Film & Video (Film & Video)

Chinese restaurants have been a familiar feature of Swedish cities since the late 1970s, embodying the foreign and the exotic. Lap-See-Lam started the project by documenting the interiors of several Chinese restaurants in Stockholm at a time when many of them were about to be taken off the map. Her own family was selling their business in 2015.

Painting (Painting)

Central Station, Alignment, and Sumo are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds. These portraits explore the relationship between the psyche and contemporary social environments, focusing on isolation, identity, and distress. Central Station shows a character reaching to wipe a tear from her face as the blues of her wardrobe seem to blend in with the dismal blue of the background.

Painting (Painting)

Central Station, Alignment, and Sumo are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds. These portraits explore the relationship between the psyche and contemporary social environments, focusing on isolation, identity, and distress. The figure in Alignment slouches with his head in his hands in a gesture of failure or despair, speaking to the difficult task of balancing individual freedom and societal rules.

Painting (Painting)

Central Station, Alignment, and Argument are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds. These portraits explore the relationship between the psyche and contemporary social environments, focusing on isolation, identity, and distress. The two characters in Argument interact in an ambiguous gesture of conflict or embrace as the world around them pulsates in agitated waves.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Calderón & Piñeros (La Decanatura) refer to Sólheimasandur as a work that tackles the issue of “the ruin as a tourist destination.” As they say, “at the end, tourists become an essential part of this unusual, beautiful, and—at the same time—banal landscape.” The video features a plane wreck on Sólheimasandur beach in Iceland, where a navy plane belonging to the United States Army crashed in 1973 due to fuel exhaustion. The plane appears as an anthropomorphized figure: lying on the sands of the beach without its wings, it resembles a sculptural torso that has lost all its limbs, with cables coming out of its body appearing as internal organs. These injuries remind the viewer of the danger inherent in these artifacts, and the potential for both heroism and death implicit in flying them to far-away territories.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Nuevo Dragon City is a reenactment of a historical event from 1927 in which six Chinese were either trapped or voluntarily hid themselves inside a building in northern Mexico. Working with this unsettled mystery, De La Torre’s video inquires into the historical and continuing tensions between Chinese and Mexicans. As such, Nuevo Dragon City depicts a symbolic act of self-entrapment in which six untrained actors of Chinese descent silently blockade themselves inside in an empty Tijuana storefront.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Lam Tung Pang created Sketches from train ride Chicago to San Francisco during his travels through the United States researching American curatorial strategies for representing traditional Chinese painting in museums and cultural institutions. The drawings incorporate both traditional and contemporary Chinese landscape techniques to reflect on the memory, history, and aesthetic practices of the Chinese laborers who played a prominent role in the American westward expansion. By representing the Western landscape according to Chinese aesthetics, Lam calls attention to the distortions and cultural specificity of American representations of the Western landscape and non-Western cultures.

Installation (Installation)

Misting Miner is a vapor sculpture by Alexey Buldakov from the Urban Fauna Lab collective that gives material form to the invisible phenomenon of mining cryptocurrency. The work is comprised of a water cooling system attached to technology that continuously mines cryptocurrency, and in the process also generates an extraordinary amount of heat. As a latent and untapped source of energy, the artist harnesses the heat and reveals its transformative potential by turning it into fog through the water cooling system, which he then reroutes to follow a cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

Photography (Photography)

Back images is a series of six photographs by Sarah Lei Cheuk Wah that explore the semiotics of power and their intersection with representations of masculinity. The photographs feature what seem to be stock images of several policemen—their rugged uniforms, vehicles and weapons drenching the photographs with signs of masculinity and power as the policemen carry on with their usual tasks. The series was part of a larger exhibition entitled In Stasis where Lei transformed the booth of an art fair into what appeared to be a security area inside an airport.

Installation (Installation)

This is not in Spanish looks at the ways in which the Chinese population in Mexico navigates the daily marginalization they encounter there. The neon translates as “this is not in Spanish,” making reference to both the famous Rene Magritte painting “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” as well as signs posted in the windows of Chinese establishments in Mexico.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Centro Espacial Satelital de Colombia (Colombian Satellite Space Center) , Calderón & Piñeros (La Decanatura) play tribute to two “stunning” satellite antennas installed in the small municipality of Chocontá where, in 1970, the Space Communications Center of Colombia was inaugurated. That same year, the first antenna, responsible for the transmission (via microwave) of radio and telephone signals was put in place and eleven years later, the second antenna or Ground Station for International Communications would complete the complex known as Space Communications Center. Excursions to visit what became known as the “Satellite City of Colombia” were common for decades.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Poet and writer Fred Moten gesticulates joyously during Girl Talk by artist Wu Tsang. Moten is dressed in light drag—a studded cloak hanging loosely over his body, his eyes and mouth adorned with makeup. Filmed in a sunlit garden, Moten whirls in slow motion to the trickle of a lion-headed water fixture and the acapella rendition of jazz standard Girl Talk by singer Josiah Wise.

Installation (Installation)

Unfinished Return of Yu Man Hon by Cici Wu is delicate, but physically much more robust than Cici Wu’s earlier works. What continues is the sense of longing, of something unresolved; it is haunting, like the images from a dream that we try to remember upon waking up. Unfinished Return of Yu Man Hon revolves around the story of a developmentally challenged young boy, who purportedly disappeared during the handover of Hong Kong by the British to Chinese governance.

