Kwok Hang Lin (Auntie Hang) worked as a sewing lady for 46 years. Her first job was working in an electronics factory when she was 11 years old. After working for a few months, her mother encouraged her to work at a garment factory instead. She excelled in using different types of sewing machines, and her years of experience enabled her to handle special designs and challenging requests with ease. She treated every production process as a learning opportunity, not […]
Founded in 2010, Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective based in London who work across the fields of art, architecture and design. Their work addresses complex urban situations, and spans housing, workspace, cultural infrastructure and public space. They create social, economic and organisational models as well as buildings, and engage in design projects from the scale of furniture to the scale of the street. Their attention to detail and imaginative approach to re-use is typified in their work in the Granby […]
Born in 1973 and based in Tokyo, Aoyama has been interrogating gender roles and hierarchical value systems between manual and machine labour, craft and fine art, and is known for making meticulous embroidery pieces with old industrial-use Singer sewing machines. In his recent works, he investigates the impact brought by artificial intelligence on artistic production. He recently exhibited at Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2017) and his work, ESCAPE from the SEA, was featured at the National Art Gallery, in Kuala Lumpur, […]
Born in 1977, Afisina is based in Depok, West Java. Whilst being an active member of the Jakarta-based artist collective ruangrupa and serving as the Artistic Director of ruangrupa Art Laboratory (ArtLab), Afisina’s concern has focused on establishing an alternative ecosystem through cultural activism. Working with a wide range of artistic forms from video to performance, he intentionally uses his body or objects of mass production in his work as a catalyst to bridge between his own entity and the […]
Born in 1953 and based in Quezon City, Roldan deploys found objects and images, combining them into traditional local craft and text to make assemblages. As amalgams of personal belongings, collective memories, history and everyday life, Roldan’s pieces present an alternative angle to see the entangled and multi-layered socio-political conditions in his surroundings. His recent participations in the exhibitions hosted by prominent institutions are No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New […]
Movana Chen Movana Chen lives and works in both Hong Kong and Lisbon. Her multidisciplinary practice explores communication across cultures. Since 2004, she has been weaving people’s stories through KNITerature – a genre that involves deconstructing and reconstructing meanings by knitting books, maps, and dictionaries. She often shreds and repurposes printed materials in different languages to create sculptural installations that represent new forms of language. Chen studied at the London College of Fashion and received a BFA from the Royal […]
Formed by Kakio Yu and Tsukahara Yuya in 2006, contact Gonzo is currently based in Osaka. The current members are Tsukahara Yuya, Mikajiri Keigo, Matsumi Takuya and NAZE. The name of the performers/artists collective ‘contact Gonzo’ was inspired by ‘Gonzo journalism’, a form of journalism written in a highly personal writing style invented in the 1970s. The collective’s performance strongly emphasises improvisational interaction among performers that is often likened to fighting or martial arts, blurring the boundaries between violence and […]
Photo: Eva Tobing
Ade Darmawan Based in Jakarta, Ade Darmawan is an artist, curator and director of the artists’ initiative ruangrupa. His works range from installation, objects, drawing, digital print and video, drawing inspiration from the impact of post-colonial trade and economic changes on people’s lifestyle. He studied in the Graphic Arts Department of Indonesia Art Institute and later attended a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. His past exhibitions include Doing Business with the Dutch, Lumen Travo Gallery, […]
Born in 1980, Huang Po-Chih is now based in Taipei. Connecting his personal family history with the issues in global economy and industrialisation in post-war East Asia, Huang’s multi-faceted artistic practices range from writing fiction and documentary, to farming and social enterprise. In these artistic endeavours, he explores the possibility of microeconomics that allows us to recover autonomy in balancing between production and consumption. He participated in numerous exhibitions hosted by international institutions such as Taipei Biennale in 2014 and […]
Born in 1978 in Hubei, China, Liu is currently based in Shanghai. He has deployed different mediums and materials, from video to personal belongings to architectural design, in representing the transformation of public mindset, standard of living and urban landscape affected by the fast-paced process of industrialisation and modernisation in China. Liu recently participated in exhibitions including Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zone at Long March Project in Beijing, China (2018), That Has Been, And May Be Again […]