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Storage Jar. Korea. Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), about mid-18th century. Porcelain painted with underglaze cobalt blue. H. 17 1/2 x Diam. 13 3/4 in. (44.5 x 34.9 cm). Asia Society, New York: Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, 1979.196
The six objects highlighted in this focused exhibition demonstrate the rigorous collecting of preeminent Asian art objects by Asia Society’s founder, John D. Rockefeller 3rd, and his wife, Blanchette. Through numerous trips to Asia, the couple cultivated an interest in Asian art, appreciating its exquisite craftsmanship, moving artistic expression, and historical and cultural significance in the realm of global art. They built their collection primarily from 1963 to 1978 under the supervision of the late Dr. Sherman Lee (1918–2008), an expert in the field of Asian art and Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1979, the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of nearly three hundred works from South, Southeast, and East Asia dating from 2000 BCE to the 19th century was established at Asia Society.
The Rockefellers bequeathed their collection in support of their mission to expand knowledge and interest in Asia, believing that art provides the strongest bridge to understanding and valuing world cultures. Further exploration of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection will continue in Asia Society galleries in the spring of 2025 with a large-scale exhibition focusing on these and other treasures in dialogue with work and ideas by three New York-based contemporary artists: Howardena Pindell, Byron Kim, and Rina Banerjee.
Xu Bing: Word Alchemy assembles more than 50 of Xu Bing’s most important woodcut prints, videos, drawings, installations, and other ephemera representing almost 50 years of the artist’s creative output. Starting with Xu’s early engagements with social realism and Western art historical traditions alike, the exhibition charts the evolution of the artist’s linguistic experiments which challenge and expand not only the history of Chinese landscape painting, but the canons of contemporary art.
Born in China and now working in both Brooklyn and Beijing, artist Xu Bing (b. 1955) is widely considered to be one of the most important artists to emerge from China in the 20th century. Focusing on the artist’s longstanding engagement with words and language, Word Alchemy is the most comprehensive exhibition on this theme so far, and around one-third of the objects in the exhibition are being shown in the U.S. for the first time.
Highlights of the exhibition include Xu Bing’s early works, never-before-exhibited notebooks, landmark prints including the Series of Repetitions handscroll, a new Background Story with a connection to Zhao Mengfu’s famous Autumn Colors on the Qiao and Hua Mountains handscroll, a new Texas-themed Square Word Calligraphy, and a new installation of Monkeys Grasp for the Moon in Asia Society Texas' Fayez Sarofim Grand Hall.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Asia Society Texas will publish a full-color exhibition catalogue and host a symposium on Xu Bing's art on February 23, 2024.
Admission and Hours
Public Hours
Wednesday・10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Thursday・12 p.m. – 7 p.m. | Free Thursday exhibition admission presented by Regions Bank Friday–Sunday・10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Admission
When planning your visit, please consider purchasing or reserving admission in advance. We welcome walk-up visitors.
Seniors, students, military personnel, and guests with disabilities receive a 20% discount on onsite purchases of Explore Asia Admission and Louisa Stude Sarofim Gallery Admission.
Photography
Photography is permitted. Flash photography and use of tripods and selfie-sticks are not allowed.
About the Artist
Xu Bing was born in Chongqing, China in 1955 and raised in Beijing. He enrolled in the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1977, completed his studies in 1981, and later joined the faculty. He went on to earn a master's degree from the same institution in 1987. In recognition of his accomplishments, he was invited to the United States as an honorary artist in 1990. Xu Bing's career has been marked by a variety of notable achievements. In 2007, he returned to China and assumed several leadership roles at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, including Vice President, professor, and supervisor of doctoral students. Since 2014, he has served as the head of the institution's Academic Committee. Currently, he divides his time between Beijing and New York, where he lives and works.
Xu Bing's work has been displayed in numerous prestigious venues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Sackler National Gallery in Washington, D.C. His work has also been exhibited at the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museo Reina Sofia, as well as the Joan Miró Foundation. Additionally, he has participated in several international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, São Paulo Biennale, and Johannesburg Biennale.
His works are included in major art history textbooks such as Art Past, Art Present (Boston: Abrahams Inc, 1997) and Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History (Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2013).
Xu Bing has been the recipient of several esteemed awards throughout his illustrious career. In 1999, he was granted the MacArthur Fellowship for his exceptional originality, creativity, personal direction, and significant contributions to society, particularly in the domains of printmaking and calligraphy. In 2003, he was honored with the 14th Fukuoka Asian Cultural Award in Japan for his noteworthy contribution to the advancement of Asian culture. In his acceptance speech, Okwui Enwezor lauded Xu Bing as an artist who transcends cultural boundaries, bridging the divide between East and West and expressing his thoughts and realities in a visual language. Additionally, he won the first Artes Mundi Prize in Wales in 2004, and the lifetime achievement award from the Southern Graphics Council in 2006. In 2010, Columbia University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, while in 2015, he received the Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large from Cornell University and the Medal of Arts from the U.S. Department of State.
For high-resolution images, please email Stephanie Todd-Wong, VP, Communications and External Affairs: [email protected]
To download a PDF copy of this release, please click here
HOUSTON, February 15, 2024 — Asia Society Texas (AST) announces the opening of Xu Bing: Word Alchemy, featuring more than 50 of Xu Bing’s most important woodcut prints, videos, drawings, installations, and other ephemera representing almost 50 years of the artist’s creative output. Starting with Xu’s early engagements with social realism and Western art historical traditions alike, the exhibition charts the evolution of the artist’s linguistic experiments that challenge and expand not only the history of Chinese landscape painting, but the canons of contemporary art. Xu Bing: Word Alchemy opens to the public Thursday, February 22, 2024, and remains on view through Sunday, July 14, 2024.
Born in China and now working in both Brooklyn and Beijing, artist Xu Bing is widely considered to be one of the most important artists working today. Focusing on the artist’s longstanding engagement with words and language, Word Alchemy is the most comprehensive exhibition on this theme so far, and around one-third of the objects in the exhibition are being shown in the U.S. for the first time. “Xu Bing: Word Alchemy is a journey through Xu Bing's interwoven strands of his visual-linguistic imagination and Chinese cultural history. His exploration continually looks forward, incorporating new technologies and his own unique creativity to stimulate and challenge us to think in new and unconventional ways" says Susan L. Beningson, Ph.D., co-curator of the exhibition.
According to Owen Duffy, Ph.D., Nancy C. Allen Curator and Director of Exhibitions, “Xu Bing: Word Alchemy is the artist's most expansive exhibition to date about words and language. The artist consistently challenges our preconceived notions about how we use language to navigate the world, offering pioneering works of contemporary art that delight and confound. Our world is richer because of his art."
In addition to more than 15 works never-before seen in the United States, Xu Bing: Word Alchemy features several new commissions and site-specific installations by Xu Bing. Specific highlights of this exhibition include the debut of a new Background Story work, where the artist recreates, out of debris, a famous Chinese landscape painting as a larger-than-life illuminated installation. In this Background Story, Xu Bing brings to life Zhao Mengfu’s famous Autumn Colors on the Qiao and Hua Mountains (1295) handscroll, and, for the first time, the artist will enhance the Background Story with animated projections that show the addition of colophons, seals, and inscriptions over the centuries.
In the Fayez Sarofim Grand Hall, Xu Bing will unveil a new version of Monkeys Grasp for the Moon. Here, suspended over a mirror, a 20-foot string of lacquered primates hangs from the ceiling, and a grouping hangs on the wall nearby. Each of the 21 pieces is composed of the word “monkey,” spelled out calligraphically in a different language: English, Thai, Arabic, and so on. The work references a Chinese folktale in which monkeys, observing the moon's reflection in a pool of water and worried that the moon had fallen, attempt to "grasp" the lunar orb, only to realize what they see is an illusion.
Finally, Xu Bing has created a new Square Word Calligraphy piece – a series where the artist transforms English words to assume the form of Chinese characters – that reinterprets the legendary folk song Deep in the Heart of Texas by Don Swander and June Hershey. Through this new work, Xu Bing graces Texas with this ode to the state's unofficial anthem, passionately sung at events throughout the Lone Star State.
"If my art made with words is still effective, I think it's because words are often seen as cultural representatives,” says Xu Bing. “Their task is to divide and categorize the complex world and record it as knowledge concepts. The core purpose of art is to use some means that have not been turned into knowledge, fresh, irregular, to loosen and blur the knowledge order arranged by language. My works can be seen as: using the form of language, touching the part that language itself cannot express."
On the occasion of the exhibition, Asia Society Texas will publish a full-color exhibition catalogue and host a symposium on Xu Bing's art on February 23, 2024.
Fast Facts:
Dates: Thursday, February 22, 2024 – Sunday, July 14, 2024
Opening Reception with the artist: Thursday, February 22, 6–8 p.m.
Admission: Free for members, $5 for students and seniors with I.D., and $8 for nonmembers. Free Thursdays presented by Regions Bank.
Asia Society Texas believes in the strength and beauty of diverse perspectives and people. As an educational institution, we advance cultural exchange by celebrating the vibrant diversity of Asia, inspiring empathy, and fostering a better understanding of our interconnected world. Spanning the fields of arts, business, culture, education, and policy, our programming is rooted in the educational and cultural development of our community — trusting in the power of art, dialogue, and ideas to combat bias and build a more inclusive society.
Credits
Xu Bing: Word Alchemy is co-curated by Susan L. Beningson, Ph.D., Independent Curator, and Owen Duffy, Nancy C. Allen Curator and Director of Exhibitions, with Rebecca Becerra, Exhibitions Manager and Registrar.
