Asia Next – Story of the Beginning

In March 2019, Fukuoka Art Museum will finally be re-opened. For celebrating its renewal opening, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum also introduces a selected contemporary Asian art that makes us feel the embryonic movements of the future.

Birth
Childhood
Transformation
Story of the Beginning

The first section Birth introduces the works that question the socially and biologically bound status of female/male as well as social and biological differences of the sexualities. For instance, Aisha Khalid’s Birth of Venus draws out the existence of women in Islamic society through burqa-covered Venus, and Lin Tianmiao’s Spawn #3 implies the female status in China’s patriarchal system. While the twenty-first century is said to be the era of women, what would be the form of society in which everyone including all the individuals with minority background is truly empowered?

The second section introduces the works relating to Childhood including Khadim Ali’s Absent Kitchen that depicts the situation of Afghan children placed in the severe conditions caused by war, and the works from Thailand and Indonesia that, in contrast, show children playing freely and cheerfully.

The section starting with Chrysalis that looks like a sort of creature or a high-tech cyborg features the works under the theme Transformation. The works in this section depict cool and good-looking hero and heroin as well as mysterious creatures that could appear scary.

The last section is entitled Story of the Beginning. The works in this section announce the beginning of something or the beginning after the end of an event. For instance, posters printed in Vietnam in 1975 celebrate the end of the Vietnam War that lasted more than ten years. Posters are filled with relief and hope for the future. Subodh Gupta’s 29 Morning, on the other hand, is filled with the artist’s sympathy for his late father. While sadness penetrates the work, it also shows a will for a new morning and new era.