INTERVIEW/ LEAP PHOTO/ Tara Sosrowardoyo In a surprise move after almost a year of speculation, Art Basel promoted its new Director Asia from within—Adeline Ooi was formerly a VIP relations liaison for the fair in southeast Asia. Known as the not-so-bad-after-all kind of art adviser (the kind who spends as much time with artists as…

In the 1990s, Nicolas Bourriaud became one of the most influential authors of contemporary art criticism thanks to his work Relational Aesthetics . From 1999 to 2006, he served as co-director of Palai…

Danish artist Danh Vo is currently presenting his first solo exhibition in China, “Danh Vo: We the People,” at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing. On this occasion, LEAP conducted an exclusive interview with the artist that resulted in an in-depth dialogue revolving around Vo’s working methods, the relationship between his personal identity and his practice, the…

The Beijing and Zurich-based curator Li Zhenhua has nearly 15 years of experience working in new art, and to some extent has become a spokesperson for the field. He explains, “In my work, I attempt to…

Over the past 20 years, James M. Bradburne has sat at the helm of various cultural institutions. From the interactive science center New Metropolis in Amsterdam to Europe’s first wireless museum Museum for Applied Art in Frankfurt, each has been unique in its own right. Currently, he directs the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence’s laboratory for cultural…

For her first solo exhibition in China, Pipilotti Rist created several new works for the Times Museum in Guangzhou and the surrounding community. These included a series of lanterns made of recycled materials from the residential complex below, the 30-meter-long video installation Mercy Mercy, a humorous chandelier made of underwear, and brightly colored videos that…

GUNNAR B. KVARAN DIRECTOR OF ASTRUP FEARNLEY MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Dr. Gunnar B. Kvaran is the Director of the Astrup Fearnley Museet of Modern Art in Oslo, and the curator of the Biennale de Lyon 2013. In his concept for the biennial, Kvaran also reveals himself to be 
a radical conductor of narrative who…

Executive Director of M+ West Kowloon Cultural Authority LEAP Why did you decide to accept the position at M+? LARS NITTVE What really attracted me to the job was that the ambitions here were quite uncompromising. On the one hand, they are trying to create something that sets really high standards. At the same time,…

Director of Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain is the largest non-profit institutional collector of contemporary art in France. Its mission is to promote contemporary art and discover outstanding works from around the world. Chinese artists such as Huang Yong ping, Cai Guo-Qiang, Liang Yue, and the three Luo brot

Indonesian Chinese Budi Tek has lived in China for 17 years. Here he is mostly known for being a collector of contemporary Chinese art. But it is his recent decision to open an art museum in Shanghai that has further triggered LEAP’s interest in this figure. In the beginning of September, we interviewed him in…

In 2011, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Shumon Basar, and Joseph Grima together proclaimed the establishment of “Posthastism.” In June 2012, their movement arrived to The Pavilion in Beiing in the form of a one-day exhibition titled “Beijing Posthastism.” Alongside film screenings and live performance, the three curators laid out the terms of “The Posthastist Manifesto,” calling…

Born in Berlin in 1934, Hilla Becher first started collaborating with Bernd Becher in 1959, taking photographs of the water towers, blast furnaces, cooling towers, and other industrial structures that are legacies of Germany’s industrial era. Cataloging them according to type, Hilla and Bernd became pioneers of the field of industrial photography. In the years…

The critic and scholar Boris Groys is a household name in the international contemporary art world, including in China, where his writings have found a great number of faithful readers. Before these readers get a chance to see his work as co-curator of this year’s Shanghai Biennale, however, LEAP made sure to sit down for…

Having missed the Hou Hanru-curated photography exhibition “The Power Of Doubt” this spring at La Fabrica gallery in Spain, we were fortunate to find it this past December at the Times Museum in Guangzhou. On the occasion of the show, we took the opportunity to interview this curator. LEAP Why did you decide to bring…

In October, artist Zhang Huan’s exhibition “Q Confucius” will draw back the curtain on the newly renovated Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai. The exhibition comes courtesy of Nanjo Fumio, noted Japanese critic, curator and director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. We caught up with him after a recent press conference for Zhang Huan’s…

We met Qiu Xichun and Tang Xin at the company’s head-office near Fuxingmen, Beijing. The differing appearance and manner of these two gives a true impression of the double-life of this extraordinary and an experimental contemporary art space. Taikang has been collecting art since the 1990s; on August 20, it will open “Image/History/Existence: A Celebration…

Zaha Hadid passed through town a few weeks ago, for meetings with her clients at SOHO China and a highly publicized “first lecture in Beijing” just after the opening festivities for her latest creation, the Guangzhou Opera House. LEAP correspondent Jian Cui got a chance to sit down with her after outmaneuvering the SOHO public-relations…

Massimo Torrigiani is not just another fair director. Before taking the position late last year, he launched the photographic quarterly Fantom, the latest in a long string of cultural entrepreneurial ventures. We caught up with him for Japanese barbeque in Beijing to talk about his plans for the fair and his read on an art…

Cheng Xindong recently took us to his second art space in Beijing’s 798. He entered his courtyard like a boss and passed through his gallery, closing the gate on his way. He was sporting formal dress in preparation for our photo shoot, neatly scheduled between an appointment with some foreigners and another media interview. Fortunately, we got a…

Whereas those we have previously interviewed for the “My Miles” column may be called “busy,” perhaps it’s more appropriate to describe Cui Xiuwen as “diligent”—she won’t even allow herself a vacation. As soon as we step foot into her Feijiacun studio, she immediately invites us to take a look at her latest work in progress. She persists in asking our impression of…