Lead support for Xu Bing: World Alchemy is provided by Texas Commission on the Arts. Major support is provided by Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, American Friends of the Shanghai Museum, Anne and Albert Chao, and an anonymous donor. Special exhibition support is provided by Michele and Marty Cohen, Judy and Scott Nyquist, Milton D. Rosenau, Jr. and Dr. Ellen R. Gritz, Leigh and Reggie Smith, and an anonymous donor. This exhibition was made possible in part with a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Exhibitions and their related programs at Asia Society Texas are presented by Nancy C. Allen, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, and Leslie and Brad Bucher. Major support comes from The Brown Foundation, Inc., the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, The Clayton Fund, Houston Endowment Inc. Generous funding also provided by The Anchorage Foundation of Texas, National Endowment for the Arts, and Texas Commission on the Arts. Free Thursday exhibition admission presented by Regions Bank. Funding is also provided through contributions from the Exhibitions Patron Circle, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas.
Presenting Sponsors
Nancy C. Allen Leslie and Brad Bucher Chinhui Juhn and Edward Allen
Asia Society is proud to present COAL + ICE, an immersive photography and video exhibition accompanied by a series of related programs. COAL + ICE visualizes the causes and consequences of the climate crisis and foregrounds creative solutions.
Throughout the run of the exhibition, climate change will take center stage at Asia Society, including speaker events, performances, films, and more. Asia Society has joined forces with a network of partner organizations across New York City’s five boroughs to concurrently present exhibitions and events, expanding the conversation to inspire deeper engagement on how the climate crisis affects our global and local communities.
COAL + ICE is co-curated by Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas and international exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries, and led by Orville Schell, Asia Society Vice President and Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations.
Above: COAL + ICE installation view of David Breashears's Mount Everest, Main Rongbuk Glacier, Tibet, China, 2007. Photograph by Leah Thompson
Starr Gallery with multiple video projections in COAL + ICE.
Asia Society present this immersive photography and video exhibition, which brings to life the environmental and human costs of climate change, while also highlighting the innovative solutions that provide hope for a more sustainable future. At once intimate and universal, the powerful images capture the human face of climate change across the globe.
Comprising the work of more than 30 photographers from China and around the world, the exhibition traces a photographic arc from deep within coal mines to the melting glaciers of the greater Himalaya and across the globe, where rising sea levels and extreme weather events are wreaking havoc. The imagery in COAL + ICE is drawn from diverse materials, from glass-plate negatives to smartphone videos, spanning more than a century. Through intimate portraits and vast altered landscapes, these photographs document the consequences triggered by our continued reliance on fossil fuels.
The third floor of the exhibition takes things a step further to reflect the innovative ideas for climate solutions that have germinated most recently, with Maya Lin, Jake Barton (of Local Projects), and Superflux contributing to the actions we can take collectively. Maya Lin’s project What Is Missing? comprises videos and a visually stunning and in-depth website, focusing attention on species and places that have gone extinct or will most likely disappear within our lifetime if we do not act to protect them. Jake Barton’s CarbonVision Cards provides visitors with take-home postcards. Organized by categories from fashion to finance to local government to K–12 schools, the postcards list fundamental changes that are needed.
Superflux, the London-based international award-winning design firm co-founded by Anab Jain and Jon Arden, has created New York, 2050: A Possible Future, a fully-immersive, multi-sensory, installation, in the final section of COAL + ICE. As visitors enter the space, experience what New York actually looked like in 2023, when Canadian fires coated its skies with a thick orange smog. The second space is a 360-degree, slow-moving, visual rendering of what the city could look like in 2050, with utopian views of self-sustaining rooftop, balcony, and indoor farms, pedestrian walkways and riverboats in place of cars, and wind and solar energy in place of coal and gas. New York 2050 invites viewers to take a step into New York in 2050 and beyond to experience what a hopeful future can look and feel like.
COAL + ICE is co-curated by Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas and international exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries, and led by Orville Schell, Asia Society Vice President and Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations.
Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations, at the opening of COAL + ICE.
History
COAL + ICE was first developed by Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations for exhibition at Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing in 2011. After publishing numerous policy reports on the urgent need for the U.S. and China to collaborate on climate issues, Orville Schell, the Center’s director, began looking for other methods of change: “In recognizing that policy alone could not solve this crisis, we began asking, how else can we go at this problem? One way was visually. If we could present something that was telling at the same time that it was beautiful, then maybe we could get people to look.” The exhibition traveled across China, and was on display at the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Paris during COP 21 before finally coming to the U.S., to Fort Mason in San Francisco and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Through the curatorial vision of Susan Meiselas and Jeroen de Vries, the imagery in the exhibition has continued to evolve along with the climate crisis, most significantly with the addition of a growing set of works that visualize the human consequences of climate change, including droughts, floods, fires, and migration. That said, COAL + ICE is not a comprehensive photographic overview of the climate crisis, but rather a presentation of imagery curated from long-term, authored bodies of work, which demonstrate each photographer's commitment to capturing our changing environment and its human toll. Ultimately, COAL + ICE is about humanity, the resilience of the coal miners and their families, and also of those already dealing with the consequences of climate change.
The first presentation of COAL + ICE in Beijing was now over a decade ago, and yet the urgency to combat the climate crisis is more pressing than ever. What will ultimately move the needle? This exhibition, and our related programming series during its six month run, are an ongoing creative experiment to help catalyze more effective action
Visit coalandice.org for more information about the project and its history.
Selected Works
Song Chao Miners - No. 7, Shandong Province, China, 2002 Photograph Courtesy of the artist
Geng Yunsheng Zhenxiong, Yunnan Province, China, 2002 Photograph Courtesy of the artist
Noah Berger California, USA, 2020-2021 Photograph Courtesy of the artist
Darcy Padilla California, USA, 2017 from the After the Wildfires series Photograph Courtesy of Agence VU’
Camille Seaman Iceberg in Blood Red Sea, Lemaire Channel, Antarctica, 2016 Photograph Courtesy of the artist
David Breashears Mount Everest, Main Rongbuk Glacier, Tibet, China, 2007 Photograph Courtesy of GlacierWorks
Clifford Ross Nazaré Wave IX, Portugal 2022 Photograph Courtesy of the artist
Gideon Mendel João Pereira de Araújo, Taquari District, Rio Branco, Brazil, 2015 from the Submerged Portraits series Photograph Courtesy of the artist
Meridith Kohut Mexico, 2019 Photograph Courtesy of the artist
Ingka Group (IKEA) with Superflux (est. 2009, London, UK) Detail from New York, 2050: A Possible Future, 2023 Video, sound, and scent installation with four-channel video Duration: 3 minutes, 30 seconds Courtesy of Ingka Group (IKEA)
Artists, Photographers, and Contributors
L to R: Clifford Ross; Susan Meiselas with Song Chao; Jake Barton (left); Susan Meiselas with Gideon Mendel; and Jamey Stillings.
Jake Barton Bernd and Hilla Becher Daniel Beltrá Noah Berger Matt Black David Breashears Jimmy Chin Bruce Davidson Cameron Davidson John Davies Willem Diepraam Anna Filipova Geng Yunsheng Lewis Hine Jane Hirshfield Joris Ivens Dolf Kruger Meridith Kohut Maya Lin Dana Lixenberg George Mallory Gideon Mendel Niu Guozheng Darcy Padilla Gordon Parks Clifford Ross Camille Seaman Vittorio Sella Nichole Sobecki Song Chao Jamey Stillings Henri Storck Superflux Peter van Agtmael Major E. O. Wheeler Witho Worms Yu Haibo
Additional Contributors, Galleries, and Archives
Agence VU' Louis Andriessen British Antarctic Survey China Features / China Photo Archive Decaneas Archive EUMETSAT Fondazione Sella Fonds Henri Storck GlacierWorks GRIMM Ingka Group (IKEA) L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York Library of Congress Magnum Photos Royal Geographical Society SK Stiftung Kultur Tamasa Distribution The Gordon Parks Foundation The National Archives University of Louisville Digital Collections VII
New York Climate Action Partners
COAL + ICE has joined forces with a wide range of artistic, environmental, and service organizations. While COAL + ICE is on view at Asia Society, these organizations will concurrently present climate-related programs to diverse audiences across the five boroughs and beyond. These collaborations aim to inspire deeper engagement and meaningful dialogue on how the climate crisis affects our global and local communities.
American Museum of Natural History Billion Oyster Project Bronx River Alliance Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Brooklyn Grange Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation City of Water Day Climate Fresk Climate Film Festival New York The Climate Museum Dysturb Fotografiska New York French Institute Alliance Française Hudson River Foundation/NY NJ Harbor & Estuary Program Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center International Center of Photography (ICP) LA MAMA Lincoln Center Magnum Foundation Melting Metropolis National Sawdust New York Botanical Garden The New York Public Library New York WILD Film Festival NYU Gallatin WetLab Park Avenue Armory THE POINT Community Development Corporation Queens Public Library Staten Island Museum The Trust for Governors Island Waterfront Alliance Working & Learning Together Electronics (WALTER)
Make a Poster
Visualize and share your thoughts and ideas about the climate crisis with the COAL + ICE Climate Posterator.
The “Map of Memory” section of Maya Lin's What Is Missing? highlights ecological histories of habitats, species, waterways, and cities—with timelines, videos, historic accounts, conservation success and disaster stories, and user-submitted personal memories.
Please share your own memory of the natural world, helping to make a global memorial something personal and close to home
By texting the phrase Future Me to 1 (877) 763-1612, you can talk with your “future self,” and hear about the impact of the climate actions you are going to take.
The chatbot is part of The Accelerator 2050, a time machine inviting visitors to see, talk, and inhabit a conditional future, one that is still in flux and undecided, from artist Jake Barton.
