Art Central Hong Kong 2024
Gok Dou Live
Thursday, 28 March 2024
2:00 – 3:30PM | Asia Society: Arts and Culture on a Global Network
4:00 – 5:30PM | Curating as Collaborative Practice: Presenting South East Asia and beyond in the context of Middle East
6:00 – 7:30PM | Homecoming: Wifredo Lam and his Chinese Heritage
Arts and Culture on a Global Network
With Speakers Yasufumi Nakamori (invited) and Owen Duffy. Moderated by S. Alice Mong
Join us to explore Asia Society’s global vision in the arts and culture space as representatives from the New York, Houston and Hong Kong Asia Society Centers discuss their past and future collaborations, what it means to be part of the Asia Society Global Network and the changes and developments of Asian and Asian American artists since Asia Society’s establishment in 1956.
Owen Duffy, Ph.D. is the Nancy C. Allen Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Asia Society Texas. Duffy comes to Asia Society Texas from St. John’s University’s Yeh Art Gallery where he served as its director from 2019 to 2022, leading the institution through physical renovations to the exhibition spaces and the creation of a new exhibition program around the theme of diplomacy. During his tenure he organized more than 20 exhibitions, including Lain Singh Bangdel: Moon over Kathmandu, the first solo museum exhibition outside Nepal of the country’s preeminent modern artist Lain Singh Bangdel (1919-2002). Duffy’s exhibitions have earned press in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, Brooklyn Rail, and Art in America, among others. In addition, Duffy has published scholarship on the work of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, and Nepali performance artist Ashmina Ranjit. Among other publications, his writing about contemporary art has appeared ArtReview, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Artforum, Art & Education, frieze, Momus, Journal of Curatorial Studies, and BOMB. His most recent curatorial project at Asia Society Texas is Xu Bing: Word Alchemy (co-curated with Susan L. Beningson).
Dr. Yasufumi Nakamori is the recently appointed Museum Director and Vice President of Global Artistic Programs at Asia Society New York. He previously served as the Senior Curator of International Art (Photography) at Tate Modern since 2018. While there, he oversaw the collection of photography, bringing in new acquisitions and developing related exhibitions and gallery displays. He also advised more broadly on the Tate’s programming in Asian and Asian diaspora art, and from 2020 to 2022 was a member of the Race Equality Task Force, making recommendations towards institutional goals of equity and diversity at Tate. Prior to that appointment, he headed the department of photography and new media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and was the curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2008 to 2016.
S. Alice MONG is the President of Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK), an independent non-governmental educational organization established in 1990. She served as Executive Director of ASHK for 12 years before becoming its President. Previously, Alice worked in New York for a decade in senior management positions in non-profits such as the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA); the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American membership organization founded by I.M. Pei and Yo-Yo Ma. She began her career at the Ohio Department of Development, and later became Managing Director of Ohio Office of East and Southeast Asia in Hong Kong. She also worked at Hang Lung Development from 1995 to 2002.
Curating as Collaborative Practice: Presenting South East Asia and beyond in the context of Middle East
With Speakers Alia Swastika and Amal Khalaf
The talk will be bringing Alia and Amal's experience, as co-curators of the Sharjah Biennial, in initiating conversation with artists from different contexts and geopolitical situations, focusing on the practice of collaboration and working together, especially for trans-national connection that involve Southeast Asian artists to be engaged with wider landscape especially in the Middle east.
Alia Swastika is a curator, researcher and writer whose practice over the last 10 years has expanded on issues and perspectives of decoloniality and feminism. Her different projects involve decentralising art, rewriting art history and encouraging local activism. She works as the Director of the Biennale Jogja Foundation, Yogyakarta, and continues her research on Indonesian female artists during Indonesia’s New Order. She established and was Program Director for Ark Galerie, Yogyakarta (2007–2017). She was co-curator for the Biennale Jogja XI Equator #1 (2011); co-artistic director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012); and roundtable curator for contemporary art exhibitions for the Europalia Arts Festival (2017), including presentations at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; MuHKA, Antwerp; and SMAK Ghent, Belgium. Her research on Indonesian women artists during the New Order was published in 2019. She is also co-curating Sharjah Biennial 16 (February–June 2025).
Amal Khalaf is a curator and artist who serves as Director of Programmes at Cubitt (2019–present) and Civic Curator at the Serpentine Galleries (2009–present), both in London. Here and in other contexts she has developed residencies, exhibitions and collaborative research projects at the intersection of arts and social justice. Recent projects at the Serpentine include the launch of Support Structures for Support Structures (2021), Radio Ballads (2019–2022) and Sensing the Planet (2021). She curated the Bahrain Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and co-directed the Global Art Forum at Art Dubai (2016). She is a trustee of Mophradat, Athens, and not/nowhere, London, and a founding member of the GCC art collective. Her work, exhibitions and research have also been presented at MoMA PS1, New York; Sharjah Art Foundation; Whitney Biennial, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Berlin Biennale; Fridericianum, Kassel; and New Museum, New York, among many others. She is also co-curating Sharjah Biennial 16 (February–June 2025).
Homecoming: Wifredo Lam and his Chinese Heritage
With Speaker Stephane Lam
Born in Cuba in 1902, Wifredo Lam represents both the synergy and conflict born out of the merging of multiple cultural traditions: his mother was of Afro-Spanish heritage and his father, of Cantonese roots. Homecoming at Asia Society Hong Kong Center marks Wifredo Lam’s first major solo retrospective in Hong Kong and also the pivotal return of Lam to Asia - tracing his Chinese father’s lineage and studying the significance of the Chinese diaspora. In this talk, Stephane Lam, Founder and Director of Le Pavillon Rouge des Arts Hong Kong and also the son of Wifredo will be joined by Dorota Dolega, Head Archivist of the Wifredo Lam Estate. Read more about the exhibition here.
Stéphane is the Founder and Director of Le Pavillon Rouge des Arts Hong Kong (PRAHK). As an artistic director, musician, composer, workshop instructor and project leader, Stéphane has been working actively in many international artistic organizations and companies specializing in different areas including art, dance, music, theatre audio visual productions and festivals. In 2012, Stéphane founded PRA in Lyon with a mission to promote cultural and artistic exchanges between China and France. In 2014, he set up PRAHK to facilitate the work of PRA further in the Asian continent.