Art, at its core, is a dialogue with time—its passage, its weight, and its capacity to shape who we are and how we see the world. ArtAsiaPacific’s issue 145 explores a constellation of artists who probe questions of temporality, identity, and place, challenging us to reconsider our relationship with the past and present, the local and global, the individual and collective.
The issue’s cover feature spotlights On Kawara, whose work is a meditation on time itself. AAP associate editor Louis Lu reflects on the conceptual artist’s recent retrospective “Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules” at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun, which offered an opportunity to revisit Kawara’s incredible output. Each painting, postcard, telegram, map, and newspaper clipping—executed with exquisite precision—captures a single day, transforming the mundane act of noting time into a profound existential inquiry, and a quietly insistent reminder to be present.
For the issue’s second feature, curator Jiwon Yu traces Lee Bul’s oeuvre, from her early performances confronting gender and power to her later architectural fantasies—a timely exploration ahead of Lee’s major retrospective at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul. Yu writes: “Lee’s practice refuses to isolate nostalgic mourning and utopian longing, instead drawing them into a zone of perpetual unfinishedness—where desire, loss, and potential coexist in uneasy suspension.” Her shimmering, fragmented forms, reifying South Korea’s rapid modernization, reflect the intersections of memory, progress, and possibility.
The magazine’s Up Close section expands these conversations with three artists who share a commitment to the poetics of place and being in recent projects: Lee Kit’s solo show at the Fridericianum in Kassel features new work speaking to resilience and impermanence; Meta Enjelita’s Inner Monologue (2025), a textile installation at ArtJog in Yogyakarta, offers a meditation on how materiality can carry the weight of cultural memory, bridging past and present; and Do Ho Suh’s Nest/s (2024) at London’s Tate Modern presents home as a fragile, portable concept.
For the issue’s Inside Burger Collection section, Nick Yu sits down with Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. As co-directors of Hamburger Bahnhof, the two have reimagined the institution within the context of the National Gallery of Berlin, transforming it into a space that pulses with community rhythms and dialogue. In Profiles, Para Site deputy director Junni Chen talks with Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi about her curatorial approach as she embarks on the Aichi Triennale, which opens in September, as well as the Biennale of Sydney in 2026; while Patricia Chen met with Indonesia’s Natasha Sidharta to discuss how the Jakarta-based art patron has quietly supported her country’s trailblazing artists.
Elsewhere in the issue, Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano reviews the ambitious Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Arthur Solway travels to Xu Zhen’s studio in Shanghai to look at his latest projects inspired by Tibet, and Xintian Tina Wang files a Dispatch from New York, examining its cultural ecosystem’s adaptation and resiliency amid the Trump administration’s cuts to arts funding. Ryan Su’s essay explores sociocultural interpretations of intellectual property, examining the tradition of copying in literati ink painting, and contemplating whether Dafen art village and shanzhai counterculture have led to the democratization of art, and as the international art market deflates, Seoul gallerist Won Jae Park argues in The Point for reclaiming art’s soul and restoring its transformative essence.
Finally, in One on One, photographer Greg Girard reflects on his first encounter with Paul Bowles’s writings.
A digital edition of the full ArtAsiaPacific 145 (September/October 2025) is now available for purchase on Zinio, Google Play, iTunes, and Magzter.