Supporters
COAL + ICE is funded by the generous contributions of The Schmidt Family Foundation, Janet Ross, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Frank and Susan Brown, Adobe, Jerome Dodson, Stephanie Hui, Denise and Andrew Saul, Carlo Mormorunni and Magdalena Gross, and Anonymous Donors. Additional support is provided by Nancy Stephens and Rick Rosenthal, Laumont Editions, and Jane Shaw.
Support for Asia Society Museum is provided by Asia Society Council on Asian Arts and Culture; Asia Society Friends of Asian Arts; Arthur Ross Foundation; Sheryl and Charles R. Kaye Endowment for Contemporary Art Exhibitions; The Hazen Polsky Foundation; The Mary Griggs Burke Fund, and Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
28 Feb 202307 May 202311:00am5:00pmວັນອັງຄານ 28 Feb 2023ວັນອາທິດ 7 May 2023
Detail, The Fathers of the People of Error Are Punished in Hell, miniature from a copy of Hamla-i Haydari (‘Ali’s Exploits)
India, Deccan, Hyderabad (?)
Ca. 1800
Manuscript page; ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
The David Collection, Copenhagen, 19/2015
The Fathers of the People of Error Are Punished in Hell, miniature from a copy of Hamla-i Haydari (‘Ali’s Exploits)
India, Deccan, Hyderabad (?)
Ca. 1800
Manuscript page; ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
The David Collection, Copenhagen, 19/2015
Adhai-dvipa: The Two and a Half Continents, the Universe in the Shape of a Person (Cosmic Man, Lokapurusha), and the Seven Levels of Hell
India, Gujarat
Samvat 1670/1613
Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on cloth
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2018.201
Enma-ō, King and Judge of Hell
Japan
Muromachi period (1392–1573), 16th century
Wood with gesso and traces of polychrome, inlaid glass eyes
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. H. George Mann, 79.277
Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831–1889, Japan)
Even in Hell Money Counts (Jigoku no sata mo kane shidai), Bugs in the Food of the Hungry Ghost (Gaki no mono ni mushi), from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyōsai (Kyōsai hyakuzu)
Japan
Edo period (1615–1868), 1863–66 (Bunkyū 3–Keiō 2)
Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 11.37028
Kayu kepuh (Gateway to the Underworld) Shadow Puppet (Wayang kulit), from Wayang Cupak Tabanan Set
Indonesia, Bali
Early 20th century
Water buffalo hide, water buffalo horn, pigments, metal wire
Yale University Art Gallery, The Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection, 2018.130.6.2
Luis Lorenzana (born 1979, Philippines)
Akeldama
Philippines
2006
Oil on canvas
Private collection
“A dazzling exhibition... ‘Comparative Hell’ immerses viewers in a realm aesthetically transcendent.”
—The Wall Street Journal
The first comprehensive exhibition in the United States to explore portrayals of hell across the Asian religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam, Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds, examines how systems of belief and the underworlds within them are manifest in the rich artistic creations of Asia.
Exceptional and visually stunning artworks explore the impact of conceptions of hell on Asian visual culture over time. Didactic paintings, sculptures, and sacred objects introduce the notions of Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and Islamic cosmology, as well as ideas about judgment, punishment, and salvation after death—many of which are shared by these traditions. Exhibition artworks portray religious threats of fiery torture as a means to shape values and beliefs, to instill virtuous behavior, and to encourage atonement for sins—reflecting a universal human desire for spiritual transformation.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with contributions by curator and editor, Adriana Proser, and esteemed scholars Geok Yian Goh, Phyllis Granoff, Christiane Gruber, Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, and D. Max Moerman. Copublished by Asia Society Museum and Officina Libraria, it is available for purchase at AsiaStore.
Divided into five sections, Comparative Hell takes you on a journey through the underworld.
Situating Hell
Detail, Bhavachakra (Wheel of Life). Tibet. 18th century. Mineral pigments on linen, silk brocade mount. H. 40 1/4 x W. 61 1/4 in.
(102.2 x 61.3 cm). Tibet House US Collection.
The works in this gallery provide just a few perspectives of the position that hell holds in Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic thought. These religious systems, as well as Hinduism, place human existence in the world within a larger framework that includes both heavens and hells. The cosmologies of these religions encompass multiple layers or stages of hells, and sometimes subdivisions of each of these, every one distinct from the others. Buddhists believe in the existence of eight major hells, but in some Buddhist traditions, as many as 272 subdivisions are noted. Hindu texts vary, with some mentioning five or seven major divisions and as many as 84 or more subdivisions. Both Jain and Islamic texts discuss seven hells or layers of hell. The multi-layered structures depicted here attest to varied punishments for different transgressions. While Muslims do not believe in reincarnation, Islam teaches there are also multiple heavens, as seen in the Islamic schematic rendering in the Ma‘rifatnama (Book of Gnosis) on view in this gallery. In the manuscript, seven layers of heaven are situated above seven layers of hell.
Spiritual growth for Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus is a slow process that occurs over many lifetimes. A depiction of the Bhavachakra (Wheel of Life) captures the Buddhist conception of the various realms along the path that can lead to punishment in hell at one extreme or to the bliss of enlightenment at the other. In another painting, Kshitigarbha (known as Chichang Bosal in Korean), a Buddhist being with the capacity to save people from hell, is featured with a large assembly of attendants. This portrayal of the Buddha emerged within the context of East Asia, where the Chinese governmental bureaucracy had a palpable impact on how Buddhists there came to understand the administrative structure that helped determine their fates after death.
For believers, the contrast between heavens and hells articulated in religious texts and illustrated in related artworks emphasizes the consequences of good and evil behaviors and deeds. These stark juxtapositions make it possible for each religion to demonstrate clearly what the results of different types of conduct will be.
Judgment
The Hindu Deity Yama Seated on a Buffalo. Cambodia. 1175–1225. Sandstone. H. 21 5/8 x W. 6 3/4 x D. 17 1/2 in. (55 x 17.2 x 44.4 cm). Asian Art Museum, Gift of Jonathan Cobb in memory of Maria Dyliacco Meyer, 1995.36.
The works in this exhibition section, from temple sculptures and banners to coffee house paintings, demonstrate the common notion in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism that people are judged in death based on their behavior in life. Just as the threat of punishment on earth for criminal behavior is a means to control the basest human behaviors, the threat of punishment in hell serves as a further incentive for people to conform to societal norms and fend off human desires and actions that can damage social structures.
Even prior to death Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains take the notion of karma (the force of cause and effect) to heart. Karma applies to all types of intentional mental, verbal, and physical deeds. The grand effect of a lifetime of deeds occurs after death, at which time in Hinduism and Buddhism, male, all-seeing judges determine the fate of the deceased.
The faithful of all four religions are confronted by images of judgment when they enter their places of worship and elsewhere as they conduct their daily lives. Artworks showing the meting out of justice in the afterlife often parallel judicial procedures on earth. The weighing of good and bad behavior is an important feature in each of the four traditions. As seen in this gallery, it is commonly represented by a scale that emphasizes the process of adjudication. For Hindus, Yama is the god of death and lord of justice. He is also part of the Buddhist tradition. Variant imagery of Yama, other judges, and judgment has emerged over time in Asia, often depending on the influence of regional faiths and the development of syncretic religious beliefs.
Distinctively, Muslims believe there is a Day of Reckoning when all people will be resurrected from the dead and judged on their deeds in life. This day will follow the destruction of the universe and its recreation by God. All gather before God to be judged one by one.
Punishment
Demon with Two Chained Men (recto), Man Bitten on the Arm by a Tiger (verso); Folio from a Jain Karma Series. India, Rajasthan, Marwar 1850–1900. Opaque watercolor and ink on paper. H. 6 13/16 x W. 8 1/2 in. (17.3 x 21.6 cm). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Purchase, M.72.53.26.
The consequences of bad behavior resulting from unbridled desires have captured the imaginations of artists from across cultures and religions in myriad ways. The gruesome scenes presented in this gallery were informed by descriptions in religious and pseudo-religious texts, local performance practices, and poetry and prose, as well as culturally and time-specific forms of worldly punishment.
Whether the torture carried out is flogging the damned or boiling them in a cauldron, artists use their skills to magnify the horror of the agony of those suffering and the callousness of those who subject them to their punishments.
The geographical and religious distinctions among Asia’s hells may differ, but no matter the tradition from which the imagery derives, artists depict hell as places where punishment is carried out graphically by torturers in human or demonic form or, in the case of Islam, by angels of hell. Whether depicted in the form of a painting, print, or as a buffalo hide puppet, there is much overlap in the identification of negative behavior and associated punishment, as well as a shared vocabulary of demons across cultures. These different hells are all nightmarish places where people are attacked continuously by packs of dogs or serpents; forced to endlessly climb spikey, cold peaks in the nude; or burnt alive over and over again.
Salvation
Wayan Ketig (1930–2010, Indonesia). Bima Swarga. Indonesia. Ca. 1970. Pigment on cloth. Overall: 58 1/16 x 113 11/16 in.
(147.5 x 288.8 cm). Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, 1988.2.
Compelling tales of the damned who plead to be saved, family members who attempt to intervene on their behalf, and the intercessors who help to make escape from hell possible are an important component of Asia’s Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions. These intercessors and the stories connected with them may draw too from co-existing local systems of belief and the stories connected with them.
