Sunday, October 2, 2011

2011 Asian Art Biennial: Medi(t)ation, “Asian Art and Curator’s Forum,” National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan, 9am – 5pm

The Forum will bring together scholars from Japan, Philippines, Korea, Afghanistan, and India to present research, exchange ideas, and investigate the impact of new cultural trends on contemporary art.   The presenters will analyze how current trends affect countries across Asia with specific respect to their regional history, traditions, aesthetics, cultural backgrounds, and relationship with regional counterparts in the 21st century. The forum aims to foster a mutual exchange of views and to deepen reciprocal understanding as the basis for further interaction and connection.

Leeza Ahmady’s presentation within the framework of the “Asian Art and Curator’s Forum” aims to engage professionals and encourage artistic exchange between Central Asia and the larger Asian contemporary art world.  Ahmady will offer a broad-spectrum analysis of the arts and culture in Central Asia as related to recent developments in contemporary art.  The presentation will showcase locally active artists and organizations, as well as those who are visible in the international arena, while addressing the lack of artistic dialogue between Central Asia and the surrounding Asian continent, the United States and Europe, thus making a case for the importance of further global artistic engagement in this region.

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

Auditorium Gallery

Taipei, Taiwan

For more information please visit:

http://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/english/projectlecture_1.aspx?SN=3321

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Roundtable discussion “Contemporary Art: World Currents,” with Terry Smith, Independent Curators International, New York, 2pm – 5pm

This roundtable will bring together a number of emerging and mid-career curators who are actively engaged in the global art community for a collaborative discussion based on each curator’s theoretical and practical approach to navigating contemporary art.  The conversation will center on the idea of testing definitions of contemporaneity, re-modernism and global.  Participants will exchange ideas and opinions that explore the applications and implications of these terms.

Participants include:  Leeza Ahmady, Kalia Brooks, Doryun Chong, Sofia Olascoaga, Terry Smith, and others.

Independent Curators International (ICI)
401 Broadway, Suite 1620
New York, NY 10013

Thursday, November 3, 2011

“The Taste of Others: Art in Central Asia,” as part of the CU Art Museum and Art History Program fall Lecture Series “CRITICAL POSITIONS: Perspectives on Art History, Curatorial Practice, and Art Criticism,” University of Colorado at Boulder

Leeza Ahmady’s project “The Taste of Others” was first launched in 2005 as an ongoing curatorial, educational, and archival initiative to connect the artists and art practitioners of Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan) to artists and art professionals in other parts of the world. The project has been presented in a variety of formats (exhibitions, lectures, panels, screenings, interviews, articles, essays) at numerous venues in the US and abroad.

318 UCB, Visual Arts Complex (VAC)
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309

dOCUMENTA (13) is a series of artistic acts and gestures that are already taking place as well as an exhibition that will open on June 9, 2012, and that will run for 100 days. dOCUMENTA (13) does not follow a single, overall concept but engages in conducting, and choreographing manifold materials, methods, and knowledges.

Curatorial Team and Process

dOCUMENTA (13) is being planned by artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with a number of agents, advisors, and artists. Throughout 2009 and 2010, Christov-Bakargiev traveled and lectured widely, building up a group of people with whom the process is shared. More than half of the participating artists have already been invited and are preparing projects for dOCUMENTA (13).

The dOCUMENTA (13) Agents contribute in various ways, and have different degrees of engagement. Some work more closely and consistently, others more loosely and occasionally, so as to create a generative process that is organic and affective, open to change. The Agents may increase during the upcoming years, and constitute an unstable curatorial entity. “In small systems,” states Christov-Bakargiev, “an agent acts by proxy, and chooses among a number of alternatives, so that agency is delegated, thus implying an element of uncertainty through which the system works. An agent, in biology, precipitates a reaction, and in fiction, an agent suggests someone who is hidden or undercover, never fully revealing identity. Agere, in Latin, is to act.” Currently, the Agents are Leeza Ahmady, Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Sunjung Kim, Koyo Kouoh, Joasia Krysa, Marta Kuzma, Raimundas Malašauskas, Chus Martínez, Lívia Páldi, Hetti Perkins, Eva Scharrer, Kitty Scott, and Andrea Viliani.

What is dOCUMENTA (13) about?

