Asia Society Triennial 2020-2021
We Do Not Dream Alone
New York
October 27, 2020 - June 27, 2021
Asia Society Museum announced new dates for its inaugural Triennial due to the global COVID-19 outbreak. The Asia Society Triennial is the first recurring initiative in the United States devoted to contemporary art from and about Asia and Asian diasporas.
Originally programmed to take place from June 5–August 9, 2020, this groundbreaking initiative will now unfold in two successive parts at Asia Society Museum, and across select participating venues throughout Manhattan. The first part will run from October 27, 2020, through February 7, 2021, and the second part from March 16, 2021, through June 27, 2021. The longer duration will allow for greater flexibility in scheduling, more artistic and educational programming, and new visitor safety protocols.
“Throughout history, pandemics have shown us how vulnerable we are, but also how we give each other strength and hope by coming together,” said Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair of the Asia Society Triennial. “We believe that the Triennial will be a potent manifestation of the power of art to bring humanity back to a divided, vulnerable, post-COVID-19 world, especially at a time when racism against Asians and Asian Americans has resurged in our society. We are profoundly grateful to our supporters and partner institutions, who have stood firmly by us as we navigated the many difficult challenges to keep the Triennial viable and strong.”
Entitled We Do Not Dream Alone, the exhibition and performance program has been reconceived by Dr. Hsu-Tang, Artistic Director of the Triennial and Asia Society Museum Director Boon Hui Tan, and Executive Director of Global Artistic Programs Ken Tan, in response to these unprecedented times. “By presenting the exhibition over a longer period of time and in two consecutive parts, we are moving away from the crush of spectacle associated with many international art events,” said Boon Hui Tan. “This reconfiguration will create a more spread out, yet intimate experience of the artworks while enabling necessary physical distancing. We intend for the exhibition to be one that may be returned to more than once and slowly absorbed, like slow food.”
The exhibition features over 40 artists and collectives from 20 countries. The participating artists and collectives work across a variety of disciplines including painting, sculpture, photography, video, fiber art, and performance, and nearly half have been commissioned to create new work. There will be a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue and an expanded digital component.
The exhibition is cocurated by Boon Hui Tan, Vice President of Global Artistic Programs and Director of Asia Society Museum, and Artistic Director of the Triennial, and Michelle Yun, Senior Curator of Asian Contemporary Art and Associate Director of the Triennial.
The artists and collectives chosen for the Asia Society Triennial work across a variety of disciplines including painting, sculpture, photography, video, fiber art, and performance. They represent countries across Asia and the Asian diaspora, and bring together a spectacularly diverse range of works and viewpoints. Nearly half of the artists have been commissioned to create new work; many of these works are site-specific.
“Art has the power to connect us beyond borders and across cultures,” says Asia Society President and CEO Josette Sheeran. “It is a vital time to connect on our common, human dreams. This first-ever Triennial of Asian art will bring the power of visionary art and ideas to remind us that indeed we do not dream alone.”
To create a truly democratic and wide-reaching festival, Asia Society will partner with other New York cultural institutions and venues such as Governors Island and Times Square Arts Midnight Moment to bring the Triennial to locations across New York City and ensure it is free to all audiences. Led by Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D., Executive Chair of the Triennial and Chair of its Steering Committee, the Triennial reaches beyond New York City and the visual art field to build seminal collaborations, including with the New York Philharmonic, Santa Fe Opera, and others to create a platform that brings together a diversity of art forms.
In addition to showcasing works by renowned performance artists such as Susie Ibarra, who will perform at New-York Historical Society, the Triennial will feature a newly commissioned work by contemporary composer Huang Ruo that will premiere at the Opening Night Gala on June 5. Huang Ruo, composer of the highly anticipated new opera M. Butterfly, is the Triennial’s inaugural composer-in-residence. “A contemporary art festival should be Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, in itself,” says Dr. Hsu-Tang. “The Triennial advances the legacy of Asia Society Museum as a cultural vanguard of diverse artistic voices from and about Asia. This new international platform builds on more than six decades of institutional heritage of diplomacy and systematic engagement between Asia and America.”
About the artists and artworks
Artists in the exhibition work across today’s mediums of artistic expression, reflecting the diversity of contemporary artistic practice. Whether the artists are early in their careers or more established, their works offer opportunities for wide-ranging conversations about art, identity, and politics.