In East Asia, for instance, the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha is one of a few popular savior deities capable of guiding the condemned out of hell. Known as Jizō Bosatsu in Japan, he is a figure of hope. Holding a metal staff, he leads the suffering out of hell. In Southeast Asia, it is Phra Malai who most commonly takes on this role for Buddhists. His legends are featured perhaps most notably in Thai art and rituals associated with the afterlife. His efforts to save the damned who beg to be rescued from hell are frequently depicted in manuscripts and sculptures like those also on view in this gallery.
In both South and Southeast Asia the Mahabharata, the Indian epic poem, is the Hindu source for two well-known characters who seek out their relatives in hell in order to rescue them. King Yudhishthira, the eldest of five Pandava brothers mentioned in the Mahabharata, finds his brothers suffering in hell and, when he refuses to leave without them, they are set free. In the Indonesian version of the story, the second born of the Pandava brothers, known as Bima, is the famed figure who travels to hell to rescue his relatives. Depictions of the Bima Swarga (Bima’s visit to the realms where the gods reside) is the foundation for major Balinese theatrical performances and a popular subject of paintings and other forms of art. In the Bima Swarga, Bima goes to hell on a mission to rescue his father and second mother. His story continues to be a popular theme for Indonesian artists to this day.
The Art of Hell in Our Times
Tsherin Sherpa (Born 1968 in Kathmandu; lives and works in San Francisco). Untitled. 2010. Gouache, acrylic and gold leaf on museum board. H. 45 3/8 x W. 38 3/8 x D. 1 3/4 (110.2 x 97.5 x 4.4 cm). Rubin Museum of Art, SC2010.31.
As religious authority has given way to secular authority in our contemporary times, many artists have replaced conventional religious notions of hell as a source of inspiration, with concepts of hell and the afterlife that are more easily reconcilable with modern science, technology, and popular culture. Rather than depicting recognizable environments where one is tortured according to adherence to religious codes of morality, the contemporary artists’ works shown here combine conventional symbolism derived from religion with new media to convey today’s values and ills. Here, hell becomes a metaphor for the sociopolitical, economic, and environmental troubles of contemporary society.
Although each of these works is a personalized metaphor inspired by the distinct heritage and life experience of each artist, all grapple with the same issues—good and evil, morality and immorality—that have concerned humanity across time and religious traditions. The visual arts remain an important way for cultures to express their beliefs and anxieties about human behavior and the afterlife.
Virtual Tour
Symposium
To Hell and Back: An Art and Religious Studies Symposium
This interdisciplinary symposium on hell(s) with scholars of religion, theology, art history, and anthropology will explore the artistic expressions of the afterlife across religious traditions in Asia.
April 14, Friday 6:30pm—9pm: Keynote address and cocktail reception
Speaker: Francisca Cho (Professor of Buddhist Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Georgetown University). Keynote address begins at 8 p.m.
April 15, Saturday: Panel Discussions, Exhibition Viewing, and Performance
9:15 a.m. Welcome
9:30—11:30 a.m. Panel 1: “Hell and the Desire for Spiritual Transformation”
Moderator: Ben Bogin, Asian Studies, Skidmore College
Ismail Fajrie Alatas, Middle Eastern Studies, New York University
Sonam Kachru, Religious Studies, Yale University
Subhashini Kaligotla, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
11:30 a.m.—12:30 p.m. Lunch Break and Exhibition Viewing
12:30—2:30 p.m. Panel 2: “Describing Hell in Text & Image”
Moderator: Max Moerman, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Columbia University
Daud Ali, South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Nerina Rustomji, History, St. John’s University
Rachel Saunders, Curator of Asian Art, Harvard University
3:00—5:00 p.m. Panel 3: “Performing Hell”
Moderator: Rachel Cooper, Asia Society
Matthew Isaac Cohen, Dramatic Arts, University of Connecticut
Laurel Kendall, Curator of Asian Ethnology, American Museum of Natural History
Hank Glassman, Asian Studies, Haverford College
The "Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds" exhibition and catalogue have been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and additional support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
Support for Asia Society Museum is provided by Asia Society Global Council on Asian Arts and Culture; Asia Society Friends of Asian Arts; Arthur Ross Foundation; Sheryl and Charles R. Kaye Endowment for Contemporary Art Exhibitions; The Hazen Polsky Foundation; The Mary Griggs Burke Fund, and Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this catalogue do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
10 Feb 202302 Jul 202311:00am6:00pmວັນສຸກ 10 Feb 2023ວັນອາທິດ 2 Jul 2023
Yun-Fei Ji, The Three Gorges Dam Migration (detail), 2008, Ink and watercolor on xuan paper mounted on silk, Courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery
Yang Yongliang, Imagined Landscape, Rabbit, 2022, Giclee print on fine art paper, Courtesy the artist
Peng Wei, The One in My Dreams – Yan Ru Yu 1, 2020, Ink on flax paper, Courtesy the artist and Tina Keng Foundation
Xu-Bing, Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy (New English Calligraphy) (detail),1994-1996, Calligraphy, ink on paper, Private Collection, New York, Photograph by Oi-Cheong Lee, The Photograph Studio, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions highlights works by over 30 contemporary artists of Chinese descent who reinterpret traditions in dynamic and innovative ways. Across painting, sculpture, and photography, these works were created by both established and emerging artists of different generations who use experimentation to draw on both Eastern and Western art-making practices and materials. They push boundaries that manipulate traditional materials and develop unique fabrication processes.
The artworks focus on experimental ink painting, calligraphy, deconstructed language, landscapes (real and imaginary), cityscapes, and celestial patterns. Landscapes borrow from time-honored imagery, but the artists in this exhibition subvert their visual language and meaning. They respond to our present-day concerns about urbanization, the fragmentation of landscapes created by the degradation of the environment, and the rapid pace of China’s modernization, among other urgent issues. Ultimately, these artists summon memories of the past to move beyond its specter, forging new artistic ground on which to build.
Admission Information
Admission is free for members, $5 for students and seniors with I.D., and $8 for nonmembers.
When planning your visit, please consider purchasing or reserving admission in advance to view the exhibition. We welcome walk-up visitors.
Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions features the work of 32 artists of Chinese descent. This exhibition creates an intergenerational dialogue between some of the most important figures in contemporary Chinese art, as well as emerging talents in the field.
Bingyi
Chu Chu
Cui Fei
Fu Xiaotong
Fung Ming Chip
Hong Hao
Hong Lei
Irene Zhou
Jennifer Wen Ma
Kelly Wang
Lin Guocheng
Liu Dan
Liu Wei
Liu Xiaodong
Lü Shoukun
Peng Wei
Qiu Anxiong
Ren Pan
Sun Xun
Tao Aimin
Wang Fangyu
Wang Tiande
Wu Chi-Tsung
Xu Bing
Yang Yongliang
Yun-Fei Ji
Zhan Wang
Zhang Dali
Zhang Hongtu
Zhang Jian-Jun
Zheng Chongbin
Zheng Lu
About the Curator
Susan L. Beningson is an independent curator based in New York City. She is currently teaching at New York University. Her next project will be a special exhibition of contemporary Chinese experimental ink painting in conjunction with Art Basel Hong Kong (March 2023). In 2020-2021 she curated the exhibition We The People: Xu Bing and Sun Xun Respond to the Declaration of Independence as part of the Asia Society Triennial (New York). From 2013 through 2019 she served as curator, Asian Art, at the Brooklyn Museum. Her curatorial projects during this tenure included the exhibition One: Xu Bing and the reinstallation of the Arts of China galleries. She was a cocurator of the exhibition Infinite Blue and the reinstallation of the Arts of Korea galleries. Dr. Beningson was also responsible for the acquisition of more than fifty contemporary works of art for the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent Asian Art collection.
Previously, Dr. Beningson taught Asian and Islamic art history at the City University of New York, Rutgers University, and Columbia University and worked at Princeton University Art Museum. Her writings include contributions to Brooklyn Museum Highlights (2014), Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art (Asia Society Museum, 2010), and Providing for the Afterlife: “Brilliant Artifacts” from Shandong (China Institute, 2005), which accompanied an exhibition of the same title she co-organized in conjunction with the Shandong Provincial Museum. She has lectured and published widely on both contemporary and historical Asian art. Dr. Beningson received her PhD in Chinese art and archaeology from Columbia University.
For high-resolution images, please email Stephanie Todd-Wong, Director of Communications and Audience Engagement: [email protected]
To download a PDF copy of this release, please click here
HOUSTON, February 3, 2023 — Asia Society Texas (AST) announces the opening of the powerful new contemporary art exhibition, Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions, featuring the work of 32 artists of Chinese descent. Curated exclusively for Asia Society Texas, this exhibition showcases an exhilarating mix of well-known and emerging artists, and creates a dynamic intergenerational dialogue steeped in memory and diverse perspectives. Summoning Memories will be on view from Friday, February 10, through Sunday, July 2. Admission is free for members, $5 for students and seniors with I.D., and $8 for nonmembers.
Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions highlights stunning works by contemporary artists who reinterpret traditions in dynamic and innovative ways. Across painting, sculpture, and photography, these works by established and emerging artists of different generations use experimentation to draw on both Eastern and Western art-making practices and materials. According to guest curator Dr. Susan L. Beningson, “In Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions, artists move ‘beyond the brush’ to create a dialogue — not only with different artistic, social, historical, and literary traditions, but also between some of the most important living artists of Chinese descent and the next generation of emerging talent.”
In addition to new works created specifically for this exhibition by Zhang Jian-Jun and Yang Yongliang, a few of the exciting pieces on view are:
Xu Bing's famous handscroll How to Do Square Word Calligraphy as well as his Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats, both of which demonstrate his system for organizing English words into structures that resemble Chinese characters.
Kelly Wang's Entanglement in which she weaves newspapers — collected outside her father’s apartment while he was in the hospital fighting COVID-19 — into a scholar's rock.
