Looking Forward about the Progressive Artists’ Group, which formed at the time of independence; a conversation about the exhibition “Sultans of Deccan India—Opulence and Fantasy” by Navina Haidar, Curator, Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and
- A musical performance with The Aga Khan Music Initiative, New Music from the Ends of the Silk Road.
In 2012, Asia Society India hosted Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, director of the Academy Award-winning documentary Saving Face, as well as a special pre-release screening of Death in the Gunj with Konkona Sensharma.
About Asia Society
Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational institution headquartered in New York with state-of-the-art cultural centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston, and offices in Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.