“My cocurator and I have sought to commission artists and to find complex works that have not been widely seen in this country,” says Mr. Tan. “In the face of an increasingly fractured world, where the old ties between cultures and civilizations have become undone, contemporary art has risen to prod, pull, and nudge us to resist pessimism. With this Triennial, we are pushing beyond our own walls to present artists and artworks that interrogate the complexities of the present moment and that invite viewers to consider new ways of seeing.”
“Asia Society’s purview across the region and the diaspora represents diverse cultures, religions, ethnicities, political ideologies, and identities,” says Ms. Yun. “Consequently, as we considered which artists to include in our first Triennial, we initially cast a wide net. Ultimately, we focused our selection on artists whose practices actively and uniquely engage timely, yet universally accessible, issues relating to democracy, identity, gender, and sustainability. We are especially pleased to be collaborating with such a dynamic group of artists and venue partners to premiere newly commissioned works, many of them specific to New York City.”
Kimsooja is a multimedia conceptual artist who lives and works between New York, Paris, and Seoul, and whose work will be displayed at multiple Triennial locations. At Governors Island, Kimsooja will create a site-specific immersive installation, incorporating architecture, light, and sound. At other venues, the artist will activate her project To Breathe—The Flags, incorporating a cross-pollination of national flags into a unifying symbol that in the artist’s words “is a wish for coexistence, for an ideal world in which individuals can unite in celebration of our distinctions and of our common humanity.”
Israeli-born artist Ghiora Aharoni utilizes found, often ancient, culturally specific objects and texts to explore history, symbolism, and imagination in works that question age-old ideologies and ethnic conflicts as well as love, family, and sexuality. His contribution to the Triennial will include the use of phulkari, a traditional Punjabi dowry shawl that Aharoni inscribes with his own family biography texts, drawings, symbols, and objects of daily life, thereby overlaying them with new meaning and drawing them into conversation with contemporary ideas and artistic practice.
Anne Samat is a fiber and textile artist from Malaysia whose work addresses issues of identity, gender, and nationhood by pushing the boundaries of traditional Southeast Asian weaving techniques infusing her ornate and visually arresting woven sculptures with everyday household objects. She will be contributing a new, site-specific installation at Asia Society Museum. Chinese artist Xu Zhen has created a suite of sculptures composed of replicas of classical statues deemed the highest benchmark of western and Asian civilizations. These become a means to explore preconceived hierarchies within the art historical canon and provoke dialogue on the sometimes violent nature of cultural appropriation. With irony, Xu's work raises issues relating to the body, craftsmanship, originality versus mass production, appropriation and authorship, agency, and the monetization of art. In a house on Governors Island, Iranian artist Reza Aramesh will create an installation of ceramic vases that recall Hellenistic artifacts, but incorporate images of contemporary war and torture, alluding to the continuity of conflict and barbarity as well as the history of Governors Island as a military outpost.
Arpita Singh, a world-renowned painter whose work has rarely been shown in the U.S., will be represented in the Triennial with a suite of paintings that reflect on the experience of the older woman in contemporary Indian society. anGie seah is a performance and multimedia artist from Singapore whose practice explores the complexities of the human psyche through cathartic acts of spontaneity. For the Triennial she will collaborate with local communities to create a participatory installation as a humorous antidote to the emotional and psychological strains of contemporary life. Lu Yang attempts to reconcile the gap between the mysticism of religious practice and rational, scientific thought. Born and currently based in Shanghai, China, her multifaceted, multimedia practice entwines elements of Buddhism, neuroscience, gender, and physiology with pop-culture tropes including manga, science fiction, and video games. She will create a site-specific, interactive installation in a suite of rooms on Governors Island. Mina Cheon will create a participatory public artwork, in partnership with the New York Philharmonic, at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall. The work invites audience members to consider the unity of North and South Korea through consumption of one of the region’s most popular and symbolic snacks, the Choco Pie. Mina Cheon will also have an installation on Governors Island featuring a series of art history lessons given by her alter ego “Professor Kim.”
Artists will also explore issues closer to home. Xu Bing and Sun Xun will create new works for a special project that responds to the Declaration of Independence and the principles of equality and moral leadership on which the United States government and American national identity is based. Guest curator: Susan L. Beningson, Ph.D.
NASIM NASR
33 Beads (Unworried) #2 (video still), 2018
HD single-channel video, no sound
Duration: 2 minutes, 35 seconds, loop
Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of the artist
Asia Society Triennial artist list:
Hamra Abbas (b. 1976 in Kuwait City, Kuwait. Lives and works in Boston, MA, U.S. and Lahore, Pakistan)
Ghiora Aharoni (b. 1969 in Rehovot, Israel. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.)