Yun-fei Ji’s original hand scroll of the Three Gorges Dam Migration. Painted in a classical Chinese landscape style, this piece depicts the problematic migration and destruction forced by the creation of the dam.
"Yun-Fei Ji's epic Three Gorges Dam Migration handscroll is a 21st-century masterpiece. It's an honor to display this ten-foot saga about migration and loss, and we are honored to highlight the original, rarely exhibited painting," states Owen Duffy, Nancy C. Allen Curator and Director of Exhibitions at AST.
The artists featured in this show push boundaries, manipulating traditional materials, and developing unique fabrication processes that result in experimental ink painting, calligraphy, and deconstructed language, on both real and imaginary landscapes, cityscapes, and celestial patterns. While landscapes borrow from time-honored imagery, the artists in this exhibition subvert their visual language and meaning, responding to our present-day concerns about urbanization, the fragmentation of landscapes created by the degradation of the environment, and the rapid pace of China’s modernization, among other urgent issues. Ultimately, these artists summon memories of the past to move beyond its specter, forging new artistic ground on which to build.
Fast Facts
Dates: Friday, February 10, 2023 – Sunday, July 2, 2023
Admission: Free for members, $5 for students and seniors with I.D., and $8 for nonmembers
Asia Society Texas believes in the strength and beauty of diverse perspectives and people. As an educational institution, we advance cultural exchange by celebrating the vibrant diversity of Asia, inspiring empathy, and fostering a better understanding of our interconnected world. Spanning the fields of arts, business, culture, education, and policy, our programming is rooted in the educational and cultural development of our community — trusting in the power of art, dialogue, and ideas to combat bias and build a more inclusive society.
Credits
Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions is curated by Susan L. Beningson, Ph.D., Independent Curator, with the support of Owen Duffy, Nancy C. Allen Curator and Director of Exhibitions, and Rebecca Becerra, Exhibitions Manager and Registrar. This program was made possible in part with a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special support provided by Sundaram Tagore Gallery.
Exhibitions and their related programs at Asia Society Texas are presented by Nancy C. Allen, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, and Leslie and Brad Bucher. Major support comes from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Generous funding also provided by The Anchorage Foundation of Texas, The Clayton Fund, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Wortham Foundation, Inc., Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. and Oscar L. Tang, and Ann Wales. Funding is also provided through contributions from the Exhibitions Patron Circle, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas.
Presenting Sponsors
Nancy C. Allen
Leslie and Brad Bucher
Chinhui Juhn and Edward Allen
15 Jun 202230 Dec 202211:00am6:00pmວັນພຸດ 15 Jun 2022ວັນສຸກ 30 Dec 2022
Tianzhuo Chen. Trance, 2019 (video still). Two single-channel videos with sound (loop). Duration: 5 minutes, 1 second; 2 minutes, 51 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and BANK/MABSOCIETY. Image courtesy of the artist, BANK/MABSOCIETY, and Asia Society Museum, New York
Pixy Liao. I Push You, 2021. Digital chromogenic print. H. 15 x W. 20 in. (38.1 x 50.8 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art
Cui Jie. Shanghai Broadcasting Building, 2018. Acrylic and oil on canvas. H. 78 3/4 x W. 59 1/8 in. (200 x 150 cm). Collection of Farhad Karim and Sanda Lwin. Image courtesy of the artist; Pilar Corrias, London; and Antenna Space, Shanghai
Liu Shiyuan. For Jord (No. 1), 2020. Giclée print, face mounted on UV acrylic and back mounted on aluminum panel, and frame. H. 51 1/8 x W. 61 1/2 in. (129.8 x 156.2 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles
Miao Ying. Surplus Intelligence, 2021-2022. Single-channel film with sound. Duration: 33 minutes, 27 seconds. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of the artist
Nabuqi. How to Be “Good Life,” 2019. Mixed media; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Image courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong and Shanghai
Tao Hui. Similar Disguise Stills, 2021. Archival pigment prints, mounted on aluminum panels. Set of six prints, four horizontal: H. 11 7/8 x W. 17 3/4 in. (30 x 45 cm) each; two vertical: H. 17 3/4 x W. 11 7/8 in. (45 x 30 cm) each. Courtesy of the artist; Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong and Shanghai; Esther Schipper, Berlin; and Macalline Art Center, Beijing. Images courtesy of the artist; Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong and Shanghai; Esther Schipper, Berlin; and Macalline Art Center, Beijing
This exhibition presents 19 artworks by seven artists, born in mainland China in the 1980s. Belonging to what is referred to as the ba ling hou generation, they grew up in a post-Mao China shaped by the one-child policy and the influx of foreign investment. Comprising painting, sculpture, performance, installation, video, digital art, and photography, the exhibition reflects the dramatic economic, political, and cultural shifts the artists have experienced in China during their lifetimes.
The exhibition’s title, Mirror Image, refers to the double reflection at the heart of the exhibition. Rather than emphasizing their “Chinese-ness,” these artists’ respective practices are born of a contemporary China where Starbucks can be found in the Forbidden City and the internet permits them access—despite the obstacles of censorship—to a host of influences beyond geographical boundaries.
Organized by Barbara Pollack, guest curator, with Hongzheng Han, guest curatorial assistant.
Participating Artists
Tianzhuo Chen (Born 1985 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing) Cui Jie (Born 1983 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Shanghai) Pixy Liao (Born 1979 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) Liu Shiyuan (Born 1985 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing and Copenhagen, Denmark) Miao Ying (Born 1985 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in Shanghai and New York City) Nabuqi (Born 1984 in Inner Mongolia, China; lives and works in Beijing, China) Tao Hui (Born 1987 in Chongqing, China; lives and works in Beijing, China)
Overview
Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity poses the question “What remains of ‘Chinese-ness’ once China has become a fully globalized nation?” Through the artworks of seven artists—all born after 1976 (the year of Mao Zedong’s death), all products of the one-child policy, and all having come of age in an emerging superpower, this exhibition posits that a new transnational sense of self has emerged. Barely considering the traditional East-West dichotomy that dominates discussions of older generations of Chinese artists, these younger artists are full-fledged participants of a global art world.
The title, Mirror Image, refers to the double reflection at the heart of this exhibition. The participants in this exhibition reject the nationalistic label of “Chinese artist” and prefer the banner “global artist.” Eschewing stereotypical iconography and self-Orientalizing, these artists create works that reflect a contemporary China, where Starbucks can be found in the Forbidden City and the internet permits access—albeit with the help of a VPN—to countless sources of influence beyond geographic boundaries. At the same time, as they examine themselves looking inward, they anticipate the reception of a global audience and challenge distortions of identity that assume Chinese artists are exotic, isolated, or politically motivated. Like a hall of mirrors, there is no one way to interpret their work and no single way of seeing things.
The work of this circumscribed group of artists—the 1980s generation, or ba ling hou—represents the prime examples of the impact of globalization on art production in China. They grew up during the first wave of economic transformation set into motion by Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy (initiated in 1978) and became artists in a milieu that has benefited from the expansion of the domestic art infrastructure in the early 2000s. Such rapid development—reflected in the innovations in the works in the exhibition—may be the most quintessentially Chinese in the artistic output of their generation. No need to search for Ming Dynasty furniture or references to the Cultural Revolution. From TikTok soap operas to a digital media project run by artificial intelligence to simulate China’s social credit plan, these artworks reveal the outlook of a generation of artists who view themselves as citizens of the world rather than ambassadors of a foreign country.
With the rules of quarantine set in response to the pandemic and with the rise of Xi Jinping and Chinese nationalism, these artists’ lives are changing. Some remain in China; others have left for the diaspora. Regardless of where they choose to live, these ba ling hou artists produce works that are provocative and inventive, challenging us to reconsider contemporary Chinese art and, for that matter, the global dimension of art movements at this moment in history.
Curatorial Statement
Twenty-four years ago, Asia Society Museum presented a groundbreaking exhibition, Inside Out: New Chinese Art, introducing American audiences to the scope and depth of contemporary Chinese art production. Even then—when little was known about contemporary art in China—curator Gao Minglu underscored with prescient insight the impact of “transnational forces” on these artists’ lives and ideas. Flash forward to the present and Asia Society Museum offers Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity as an update, demonstrating the emergence in the last decade of a new kind of artist—forged by more recent and current global influences.
Mirror Image asks the question, “What remains of ‘Chinese-ness’ once China has become a fully globalized nation?” Through the artworks of seven artists—all born after 1976 (the year of Mao Zedong’s death), all products of the one-child policy, and all having come of age in an emerging superpower, this exhibition posits that a new transnational sense of self has developed. Do not search for remnants of an East versus West dichotomy that dominates discussions of the older generation of Chinese artists. Instead, strap on new lenses and see these artists as pioneers from a frontier forged by the internet, bootleg DVDs, international brands, and global art history.
The ease of navigating a world of colliding influences is clearly evidenced by the participating artists: Tianzhuo Chen, Cui Jie, Pixy Liao, Liu Shiyuan, Miao Ying, Nabuqi, and Tao Hui. They experiment with materials, genres, iconography, and social roles to convey the way that globalization has upended traditional values and geographically specific ways of looking at the world. You will not find self-Orientalizing gestures of dragons or calligraphy, Ming furniture, or tea ceremonies. Instead, these artists apply a more fluid approach, consistently refusing to be defined by binary oppositional categories.
In this exhibition, there are distinct strategies employed to illustrate ways of interacting with a world in flux. “Sampling”—a playful use of appropriation akin to the work of deejays in music—is strongly in evidence in the photomontages of Liu Shiyuan, the performances of Tianzhou Chen, and the installations of Nabuqi.
