2016 spring programmes

Asia Art Archive (AAA) presents its 2016 spring programmes:

April 2015–spring 2017
15 Invitations for 15 Years is a special programme series featuring exhibitions, projects, written works, performances, a blog, and a set of dossiers that trace each invitation to document the process, resulting in a final print publication. In March, Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta presents That photo we never got at AAA, a research-based project that draws out narratives from the AAA collection to explore friendship and love in the field of art. Upcoming participants include Nonny De La Peña, Hu Fang & Zhang Wei, Walid Raad, Wong Wai Yin, and others.

October 2015–December 2016
AAA residencies invite artists and creative practitioners to interact with AAA and its collection within flexible time frames. Berlin-based artist group Slavs and Tatars continue their research residency through 2016 to investigate "the translation of Islam into China and Confucianism." 

March 12–June 12, 2016
AAA responds to The Time is Out of Joint, a project curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh at the Sharjah Art Foundation around the first Arab Artist Biennial in Baghdad (1974), China Avant-garde Exhibition in Beijing (1989), and the future Jogja Equator Conference in 2022. AAA will give a digital response in two parts: documentation from various AAA archiving projects on China Avant-garde, and material from a collaborative translation project with Indonesia Visual Art Archive (IVAA). In addition, AAA will contribute to the exhibition’s publication.

March 22–26, 2016
Open Platform is the fourth annual edition of "meetings without walls" held at AAA's booth during Art Basel's show in Hong Kong that gathers cultural practitioners from all disciplines to discuss and debate on topics of interest in the field. Participants will include artist, writer, and publisher Paul Chan; choreographer Alice Rensy; ‎Associate Curator of Architecture & Design at M+ Shirley Surya; and artist Tintin Wulia, among others. COLLECTIVE was selected from an open call that invited Hong Kong-based architects and creative practitioners to design the AAA booth. AAA is a Cultural Partner of the 2016 Hong Kong edition of Art Basel.

March 24, 2016
Simryn Gill gives an artist talk at AAA on her long-standing work Station Hotel, a systematic documentary record of a derelict hotel in Singapore. Gill was born in Singapore and presently lives in Port Dickson, Malaysia. Recent exhibitions include a survey of her photographs at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore (2015), and a new project made for the Dhaka Art Summit (2016). 

April 2016
The Dossiers is a part of AAA's Publications Project, which brings together established scholars, educators, artists, critics, and young researchers to inquire into multilingual art writing. The project aims to compile, translate, and publish important texts on art in South Asia from the late 19th century to the present in the form of "dossiers." The first dossier to be published in April considers the figure of the artist in fictional writing.

Special thanks:
15 Invitations: The S. H. Ho Foundation Limited; the C. K. & Kay Ho Foundation; the Hong Kong Arts Development Council; Hani Charaf, Kemistry Design
Open Platform: Wendy Lee & Stephen Li; Lavina & William Lim; Elaine & Anto Marden; Art Basel in Hong Kong; COLLECTIVE; frieze; randian
Publications Project: The Avantha Group; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art; Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi; Mohile Parikh Centre, Mumbai; The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts

Asia Art Archive is an independent non-profit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. With one of the most valuable collections of material on art freely available from its website and onsite library, AAA builds tools and communities to collectively expand knowledge through public, research, residency, and educational programmes.

*(1) Shilpa Gupta, That photo we never got, 2015. Courtesy of the artist. (2) Simryn Gill, Scale or Tasha and the Tree, 2005, 2013. Courtesy of the artist. (3) Open Platform 2016 booth design. Courtesy of COLLECTIVE, Hong Kong. (4) Slavs and Tatars, Kitab Kebab (Mystics, Commissars, Idiots), 2013. Courtesy of Slavs and Tatars. Photo: Kitmin Lee 2015. (5) Performance at Binal Eksperimental (Binal Experimental Arts), 1992. Courtesy of Indonesia Visual Art Archive. (6) China/Avant-Garde Exhibition Posters outside The National Art Museum of China, 1989. Courtesy of Fei Daiwei. (7) Materials for the Dossiers. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.