Ten years ago, when we talked about Chinese performance art, one would typically refer to controversial actions like eating a fetus. However, one should not forget that there were also Xiamen Dada’s burning of artworks after exhibition (1986), Xiao Lu and Tang Song’s shooting incident at the “China Modern Art Exhibition” (1989), the Beijing East…

The art world’s increasing interest in Southeast Asia in recent years is indisputable. Last year’s Art Dubai welcomed Alia Swastika to curate its Southeast Asian-focused “Marker” section. In late May, Christie’s Hong Kong offered up its largest-ever lot of contemporary wares from the region. Perhaps most tellingly, this year also witnessed the Guggenheim hold “No…

The openness of contemporary art with regard to medium and context allows for a wider range of formal possibilities, and its social orientation also serves to consistently expand the limits of these. …

Performance art, as a formal concept, has been in China for about three decades now. Over these past 30 years, people have been using the term “behavioral art” (Chinese: xingwei yishu) to describe the concept. In fact, around the time of the ’85 New Wave, performance art began entering mainstream consciousness along with Chinese Modernism….

Collectors from all over the world descended upon Berlin in the dwindling days of April for the ninth edition of Gallery Weekend Berlin. While the German capital, a city with less than four million inhabitants, is home to countless galleries—the number varies, depending on whom you ask, though accounts of the current number tend to…

In all eras we have expected art to fulfill some extremely practical roles. In this sense, the so-called“contemporary art” we have now could be understood as presently useful art, a little like a folk…