Song-Ming Ang (b. 1980 in Singapore. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Singapore)
Reza Aramesh (b. 1970 in Awhaz, Iran. Lives and works in London, UK)
Christine Ay Tjoe (b. 1973 in Bandung, Indonesia. Lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia)
Mina Cheon (b. 1973 in Seoul, Korea. Lives and works in Baltimore, MD and New York, NY, U.S.; and Seoul, Korea)
Cheuk Wing Nam (b. 1983 in Hong Kong. Lives and works in Hong Kong)
Daniel Crooks (b. 1973 in Hastings, New Zealand. Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia)
Vibha Galhotra (b. 1978 in Chandigarh, India. Lives and works in New Delhi, India)
Kyungah Ham (b. 1966 in Seoul, Korea. Lives and works in Seoul, Korea)
Joyce Ho (b. 1983 in Taipei, Taiwan. Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan)
Susie Ibarra (b. 1970 in Anaheim, CA, U.S. Lives and works in New Paltz, NY; Bennington, VT; and New York, NY, U.S.)
Abir Karmakar (b. 1977 in Siliguri, India. Lives and works in Vadodara, India)
Kimsooja (b. 1957 in Daegu, Korea. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.; Paris, France; and Seoul, Korea)
Lao Tongli (b. 1982 in Guangdong Province, China. Lives and works in Guangzhou, China)
Dinh Q. Lê (b. 1968 in Hà Tiên, Vietnam. Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Los Angeles, CA, U.S.)
Li Jianjun (b. 1972 in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China)
Minouk Lim (b. 1968 in Daejeon, Korea. Lives and works in Seoul, Korea)
Lu Yang (b. 1984 in Shanghai, China. Lives and works in Shanghai, China)
Prabhavathi Meppayil (b. 1965 in Bangalore, India. Lives and works in Bangalore, India)
Mountain River Jump! Duo founded in 2016. (
Huang He b. 1985 in Guangzhou, China;
Huang Shan b. 1985 in Guangzhou, China. Live and work in Foshan, China)
Kevork Mourad (b. 1970 in Qamishli, Syria. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.)
Nasim Nasr (b. 1984 in Tehran, Iran. Lives and works in Sydney, Australia)
Jordan Nassar (b. 1985 in New York, NY, U.S. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.)
Hetain Patel (b. 1980 in Bolton, UK. Lives and works in London, UK)
Anne Samat (b. 1973 in Malacca, Malaysia. Lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
anGie seah (b. 1979 in Singapore. Lives and works in Singapore)
Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.)
Arpita Singh (b. 1937 in Baranagar, India. Lives and works in New Delhi, India)
Samita Sinha (b. 1978 in New York, NY, U.S. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.)
Sun Xun (b. 1980 in Fuxin, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China)
Melati Suryodarmo (b. 1969 in Surakarta, Indonesia. Lives and works in Gross Gleidingen, Germany and Surakarta, Indonesia)
teamLab Collective (founded in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko. Based in Tokyo, Japan)
Natee Utarit (b. 1970 in Bangkok, Thailand. Lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand)
Jason Wee (b. 1979 in Singapore. Lives and works in Singapore and New York, NY, U.S.)
Wen Hui (b. 1960 in Yunnan Province, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China)
Xu Bing (b. 1955 in Chongqing, China. Based in Beijing, China and New York, NY, U.S.)
Xu Zhen® (b. 1977 in Shanghai, China. Lives and works in Shanghai, China)
Ken + Julia Yonetani (
Ken Yonetani b. 1971 in Tokyo, Japan;
Julia Yonetani b. 1972 in Tokyo, Japan. Live and work in Sydney, Australia and Kyoto, Japan)
Composer-in-residence
Huang Ruo (b. 1976 Hainan, China. Lives and works in New York, NY, U.S.)
The Asia Society Triennial is organized by Boon Hui Tan, Vice President of Global Artistic Programs and Director of Asia Society Museum and Artistic Director of the Triennial; and Michelle Yun, Senior Curator of Asian Contemporary Art and Associate Director of the Triennial. Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. is the Executive Chair, leading the Steering Committee and guiding Triennial collaborations with other cultural organizations.
The Asia Society Triennial Steering Committee includes:
Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. (Executive Chair)
David Barboza
Lilly Chan
Niv Fichman
David Henry Hwang
Golnar Khosrowshahi
Mee-Seen Loong
Charles Rockefeller
Hao Sheng
Andreas Teoh
Robert Wong
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