Questions of personal and collective emancipation through art emerge in the process of making dOCUMENTA (13) by thinking through a number of composite ontologies that generate paradoxical conditions of contemporary life and artistic production. These include:

• participation and withdrawal as simultaneous modes of existence today;
• embodiment and disembodiment, and their mutual dependency;
• rootedness and homelessness, as a dual condition of subjecthood;
• proximity and distance, and their relativity;
• collapse and recovery, occurring simultaneously as well as in succession;
• the flood of uncontrolled information and the contemporaneous obsession with control and organization;
• translation and untranslatability, and their negotiation;
• inclusion and exclusion, and their connectedness;
• access and inaccessibility, and their co-existence;
• the obsolescence of a Eurocentric notion of art and the paradoxical emergence of practices related to that same notion in the world at large today;
• human life and other forms of life facing multi-species entangled  histories;
• advanced science/technology and its alliance with ancient traditions;
• tangible and intangible heritage and their interconnectedness with contemporary culture;
• the specificity of being an artist and the non-specificity of artistic practice.

Exploring this set of composite ontologies and considerations, the exhibition will be held in various locations and places, and will include new works by more than 100 artists from around the world. In some cases, these will be presented as parts of projects with other artists, agents, or persons active in cultural fields including science and literature. Furthermore, a number of historical artworks will be exhibited in these interrelated ideas, conversations, and parallel stories.

Mariam Ghani, A Brief History of Collapses. Video, Commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial X, 2011.

Asian Contemporary Art Week, (ACAW) celebrates over 90 artists’ works at 35 New York City museums and galleries thru select exhibitions, conversations, screenings, book launches, receptions, and curator tours from March 21-31, 2011. Now in its seventh year, ACAW 2011 launches Dialogues in Asian Contemporary Art, a series of talks with more than 25 leading artists and professionals in the field.  Over the course of the ten days, ACAW Dialogues will strive to disseminate broader, more thorough knowledge of art communities and artists’ activities within and outside of Asia.

Highlights of the ACAW Dialogues include:

A discussion with Mariam Ghani and Barbara London at the Museum of Modern Art (March 21)
Rashid Rana and Pooja Sood at Sotheby’s (March 22)
M.F. Husain and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian with Melissa Chiu at Asia Society Museum (March 23)
David Elliott, Massimiliano Gioni, and Suzanne Cotter with Joe Martin Hill at the Guggenheim Museum (March 25)
Ushio Shinohara and Tomokazu Matsuyama with Miwako Tezuka at Asia Society Museum (March 28)
Liu Xiaodong with Alexandra Munroe at the Guggenheim Museum (March 29)
Xiaoze Xie interviewed by Robert Hobbs at China Institute (March 29)
A discussion with Asian Cultural Council 2011 grantees/contemporary artists Firoz Mahmud, Chaw Ei Thein, and Fong Wah Phoebe Hui led by Leeza Ahmady at Location One (March 30)
Yang Jiechang and Zheng Shengtian in conversation with Jane DeBevoise at Museum of Chinese in the Americas (March 31)

Most programs are free to the public and some require advance booking. For more information and a complete schedule of events, visit http://www.acaw.net

Participating Venues:

Monday, March 21
The Museum of Modern Art*

Tuesday, March 22
Sotheby’s

Wednesday, March 23
Asia Society and Museum*

Thursday, March 24
Chambers Fine Art
Jack Shainman Gallery*
Meulensteen
Priska C. Juschka Fine Art
sepia EYE at Aperture Gallery*
Sundaram Tagore Gallery
Thomas Erben Gallery*
Tyler Rollins Fine Art*

Friday, March 25
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum*
Rubin Museum of Art

Saturday, March 26
Bose Pacia*
Ethan Cohen Fine Art*
Rubin Museum of Art
sepia EYE at Aperture Gallery*
Tally Beck Contemporary
Zürcher Studio

Sunday, March 27
Indo-American Arts Council at Queens Museum of Art

Monday, March 28
Asia Society and Museum*

Tuesday, March 29
China Institute*
Gallery Korea / Korean Cultural Service
Japan Society Gallery*
Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery*
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum*
Taipei Cultural Center

Wednesday, March 30
Asian Cultural Council at Location One
China Institute*

Thursday, March 31
Asia Art Archive at Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)
Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

Sponsors: Asian Cultural Council and Sotheby’s
Media Sponsors: ArtAsiaPacific, artnet, and Art on Air

Contact us for more details!