This art month has been made extra exciting by the return of international travels. To celebrate the occasion, we have taken on the colossal task of identifying Asia-based artistic stars worth observing. From emerging to established, these visionaries are enriching our cultural dialogue, one art piece at a time.
AICO TSUMORI
Childhood reveries often inform the dreams that would invariably materialise as we age and learn – and as the dreams for what we want our lives to look like begin to take shape. For ceramic artist Aico Tsumori, though, her childhood reveries were coloured by fear; more nightmare than fantasy. “When I was a child, I was afraid of dolls in the corner of the room,” Tsumori says, “but I pretended to be okay because I didn’t want the dolls to know that I was scared.”
Her ceramic figurines have always drawn inspiration from these nervous encounters, her works always vaguely humanoid and always, as though a restorative balm for what once frightened her, coloured in bright, vivid shades to negate energies that might veer towards the fatalistic. For her Quiet Gallery exhibition, entitled a decidedly joyful “Galaxy Happy”, Tsumori appears to have, once and for all, taken back control of what frightens her – and what, finally, makes her happy.
And what makes her truly, truly happy is evident in the 30-plus ceramic sculptures from this exhibition, some of which are transposed not from Tsumori’s own imagination but from that of her young daughter, whose paintings are also exhibited alongside the figurines they’ve inspired. (The 9-year-old cheerily joined her mother at the exhibition’s opening.) While certainly an impressive showcase of the ceramic artist’s mastery of sculpting, moulding, glazing and firing, the exhibition is also a retrospective on the ceramicist’s aesthetic journey, including works from years 2017 to 2022.
Despite being widely exhibited in her native Japan, “Galaxy Happy” is the ceramic artist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Tsumori is also shown in Boston’s LaiSun Keane through February 2023, her inaugural exhibition in the United States.
The work of Alexander Sebastianus Hartanto reflects his belief that ethnographic research is an experiential way of life. He explores the decontextualization of material cultures and their ritual significance. Through his art, he seeks to decolonize the ontologies of art and reclaim Sani, a way of living that involves offering, service, and the pursuit of the unknown. In Sani, remnants and evidence of materials are left behind.
Sebastianus is a skilled weaver, having trained as an apprentice in his grandmother’s hometown in East Java. He was awarded the William Daley Award for Excellence in Art History and Craft in 2017. He is currently working as an ethnographer and developer of textile crafts at Rumah SukkhaCiwa in Java.
One of Sebastianus’s work, “Waktu adalah api yang Ku Bakar” (Time is the fire that I burned), translates stories of hazing, time wasted, and leaving home into a series of woven pieces. Through his poetry and the cremation and weaving process, Sebastianus revisits the materialization of literature in contemporary contexts. Each piece is dyed and stitched to resemble flesh, expressing memoirs and tales in Eastern Indonesian symbols. Sebastianus is currently gearing up for a solo show where he will explore new mediums in his art.
Cheung Tsz Hin is a Hong Kong artist, born in 1987 who studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and later gained a master’s in Fine Art from Taipei. Cheung grew up near the Chinese border in a remote, restricted area in the New Territories. Describing a solitary upbring, as he couldn’t have friends visit, he became used to spending time alone.
His paintings often depict the blossoming and decaying of plants, which he began to observe whilst growing up surrounded by nature “the withering and growing of plants remind me of the passage of time and the significance of being”. Later moving into more urban areas for university Cheung was equally fascinated as he began to “observe the lights and shadows in the city”, which are also reflected in his compositions.
Describing his unique creative process Cheung says, “I sit in front of the canvas and let my mind flow. Some brief flashes of memories then appear. Different emotions such as struggle, and confusion slowly build I then put these traces of living experiences onto the canvas. I use layers of paint to transform the state of my mind into something visible on the canvas, and the layers of paint are usually very thin. I guess somehow it reflects the repeated back and forth struggle during my thinking process … I am most pleased when I see how my works speak my mind”.
As he grows older, what inspires him to create the most are “the feelings and experiences in the relationships between me and my closest ones”. As well as being influenced by scenes and objects that he encounters in his everyday life. Looking to the future, having already had solo and group exhibitions in Hong Kong, Iceland and Taiwan, Cheung hopes to eventually show at an international art fair.
Hyun Jung Ji was born in South Korea, as a teenager she spent two years in New Zealand before moving to the United States at fifteen. Later enrolling at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, where she gained formal training as a painter. She currently lives and works in Seoul, Korea.
Her creative process and artworks are informed by her personal memories, “This allows me to dive deep into my consciousness and by facing these memories, I feel like I have a closer understanding of who I am. In my paintings, I try to keep my composure in challenging situations. I hope it brings sympathy to viewers and offers comfort”.
“I express the feelings of memories by storing them deep in the heart. These emotions, such as sadness, happiness, expectation, romance, and excitement, become the soil of the heart. Even though various emotions change from moment to moment, I try to accept them and transform them into positive energy for my work. Facing my feelings and overcoming loneliness through my work allows me to create a peaceful forest in my heart. It is a world that only I can create.”