Liu Shiyuan combines found imagery from the internet with her own original video footage to defy linear interpretations, representing the mistranslation pervasive in the global dialogue surrounding contemporary art. Nabuqi postulates the idea that a new universal language may be forming out of the convergence of mass production and culture, using strategies first employed by Pop artists such as Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol. Tianzhuo Chen underscores the altered state of consciousness achieved by “trance” in comparative religions and subcultures, from that of Tibetan Buddhism to that of Burning Man.
In a similar vein, Cui Jie breaks down lessons learned in the art academy and reinvents painting to convey the crazy juxtapositions and architectural manifestations of time warp on every street corner in major cities in China. Incorporating aspects of Cubism and Surrealism, her urban landscapes transport us to what appears to be a futuristic place, but one that already exists in a city like Shanghai.
The sense of freedom to create one’s own identity is a major concern for this generation of artists. Tao Hui has created a “soap opera” that reinvigorates cliché story lines by featuring an array of characters—queer, transgender, or non-binary—not commonly seen in Chinese television, especially under current restrictions. It is fitting that this faux television series is intended for viewing on TikTok, a Chinese-owned app that fosters a sense of intimacy between the viewer and the video creator, yet is available in China only through its Chinese equivalent, Douyin.
Rather than create false narratives, Pixy Liao makes use of collaborative portraiture in her series, Experimental Relationship, soliciting the cooperation of her long-term partner, Moro. The playful couplings in these photographs offer a critique of the transactional nature of traditional gender roles that is encouraged among young urbanites in Chinese cities. These roles have only become more acute with the repeal of the one-child policy, placing new pressures on Chinese women.
It might be said that this trend towards a “global identity” is not unique to China and is widely in evidence throughout the global art world. But these artists from China most acutely express this transformation in their works because their lives parallel the unfolding transformation in their homeland. China transitioned from a mostly isolated agrarian nation to a land of supercities, international airports, foreign investors, and internet access. These artists grew up in this brave new world, cognizant of Chinese culture while also organically incorporating a wide range of international influences in their lives.
This is especially true for Miao Ying’s videos developed with artificial intelligence. Her computer-generated dialogues do not betray a Chinese accent. Yet on deeper inspection, they reveal a direct correlation with technology as it is employed as a tool of social control in China. She makes art from the underlying algorithms employed in the Great Firewall or the historic roots of China’s social credit system. Miao slyly challenges this system without pointing fingers at specific leaders or laws by referencing in her graphics the medieval Christian practice of purchasing indulgences to reduce the severity of punishment in the afterlife or B.F. Skinner’s novel Walden Two.
Within that social credit system, upholding Chinese values is a key means of earning points under the current leadership in China. Indeed, the notion between “good” and “bad” influences—or eastern versus western influences, which fell out of favor in the early 2000s, has now been revived for political reasons, catalyzed by Xi Jinping’s talks at the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art in October 2014. According to Xi, the artist’s role is to “carry forward the Chinese spirit, bring together China’s might, and inspire all of the nation’s people of every ethnicity to vigorously march towards the future.” The impact of this speech can be felt in the movie industry, television programming, and, to some extent, in museums in China.
Mirror Image recognizes that the clock cannot be turned back. Despite the restrictions and reinvigoration of boundaries due to the pandemic and despite the rise in censorship and nationalism, these artists continue to push forward. We no longer view them as ambassadors from an exotic land but as representatives of a world we share. Their artistic practices contribute to the visual language being shaped on the global stage towards a more pronounced transnationalism as the world grows more divisive.
Support for Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity is provided by George and Mary Dee Hicks, China Guardian, Asia Society Global Arts Collectors Circle, Asia Society Friends of Asian Arts, Arthur Ross Foundation, Sheryl and Charles R. Kaye Endowment for Contemporary Art Exhibitions, Hazen Polsky Foundation, Mary Griggs Burke Fund, Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York State Council on the Arts.
05 Feb 202203 Jul 202211:00am6:00pmວັນເສົາ 5 Feb 2022ວັນອາທິດ 3 Jul 2022
Phung Huynh, Phung, 2019, Cotton fabric and embroidery thread, Courtesy of the artist
Phung Huynh, Monica Khun Donut Box, 2021, Silkscreen print on pink donut box, Courtesy of the artist
Phung Huynh, April 30, 1975 Snowglobe, 2021, Mixed media sculpture, Courtesy of the artist
Beili Liu, Each and Every, 2019, Installation and performance, Children’s clothing, cement, cotton thread, table, chair, scissors, needle, sound track, Courtesy of the artist, Photograph by Amos Morgan
Beili Liu, Each and Every, 2019, Installation and performance, Children’s clothing, cement, cotton thread, table, chair, scissors, needle, sound track, Courtesy of the artist, Photograph by Katie Miller
Beili Liu, Each and Every, 2019, Installation and performance, Children’s clothing, cement, cotton thread, table, chair, scissors, needle, sound track, Courtesy of the artist, Photograph by James Harnois
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019, 4-channel video installation, 2k, 7.1 surround sound, Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs, Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation with additional production support from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019, 4-channel video installation, 2k, 7.1 surround sound, Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs, Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation with additional production support from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019, 4-channel video installation, 2k, 7.1 surround sound, Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs, Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation with additional production support from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, May We Know Our Own Strength, 2021, Courtesy of the artist, Photograph by MK Luff
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, I Still Believe in Our City, 2021, Courtesy of the artist, Photography by MK Luff
Making Home: Artists and Immigration focuses on immigration and related themes through the works of Phung Huynh, Beili Liu, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya. The exhibition engages with the individual, lived experiences of immigration through the paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and installations of the four featured artists. Making Home centers the complexities of deeply personal histories of immigration, as the artists consider topics of intergenerationality, the repercussions of colonial histories, dislocation, memory, otherness, belonging, and resilience.
Admission Information
Regular admission to this exhibition is free for Asia Society members and children ages 12 and under, $5 for students and seniors with ID, and $8 for nonmembers.
Phung Huynh is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice is primarily in drawing, painting, and public art. Her work investigates notions of cultural identity from a kaleidoscopic perspective, a continual shift of idiosyncratic translations. The contemporary American landscape is where she explores how “outside” cultural ideas are imported, disassembled, and then reconstructed. In an overwhelmingly diverse metropolis such as Los Angeles, images flood our social lens through mass reproduction and social media, taking on multiple [mis]interpretations and [re]appropriations. Such reflections have guided Huynh in re-stitching traditional Asian iconography within the loosely woven fabric of American popular culture. There is a purposeful “Chinatown” aesthetic in Huynh’s paintings, alluding to kitsch souvenirs that tourists purchase and the commodification of eastern icons into tchotchkes. Huynh considers how cultural authenticity disintegrates within a capitalist framework, and she paints images of Chinese cherubs, lotus, and carp with a “pop” veneer of delight and horror to challenge the viewer with a western-leaning perspective.
Huynh’s current work is informed by her experience as a refugee of Cambodian and Chinese descent from Vietnam. Inspired by her family’s migration story, personal research, and interviews with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees and immigrants, Huynh makes drawings on pink donut boxes and cross-stitches images of personalized California license plates with unanglicized names. Her work unpacks the complexities of immigration, displacement, and cultural assimilation. Each drawing or cross-stitched piece is meant to be a sensitive portrayal of a unique personal story. Close to 90 percent of California’s donut shops are mom-and-pop businesses run by Cambodian immigrants or Cambodian Americans (Khmericans). The trend that links pink boxes with donuts can be traced back to the Khmerican donut ecosystem. Ultimately, Huynh’s work is rooted in the practice to unravel ideas of cultural representations and stereotypes, to challenge how we consume and interpret ethnographic signifiers, and to de-center whiteness in constructing visual and historical narratives.
Huynh received her BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design, and her MFA in Studio Art from New York University.
"I make environments that resonate with the experience of migration and cultural memory. My site-responsive installations and performances are rooted in the essence and history of a place and negotiate personal, cultural, and environmental concerns. I explore resilience, healing, and hope through humble materials and accumulated labor. Topics of diaspora, assimilation and the ultimate question of otherness versus belonging are at the core of my work."
Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations. Working with commonplace materials such as thread, needle, scissors, feather, salt, wax, and cement, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural narratives. As Kay Whitney wrote about Liu's work in Sculpture Magazine: "Liu's installations leap from obsession and repetition to something profound and expansive, merging the personal with the political."
Liu exhibits internationally in locations including Norway, Finland, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, China, Poland, Taiwan, and across the United States, with solo exhibitions at venues including Galerie An Der Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany, Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center, Shanghai, China, Chinese Culture Foundation, San Francisco, CA, the Crow Museum of Asian Art, Dallas, TX, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX, and Women & Their Work, Austin, TX. Her work has received support from numerous grants, fellowships, and awards including: Fulbright Arctic Chair, a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award, Norway (2021-2022), New York Foundation for the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship (2021), and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2016). Liu has been honored by the Texas Legislature and the Texas Commission on the Arts as the Texas State Artist (2018, 3D). Liu's work has been featured by PBS Arts in Context series, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and ARTnews, among others.
Born in Jilin, China, Beili Liu now lives and works in Austin, Texas. Liu received her MFA degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2003). Liu is an Institute for the Humanities Fellow (2020-2022) and the Leslie Waggener Endowed Professor in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s work explores the power of storytelling through video and sculpture. His projects are based on extensive research and community engagement, tapping into inherited histories and counter-memory. Nguyen extracts and re-works dominant, oftentimes colonial histories and supernaturalisms into imaginative vignettes. Fact and fiction are interwoven in poetic narratives that span time and place.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen was born in 1976 in Ho Chi Minh City. In 1979, he and his family emigrated as refugees to the United States. Nguyen graduated from the Fine Arts program at the University of California, Irvine in 1999 and received his MFA from The California Institute of the Arts in 2004. He currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, where he is a co-founder and former board member of Sàn Art. Nguyen was a founding member of The Propeller Group in 2006, an entity that positions themselves between a fake advertising company and an art collective.
