Three months into 2026, as geopolitical flashpoints intensify, old sovereignties are being tested and futures continually recalibrated. In this acutely unsettling atmosphere, ArtAsiaPacific turns to artists and institutions engaging with transformation—the mutable conditions of bodies, memories, ecologies, and geographies.
Our cover Feature spotlights the late Ching Ho Cheng, whose work will be included in the fourth edition of “Spectrosynthesis” at Seoul’s Art Sonje Center in March. The Havana-born Chinese American artist came of age in 1960s New York, creating gouache paintings and paper works that vibrate with raw tension: early psychedelic swarms of cosmic orbs, flames, and pulsating anatomies; interior spaces rendering plants, matchsticks, and lightbulbs with hyper-real precision. His later abstractions—oxidized, ripped, and reassembled—along with his meditative tableaux of light filtering through windows and entryways, treat destruction and endings as generative. Christina Shen surveyed Cheng’s brief, yet intensely prolific two-decade career, reflecting: “Whether in prismatic, hypersaturated gouaches inspired by Tibetan art or iron oxide-treaded papers torn into reduced shapes, Cheng’s art reflects a persistent inquiry into how process and materiality can serve as metaphors for cosmic spiritual forces.”
The issue’s second Feature explores Geumhyung Jeong’s experiments with identity, desire, and possibility through the mechanical and the performative. Self-taught in robotics, she assembles animatronic bodies from medical skeletons, fetishized mechanisms, and domestic detritus. Looking back at the artist’s earliest projects, Jiwon Yu writes: “Even as the work flirts with binaries—subject and object, active and passive, human and machinic—it sets the stage for Jeong’s modus operandi: inhabiting a logic so thoroughly that it can be bent, eroticized, and estranged.”
For Up Close, AAP editors expand this dialogue with three artists who examine technology’s imprint in new projects: Hito Steyerl’s Mechanical Kurds, Tishan Hsu’s emergent mesh, and Shao Chun’s Inner Beads (all 2025). For Inside Burger Collection, Laura McLean-Ferris sat down with Nick Mauss to talk about his multifaceted oeuvre, which spans ceramics, drawings, paintings on mirrors and textiles.
In Profiles, AAP assistant editor Annette Meier spoke with Indonesian art patron Belinda Tanoto on the eve of her Tanoto Art Foundation’s inaugural exhibition in Singapore, “Rituals of Perception.” In Australia, AAP Sydney desk editor Johanna Bear met up with senior Pitjantjatjara artist Frank Young and the APY Art Centre Collective to discuss his efforts to strengthen First Nations artistic communities—including his project for the 25th Biennale of Sydney, which opens in March. For Where I Work, AAP visited Abdullah Al Saadi’s studio in Khor Fakkan, where the Emirati artist—who is also featured in the Biennale of Sydney—revealed his decades-long practice of archiving life on stones, sweet potatoes, and handmade accordion notebooks.
With the palpable shift in attention to the Gulf region, Arthur Debsi, a curatorial consultant at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, filed a dispatch from Doha, investigating Qatar’s robust cultural offerings. In Essays, Naima Morelli highlights the independent 421 Arts Campus in Abu Dhabi, which recently marked its 10th anniversary. In The Point, Simon Wang of Shanghai’s Antenna Space explains his rationale for opening a second location in Hong Kong, despite market fluctuations.
Finally, for One on One, M+ Sigg Prize winner Wong Ping delves into his admiration of experimental poet, writer, and filmmaker Shūji Terayama, observing: “Born in 1930s Japan and having lived through World War II, ‘home’ became one of the inescapable themes that haunted him throughout his life. He lied compulsively, publicly, insisting he was born on a train, a child without origins, without anywhere to return to.” In their shared commitment to navigating volatility, the artists and initiatives in this issue probe hybridizing bodies, reactivated memories, and places in transition, revealing how beings adapt, endure, and reinvent themselves amid upheaval.
A digital edition of the full ArtAsiaPacific 147 (Mar/Apr 2026) is now available for purchase on Zinio, Google Play, iTunes, and Magzter.