Since she was small she has carried her diary with her everywhere, in order to capture feelings, experiences and the people she meets. “Even if it is just a normal thing, I write it down every day. I look at my entries from time to time.” As well as being inspired by artists: James Jean, Gustav Klimt, Yuko Shimizu, and Alphonse Mucha.
After working as an artists for five years in Los Angeles she returned to Korea, “I finally had the chance to show my works in the gallery to my parents. It was the most memorable experience of my life.” Looking to the future Hyun Jung Ji hopes to experiment with her limits and focus on creating large scale paintings.
Thai textile artist Jakkai Siributr is a master of storytelling with a needle, thread, and beading, creating entire worlds from the secrets, wisdom, and pain that each fibre and stitch holds. After spending some time in the United States studying the great contemporary artists of the West, he returned to Thailand to share his knowledge with aspiring students and give birth to the young textile art movement.
“I’m taking the most domestic technique, which is stitching, sewing – anybody can do it,” Siributr confesses, “And the challenge for me is to see how far I can go with a needle and thread.” Such mundane tools can take one to unbelievable heights, only limited to one’s imagination. The artist’s installation at the 2023 edition of Art Basel, for example, titled The Outlaw’s Flags, features a collection of fictitious flags, composed of the colours and emblems of states of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Thailand, embroidered with beads and fishnets gathered at the beaches of Sittwe, Myanmar. “Flags often represent a nation or sports team, club, or school, they are supposed to unite people together,” the artist explains, “But when there happen to be certain religious symbols on it, like a cross or crescent, or a chakra, it automatically excludes a certain group of people, because of their religious differences.” The materials of the installation symbolise the displacement of the Rohingyas – Muslim minorities in Myanmar – who were forced to flee to the south of Thailand to avoid being prosecuted by Buddhist extremists. Since then, Siributr aims to dedicate more of his time to supporting communities. In 2018, for example, he was chosen by the Thai embassy in Mozambique to become their artist-in-residence. During his time there, he enlisted a few local young men who worked at the embassy as cleaners to be his assistants. “That turned out to be like a great experience,” he says, “after that, I started working with a lot more with communities.” Currently, Siributr is working on another project in Chennai, in which members of the stateless communities in Thailand create embroidered patches that express their dreams and cultural heritage.
Shavonne Wong is a digital artist who bears a passion for creating and imagining art through various mediums. She had a ten-year career as a fashion and commercial photographer before pivoting to 3D art as the pandemic disrupted her work. A turning point in her career was when she started to incorporate NFTs into her work, which opened up a new world of possibilities for the artist and allowed her to connect to a wider global audience. To date, Wong’s greatest achievements have included being collected by Idris Elba, having her works auctioned at Sotheby’s, as well as making her debut at the Venice Biennale.
Wong’s works incorporate storytelling with 3D technology, utilising virtual human models and AI to create scenes and narratives that draw on her background in photography. Her digital art is visually impactful, merging her expertise in both photography and 3D art, showcasing her understanding of lighting, composition and posing, as well as her grasp of technology and its power to enhance and transform traditional art forms.
Her most ambitious project to date is her generative series “Love is Love”, where she challenged herself to create 500 unique pieces of art with different variations. Apiece that she feels the most for is an early work titled The Kiss, which represents
Wong’s conviction that love has no limits. The digital artwork features a close-up of two people about to kiss, with the couple changing with each rotation. The models have a range of skin colours, genders, sexual orientations, body shapes, and sizes, highlighting the universality of love. Wong is holding her first solo exhibition, The Ties That Bind, from March 17 to 31 at Ultrasupernew Gallery in Singapore.
A British artist of Balinese descent born in 1979 in New York, Sinta Tantra attended the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London from 1999 to 2003 and the Royal Academy Schools London from 2004 to 2006. She is highly regarded for her site-specific murals and installations in the public realm, which often explore the concept of drawing and colour. Her most notable public work is a 300-meter-long painted bridge commissioned for the 2012 Olympics in Canary Wharf, London.
Tantra’s fascination with colour and composition is a hallmark of her practice, which experiments with scale and dimension, the hybridity of pop and formalism, and an exploration of identity and aesthetics. Over a decade of working in the public realm, her distinct colour abstractions have enlivened and transformed the built environment. Her work spans small painted canvases to huge architectural installations, from bold tropical colours to Calder-like minimalism. It occupies a space at the intersection of painting and architecture, striking a balance between two-dimensional and three-dimensional, decorative and functional, and public and private.
In recent works, Sinta Tantra has used a variety of materials, including glass sculpture, metal, stone, and even incense and flowers, to celebrate the balance of the universe through the prayers of her Balinese heritage. Her latest series of paintings, dominated by the elegant Prussian blue, captivated many visitors at the recent event ART SG.
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