The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019, is a four-channel video installation that envisions the memories and desires of descendants of the tirailleurs sénégalais, West African colonial soldiers who were among the French forces sent to combat Vietnamese liberation uprisings in the 1940s. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, hundreds of Vietnamese women migrated to Africa with their children and their Senegalese husbands who had been stationed in Indochina. Other soldiers left their Vietnamese wives behind and took only their children, sometimes raising them without knowledge of their origins. Nguyen collaborated with members of the Vietnamese community in Senegal to write and stage imagined conversations with or between their parents or grandparents that highlight nuances in strategies of remembering. As narrators and actors, the voices of these descendants embody a historical conscience that challenges understandings of decolonizing societies.
Nguyen’s videos and films have been included in major international festivals, biennials, and exhibitions including Manifesta 13, Marseilles, France (2020); Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah, UAE (2019); SOFT POWER, SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA (2019); the 2019 Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2019); 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2017); the 55th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany (2009); 8th NHK Asian Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan (2007); 18th Singapore International Film Festival (2005) and 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Bangkok, Thailand (2005). His work is included in the permanent collections of institutions including Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and activist. As artist-in-residence with the NYC Commission on Human Rights, Amanda’s art series celebrating the resilience of the AAPI community, “I Still Believe in Our City,'' reached millions in New York City and worldwide through her Atlantic Terminal billboard, subway domination, and social media amplification. In the wake of the Atlanta shootings in March 2021, art from the series appeared on the cover of TIME magazine. From large-scale murals, augmented reality (AR) experiences, 3D printed sculptures, and interactive installations, Amanda makes the invisible, visible. She has explored microscopic universes, familial memories, and the power of collective action, challenging viewers to rethink the world around them and revealing the often-unseen depth, resilience, and beauty of marginalized communities.
Her work has been shown at the Cooper Union, Times Square, Google, Lincoln Center, and recognized by The New York Times, Fast Company, and the Guardian. She has received support from the Sloan Foundation, the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. Her work is held in permanent collections at the Goldwell Open Air Museum, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Earlier in her career, Amanda worked as a researcher studying Alzheimer’s Disease at Columbia Medical Center and received her MFA from Pratt Institute. She is currently working on FINDINGS, a national mural series celebrating women and science, in partnership with the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Born in Atlanta to Thai and Indonesian immigrants, Amanda studied neuroscience at Columbia University and worked at an Alzheimer’s research lab before becoming a full-time artist, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn, NY. Through writing, speaking, and art, she is trying to challenge audiences to rethink the world around them.
Very Asian Feelings Mural Painting
Friday, February 18 – Saturday, February 26, 2022
Experience Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya's site-responsive mural as it unfolds. We welcome guests to view the mural painting in progress during our public hours.
Exhibition Reception
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Meet the artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and see her work progress in the gallery. Members-exclusive access: 5:30–6 p.m. | Public hours: 6–7:30 p.m.
Artist Talk and Zine Workshop: Phung Huynh
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Artist Phung Huynh joins us for an artist talk, followed by an interactive zine workshop where participants will create their own personalized publication. Artist Talk: 1 p.m. | Zine Workshop: 2:15 p.m.
Beili Liu Performance and Talk
Saturday, June 18, 2022
To accompany her installation Each and Every, artist Beili Liu joins Asia Society Texas for a performance and artist talk. Performance: 3 p.m. | Artist Talk: 3:30 p.m.
Additional Asia Society Programming of Interest
No-No Boy in Concert
Friday, March 4, 2022
Inspired by jazz musicians inside internment camps, Saigon rock 'n' roll, and Filipino cruise ship bands, No-No Boy (aka Julian Saporiti) explores Asian American and transpacific histories, as well as Texas and the southern border, in this intimate live concert.
Film Screening: Flee
Sunday, March 20, 2022
A timeless exploration of the effects of war and displacement, his groundbreaking animated documentary tells the story of Amin Nawabi, his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan, and a 20-year secret that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon-to-be husband.
Cooking at Home, Writing From the Heart With Priya Krishna
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
In an age of food blogs, social media, and innumerous cooking shows, a more diverse cadre of women chefs and food writers are rising to fame — among them, Asian American women who are sharing their identities. New York Times food writer Priya Krishna speaks on the industry's transformation and how her food and writing reflect her relationship with herself and the world.
Permission to Come Home: Dr. Jenny Wang on Asian Americans and Mental Health
Thursday, May 5, 2022
In her new book, Permission to Come Home, Dr. Jenny Wang weaves together personal stories of strength, pain, and resilience with incisive analysis of Asian American and immigrant identities — and how they affect our individual and collective mental health.
Credits
This exhibition is organized by Asia Society Texas. Exhibitions and their related programs at Asia Society Texas are presented by Nancy C. Allen, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, and Leslie and Brad Bucher. Major support comes from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Generous funding also provided by Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, The Anchorage Foundation of Texas, The Clayton Fund, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Wortham Foundation, Inc., Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. and Oscar L. Tang, and Ann Wales. United Airlines is our official airline partner. Funding is also provided through contributions from the Exhibitions Patron Circle, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas.
Special support for this exhibition given by Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, Quan Law Group, PLLC, and Kashif Aftab.
Presenting Sponsors
Nancy C. Allen
Leslie and Brad Bucher
Chinhui Juhn and Edward Allen
Paper’s ubiquity in our lives renders it invisible in a way, passing through our hands for functional purposes without our close attention to its physical presence. The Mountain That Does Not Describe a Circle invites us to more deeply consider the material structure and surfaces of paper, its function, and its ability to communicate a broad range of information. While we look for handwriting or printed text on most paper we encounter, these works by Hong Hong feature mark-making of their own which can be “read” through the lens of gesture – the gestures of the artist as she pours the paper pulp into the modular mould and deckle to make each large sheet of paper; arranging and layering the colored fibers to create specific shapes, lines, and textures; and affixing tape to the paper’s surface.
The performance of ritual, with its physical demands and cyclical patterns, grounds Hong’s practice and opens a channel of communication between present and past, the artist and her ancestors, and the mundane and the divine. Using the inner bark harvested from mulberry trees, she cooks and then beats the bark by hand. With the addition of fiber-reactive dyes and water, a pulp is created which she pours into an immense single sheet outside under the open sky, adding successive layers as she circumambulates the horizontal frame. Once the water has sufficiently evaporated from the sheet, it is pulled off the mould and then immediately cut into two.
Hong (b. 1989, Hefei, China, lives and works in Houston) investigates human experiences of time, dimension, and space in her work and installations. As an exhibition takes shape and her work is being installed in a space, both intentional planning and chance operations are at play. In The Mountain That Does Not Describe a Circle, the architecture of Asia Society Texas is both a support and a counterpoint for these ideas of scale, visual perception, and experiential connection.
Hong Hong (b. 1989, Hefei, China, lives and works in Houston) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans craft, painting, performance, and earthwork. She immigrated with her family to North Dakota when she was ten years old. Hong earned her MFA from University of Georgia in 2014 and her BFA from the State University of New York in 2011. Since then, Hong has traveled to different locations across the United States to make site-responsive, monumental paper-works. These investigations have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Georgia Museum of Art, Art League Houston, Penland School of Craft, Madison Museum of Fine Art, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Jewett Arts Center, and New Mexico History Museum. She has been commissioned to create public projects for Real Art Ways, Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University, and Artspace New Haven.
Hong is the recipient of fellowships and grants from MacDowell, Yaddo, National Endowment for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Connecticut Office for the Arts, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Greater Hartford Arts Council, and The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation. Her work has been reviewed by Art21, Hyperallergic, Artnet News, Art New England, Virtual Asian American Art Museum, Southwest Contemporary, Hand Papermaking, Glasstire, Two Coats of Paint, and Yale Daily News. She has lectured and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Women's Studio Workshop, Wellesley College, Hartford Art School, and University of Oregon.
In May 2021, Hong Hong participated in an interview for the Houston Asian American Archive, a program managed by Rice University's Chao Center for Asian Studies. She covers a range of topics, from her family background and education to her experiences making and exhibiting work.
Docent-led tours of Asia Society Texas Center’s exhibitions allow visitors to experience art on a personal level, learn about art historical periods and styles, and hear stories associated with the artwork. Art tours are free for Members, $5 for Nonmembers.
Click on the link(s) below to RSVP or buy tickets.
We invite you to visit, either in-person or through their websites, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft where Hong Hong began a residency in 2020, and Art League Houston where her work will be installed on the facade of the building in April and May of 2021.
Please share your experience of her work with us: @honghongstudio @asiasocietytx #AsiaSocietyTX
Art League Houston is presenting Reading the Weather, an installation of work by artist Hong Hong, currently based in Houston, Texas. Organized by the artist and Sarah Beth Wilson, ALH’s Director of Exhibitions and Curatorial Projects, Reading the Weather is a monumental, site responsive paper-work installed on the façade of ALH’s building adjacent to the Sculpture Garden.