Photography (Photography)

The photographic series Wrapped Future II by Lim Sokchanlina brings fences used on construction sites to enclose the surrounding areas, to different locations, lakes, valleys and forests; and places them at the center of works to obscure the beautiful Cambodian landscape. The inharmonious landscape is gradually captivated by the exquisite balance between inorganic material and mystical background. The photos were taken in places that in recent years have become targets of large-scale exploitation under a massive globalization of capital and other political interests.

Photography (Photography)

Sam Contis’s photographs explore the relationship of bodies to landscape, and the shifting nature of gender identity and expression. Horseback is part of a photographic series Contis made at Deep Springs College, one of the United States’s last all-male institutions of higher learning, located in a remote desert valley on the California–Nevada border. Horseback is a black and white photograph that depicts the arched shoulders of a horse, its slick mane splayed across its neck.

Photography (Photography)

Sam Contis’s photographs explore the relationship of bodies to landscape, and the shifting nature of gender identity and expression. Oil is part of a photographic series Contis made at Deep Springs College, one of the United States’s last all-male institutions of higher learning, located in a remote desert valley on the California–Nevada border. Oil features a hand in front of an open hood of a car, checking the oil.

Photography (Photography)

The photographic series Wrapped Future II by Lim Sokchanlina brings fences used on construction sites to enclose the surrounding areas, to different locations, lakes, valleys and forests; and places them at the center of works to obscure the beautiful Cambodian landscape. The inharmonious landscape is gradually captivated by the exquisite balance between inorganic material and mystical background. The photos were taken in places that in recent years have become targets of large-scale exploitation under a massive globalization of capital and other political interests.

Photography (Photography)

The photographic series Wrapped Future II by Lim Sokchanlina brings fences used on construction sites to enclose the surrounding areas, to different locations, lakes, valleys and forests; and places them at the center of works to obscure the beautiful Cambodian landscape. The inharmonious landscape is gradually captivated by the exquisite balance between inorganic material and mystical background. The photos were taken in places that in recent years have become targets of large-scale exploitation under a massive globalization of capital and other political interests.

Painting (Painting)

Mojtaba was painted in 2015 as a part of the Bedroom Posters series. Bedroom Posters feature the same beautiful boys who could well be out of a set of fashion editorials. Mojtaba, Manuel, Titus, and a boy found on Tumblr are on the verge of becoming men, yet are narcissistic adolescents prone to fall into the trap of ideological extremes.

Photography (Photography)

The photographic series Wrapped Future II by Lim Sokchanlina brings fences used on construction sites to enclose the surrounding areas, to different locations, lakes, valleys and forests; and places them at the center of works to obscure the beautiful Cambodian landscape. The inharmonious landscape is gradually captivated by the exquisite balance between inorganic material and mystical background. The photos were taken in places that in recent years have become targets of large-scale exploitation under a massive globalization of capital and other political interests.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground. As both frames progresses, a montage of large crowds of mourners are depicted in slow motion interwoven with a variety of images including bomb explosions, fireworks, vacant stores, sunsets and sunrises, beachside landscapes, and infrared shots. At midpoint, life in the year 4012 is foreshadowed down to living insects and the video concludes back in the year 2012 as a burning inferno.

Photography (Photography)

In her 2003 series “Better Lives”, Sue Williamson explores stories of immigrants in search of a better life in a historically contentious South Africa. In an attempt to address and confront xenophobia in South African history, Better Lives series subverts racism and prejudice by emphasizing the immigrant as human, and thus gives the subjects a voice. “Better Lives: Richard Belalufu” tells a tale of surviving in a hostile South Africa through the undercurrent reflections on violence, abuse and the difficulty of finding home as an immigrant.

Textile (Textile)

The Korean title for U: Repair the cowshed after losing the cow = Too late is —a famous Korean proverb meaning “you are doing something when you are already late to do it”. This work by Seulgi Lee is a nubi (traditional Korean quilt) blanket project that shows Korean proverbs expressed as geometric shapes. Nubi blankets were used as single sheet summer blankets in Korean households until the 1980s.

Installation (Installation)

wombmate! by Mithu Sen is part of a project called AºVOID. In this fragmented mental map, the landscape is fleeting, embossed, and ethereal; there are moments of recognition and also a near-violent sudden emptying of memory.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory. The watercolor images on each note paper document the artist’s visits to various Chinese ‘New Villages’ in Malaysia. The studies, some in color and others in grey-scale, from this series include architectural ruins, portraits of people and animals, and groups of people in protest.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory. The watercolor images on each note paper document the artist’s visits to various Chinese ‘New Villages’ in Malaysia. The studies, some in color and others in grey-scale, from this series include architectural ruins, portraits of people and animals, and groups of people in protest.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

7-headed Lalandau Hat by Yee I-Lann is an intricately woven sculpture evoking the ceremonial headdress worn by Murut men in Borneo. The materiality and form of this traditional headpiece represents the strength and fierceness of forest warriors. Their ‘chimneys’ on top are intended to resemble trees in the jungle onto which hornbill feathers would once have been stuffed.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory. The watercolor images on each note paper document the artist’s visits to various Chinese ‘New Villages’ in Malaysia. The studies, some in color and others in grey-scale, from this series include architectural ruins, portraits of people and animals, and groups of people in protest.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory. The watercolor images on each note paper document the artist’s visits to various Chinese ‘New Villages’ in Malaysia. The studies, some in color and others in grey-scale, from this series include architectural ruins, portraits of people and animals, and groups of people in protest.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory. The watercolor images on each note paper document the artist’s visits to various Chinese ‘New Villages’ in Malaysia. The studies, some in color and others in grey-scale, from this series include architectural ruins, portraits of people and animals, and groups of people in protest.