The Asia Arts Game Changer Awards is a signature event honoring the Asia Arts Game Changers. Every year, major art collectors, artists, gallerists, dignitaries from the art world, and Asia Society trustees and patrons gather to celebrate contemporary art in Asia and honor artists and arts professionals for their significant contributions to contemporary art.

For more than twenty years, Asia Society has been a pioneer in identifying and fostering the latest contemporary Asian artists, and engaging new audiences for their work.

Past honorees include Cai Guo-Qiang, Hon Chi Fun, Abir Karmakar, Krishen Khanna, Bharti Kher, Kimsooja, Lee Ufan, Liu Guosong, Nalini Malani, Nyoman Masriadi, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Rashid Rana, Shahzia Sikander, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Do Ho Suh, teamLab, Wucius Wong, Xu Bing, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang, Dr. Uli Sigg, Parviz Tanavoli, Zarina, and Zhang Huan.

All proceeds from the Asia Arts Game Changer Awards support Asia Society initiatives. Asia Society is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan organization.

2022 Asia Arts Game Changer Awards
Asia Society Museum
Thursday, May 19, 2022

6:00 PM (ET) Cocktail Reception, sponsored by Rémy Martin
7:00 PM (ET) Performance: Huang Ruo & David Henry Hwang
8:00 PM (ET) Dinner & Awards Ceremony

Event program

HONORING

David Henry Hwang
Y. Z. Kami
Min Jin Lee
Sarah Sze

Purchase tickets online or complete the RSVP form and email it to [email protected]. Alternatively, you may mail the form to Asia Society Asia Arts Game Changer Awards, Asia Society Museum, Attn: Mirza Burgos, 725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021.

Asia Society is exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. EIN# 13-3234632. The estimated fair market value of the dinner is $250 per person. The balance is deductible to the extent allowed by law. Contributions are fully tax deductible. Tickets are non-refundable.

Honorees

David Henry Hwang

A playwright, librettist, and screenwriter, David Henry Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner and two-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. He has written libretti for thirteen operas, including the Grammy Award-winning Ainadamar, with music by Osvaldo Golijov; The Sound of a Voice, with music by Philip Glass; and The Rift, with music by Huang Ruo and which recently premiered in a series of commissioned work to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center. Other works include the plays Chinglish, The Dance and the Railroad, FOB, Golden Child, M. Butterfly, and Yellow Face; the musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song, Soft Power, and Tarzan. His film and TV work includes the movie M. Butterfly and four seasons of The Affair (Showtime). The performance at this year’s Asia Arts Game Changer Awards comprises a selection of pieces written by Hwang in collaboration with Huang Ruo. 

Y.Z. Kami

Born in Tehran and based in New York, Y.Z. Kami explores in paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptures the flux between matter and spirit. His abstract works reference architecture, geometry, and poetry, and his large-scale portraits ponder the unknown. Self-Portrait as a Child (1990) begins a series based on a family snapshot; Endless Prayers incorporates mandala-like arrangements of textual fragments; and the onggoing series begun in 2017, Night Paintings, features dreamlike biomorphic patterns. Kami’s work has been collected and exhibited by institutions including the British Museum in London and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Solo institutional exhibitions include the 52nd Biennale di Venezia (2007); Perspectives: Y.Z. Kami, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2008); and Endless Prayers, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017).

Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her writing has been featured in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, One Story, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2019, she was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon, and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.

Sarah Sze

A peerless bricoleur, Sarah Sze moves with a light touch across proliferating media. Her dynamic, generative body of work spans sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation. Sze was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and a Radcliffe Fellowship in 2005. In 2013, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Her work is exhibited in museums worldwide and held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions across the globe. Sze has created permanent public works for LaGuardia Airport, Storm King Art Center, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York. In 2023 Sze will present a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Sze is a professor at Columbia University in the department of visual arts.

Special Performance

Selections from An American Soldier (2014, 2018) and The Rift (2022). Written by David Henry Hwang. Music by Huang Ruo. Performed by Stephen Buck, Rod Gilfry, Yi Li, and Karen Vuong. Rod Gilfry appears courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera.

Huang Ruo

Born in Hainan Island, China, in 1976—the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended, composer Huang Ruo began his musical studies under the tutelage of his father, also a composer, at the age of six. He draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz. His diverse compositional range spans from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. His work has premiered at, or performed by, the Asko/Schoenberg, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Houston Grand Opera, Lincoln Center, London Sinfonietta, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, and Washington National Opera. His opera An American Soldier (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times. His new opera, M. Butterfly, with libretto by David Henry Hwang, will have its world premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in July of this year.

Asia Society Museum is grateful to the following donors who have made this evening possible:

LEADERSHIP

Areté Foundation

Lulu C. and Anthony Wang

INNOVATORS

Hamid Biglari and Laya Khadjavi

BENEFIT COMMITTEE

Ann Kinney

Helen and William Little

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

SUPPORTERS

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Noreen and Kenneth Buckfire

Greg and Dana Calbi

Layla Diba

Eiko Essael

Michael Findlay

Marilyn J. and Lawrence Friedland

Younghee Kim Wait

Minna Lee

Ryan Lee Gallery

Janet Ross

Allison Tollman

GIFTS IN KIND

Vikas Khanna

Huang Ruo

As of May 16, 2022