Opening Reception
Friday, May 7, 2021, 6–8 p.m. | ALH
Artist Talk
Friday, May 7, 2021, 6:30 p.m. | ALH Sculpture Garden
Credits
Exhibitions at Asia Society Texas are presented by Nancy C. Allen, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, and Leslie and Brad Bucher. Major support comes from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Generous funding also provided by The Anchorage Foundation of Texas, The Clayton Fund, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Wortham Foundation, Inc., and Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. and Oscar L. Tang. United Airlines is our official airline partner. Funding is also provided through contributions from the Exhibitions Patron Circle, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas.
Presenting Sponsors
Nancy C. Allen
Leslie & Brad Bucher
Chinhui Juhn & Edward Allen
Exploring the ritual significance of ancient Chinese bronzes, this exhibition sheds new light on innovations of form and ornamentation, and the advanced techniques of casting of these stunning objects dating from the Shang to the Han Dynasties (1600 BCE to 220 CE). Bronze designs influenced other art forms in China, and later examples in jade, blue and white ceramics, and cloisonné will also be featured.
Monday, November 23 – Sunday, November 29, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Closed Thursday, November 26.
Photography
Photography of the exhibition without flash is permitted.
Related Programs and Tours
Family Museum Quest
Monday, November 23 – Sunday, November 29, 2020, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Participate in a family-friendly scavenger hunt using a free app! All children completing the game will receive a prize.
Docent Tours
Friday, November 27 – Sunday, November 29, 2020 (Times vary)
Join us for your last chance to experience this exhibition with a personalized, guided tour by our experienced docents.
Preview Reception
Wednesday, February 26, 2020, 6–8 p.m.
Celebrate the new exhibition on view in the Louisa Stude Sarofim Gallery.
Monthly Tours
Saturday, March 14, 3 p.m.
Saturday, April 11, 3 p.m.
Saturday, May 9, 3 p.m.
To schedule a group tour outside of these designated days, please fill out the form below or contact Jennifer Kapral, Director of Education & Outreach, at [email protected].
School tours, facilitated by the education department staff and volunteers, provide educationally rich interactive opportunities for students to learn about Asian art, culture, and traditions. These free tours are open to all public, private, charter, alternative, and home schools. Visits take place on weekdays, Tuesday through Friday, for one to two hours.
All school tours and subsequent interactive projects are tethered to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and district curriculum standards. They may include:
Docent-led tour of exhibitions in the Louisa Stude Sarofim Gallery
"Introduction to Asia” PowerPoint Presentation highlighting essential information about Asian art, culture, geography, and politics
Guided tour of the Texas Center and discussion of its unique architecture
Interactive projects based on the current exhibition (unavailable during summer months, June through August)
At least two weeks’ notice is required for school tours. Additional advance notice is required for groups larger than 25.
For more information, please contact Jennifer Kapral, Director of Education & Outreach, at [email protected].
Press Release
HOUSTON, February 27, 2020 — Asia Society Texas Center (ASTC) opens a new exhibition on February 29, featuring almost 100 pieces spanning over three millennia of ancient Chinese bronze artwork and later eras inspired by the Bronze Age. Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes showcases the artistry of hundreds of artisans and craftsmen whose creations were used in ancestral traditions and burial rites. The exhibition explores humanity’s universal desire to honor one’s ancestors and highlights some of the earliest examples of the artwork and methods developed for that purpose. Though today’s technology has devised many ways to honor loved ones, this exhibition demonstrates that the concept of honoring those who came before is inherent to the human experience.
The bronzes originate from 1600 BE to 220 CE and represent the largest, most prestigious collection ever seen in Texas. The exhibition also features digital media illustrating the process of casting the bronzes, widely considered to be among the most advanced metalwork before modern times. The objects on display include pots and other serving vessels, bells, spears, daggers, and mirrors. Many are intricately shaped like animals, such as a dragon, owl, water buffalo, and a horse. The ornamentation is even more impressive given that the molds were always destroyed as a by-product of the casting process, guaranteeing that each object was completely unique.
As in many cultures both ancient and modern, rituals and ceremonies honoring departed family members were a pivotal part of Chinese society. Ancestors’ names were often cast into the pieces, and some pieces chronicled specific events in their lives. Inscription styles and the level of detail evolved over the centuries, allowing the exhibition viewers to witness first-hand the evolution of an ancient art form that eventually reached across the globe.
A collection from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the exhibition contains not just serving objects and animal shapes, but weapons and musical instruments too. Bells were an important part of rituals connecting the living to the dead, and music was a crucial a part of honoring the dead in ancient ceremonies, just like today’s funerals and religious services.
In addition to highlighting bronze artistry, the exhibition will put bronze objects side by side with later artworks influenced by the Bronze Age, such as jade, blue and white ceramics, and cloisonné.
Given the rarity of a collection this size, this is the only opportunity that will be offered anywhere in Texas for history buffs, art fans, and the public at large to see these works.
Fast Facts
Exhibition dates: Saturday, February 29 – Sunday, August 9, 2020
Admission: Free for Members and children ages 12 and under; $5 for Students and Seniors with ID; $8 for Nonmembers
Monthly docent-led tours on Saturday, March 14, and Saturday, April 11, 3 p.m. | Free for Members and children ages 12 and under, $5 for Students and Seniors, $8 for Nonmembers
Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes is organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Generous support for the exhibition and related catalogue provided by the Blakemore Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, and Christie's.
Exhibitions at Asia Society Texas Center are presented by Nancy C. Allen and Leslie and Brad Bucher. Major support comes from Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen and Mary Lawrence Porter, as well as The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Generous funding also provided by The Anchorage Foundation of Texas, The Clayton Fund, Japan Foundation New York, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Wortham Foundation, Inc., the Franci Neely Foundation, Olive Jenney, Nanako and Dale Tingleaf, and Ann Wales. United Airlines is our official airline partner. Additional support comes from The Southmore. Funding is also provided through contributions from the Exhibitions Patron Circle, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas Center.
Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes is organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Generous support for the exhibition and related catalogue provided by the Blakemore Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, and Christie's.
Exhibitions at Asia Society Texas Center are presented by Nancy C. Allen and Leslie and Brad Bucher. Major support comes from Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen and Mary Lawrence Porter, as well as The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Hearst Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Generous funding is also provided by The Anchorage Foundation of Texas, The Clayton Fund, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Wortham Foundation, Inc., Olive Jenney, and Ann Wales. Additional support for this exhibition was provided by the China General Chamber of Commerce–Houston and Stavis & Cohen Financial LLC. United Airlines is our official airline partner. Funding is also provided through contributions from the Exhibitions Patron Circle, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas Center.
Presenting Sponsors
Nancy C. Allen
Leslie and Brad Bucher
Chinhui Juhn and Edward Allen
Wang Dongling is widely recognized as one of the most celebrated living calligraphers from China. The artist’s experimental works, featuring his luanshu (chaos script), expand the venerated Chinese calligraphy tradition through a dynamic style that renders the texts almost completely indecipherable. Inspired by Laozi’s iconic text of Taoist philosophy, the artist created Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter I & II for Asia Society as part of a 2018 performance at the Museum. This exhibition serves as the first public presentation of the painting.
Overview
Wang Dongling is widely recognized as one of the most celebrated living calligraphers from China. The artist is best known for his large-scale compositions, which are created on the floor with oversized brushes through highly physical movements. Historically, calligraphy has been regarded in China as the highest art form. Wang’s experimental approach to calligraphy, featuring his luanshu (chaos script), expands this venerated literati tradition through the artist’s dynamic style that renders the texts almost completely indecipherable. Wang’s expressive movements create a field of abstract gestures that prioritize the formal aesthetics of his script over its legibility. Language becomes a formalistic tool rather than the primary subject in traditional calligraphy. The resulting controlled chaos, in a nod to western gestural abstraction, alters the distinction between calligraphy and painting as well as the conventional relationship between reading and looking in relation to traditional Chinese calligraphy.
Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter I & II, presented publicly for the first time, was created specifically for Asia Society as part of a special performance given by the artist at the Museum on March 2, 2018. Meant to be read from right to left, the work is the first two chapters of Laozi’s Dao De Jing, a classic of Taoist philosophy written during the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE). The first chapter, “Embodying the Dao,” serves as an introduction of the Dao’s meaning and purpose. Chapter two, “The Nourishment of the Person,” outlines the concept that all experience is relative and that one must have a holistic perspective to gain enlightenment. Wang’s work is an excellent example of contemporary experiments in Chinese calligraphic techniques and the lasting interconnectedness between text, calligraphy, and painting. This exceptional piece is now part of the Asia Society Museum Collection of text- and calligraphy-based artworks.
Wang Dongling was born in 1945 in Rudong, Jiangsu Province, China. The artist studied traditional calligraphy under Master Lin Sanzhi (1898–1989) and later under Master Sha Menghai (1900–1992) at Zhejiang Academy of Art (now China National Academy of Arts) in Hangzhou. He currently serves as the Director of the Modern Calligraphy Study Center at China National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou.
Michelle Yun
Senior Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art
Asia Society Museum
Video
This video documents Wang Dongling in conversation with Dr. Adriana Proser, Asia Society’s John H. Foster Senior Curator for Traditional Asian Art, as part of an event titled “Ink in Motion: Calligraphy by Wang Dongling” at Asia Society on March 2, 2018. Following their discussion, the artist created the large-scale calligraphic work with brush and ink on paper on view in this exhibition.
Audio Guide
To enjoy Asia Society's free audio guide for "Wang Dongling: Ink in Motion" just look for the audio icon next to select artworks in the exhibition.
Support for Asia Society Museum is provided by Asia Society Global Council on Asian Arts and Culture, Asia Society Friends of Asian Arts, Arthur Ross Foundation, Sheryl and Charles R. Kaye Endowment for Contemporary Art Exhibitions, Hazen Polsky Foundation, Mary Griggs Burke Fund, Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York State Council on the Arts.