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CONTACT US The Asian Art Newspaper Vol 27 Issue 2 Published by Asian Art Newspaper Ltd, London


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ISSN 1460-8537 Han Bing. Photo: Charles Duprat HAN BING by Olivia Sand


Painting can express a mood, emotions or a state, but it can also go further by including visual references of images, or realities, that have caught our attention. Such is the case for Han Bing (b 1986, China), who captures on canvas a snapshot of the realities that moved her at a given moment in time. Tese realities co-exist in the painting, bringing together figurative or realistic elements with bold colourful abstract strokes. Relying on subway adverts, printed matter, film and dialogues as some of her primary resource, She is a keen observer of our present time. In a decade widely dominated by images, she highlights and re-appropriates some of them, letting us into her visual diary. Similar to many artists of her generation, Han Bing is a global artist who has taken up the challenge to live in different parts of the world, absorbing various new cultures. As a result, her paintings provide a rich narrative and an intriguing, yet welcoming, universe for us to explore. In the following interview, Han Bing draws us even further into her universe, discussing key elements of her practice.


Asian Art Newspaper: Los Angeles has a very dynamic art scene, so what brought you to move from LA to Paris?


Han Bing: It might not be obvious, but I am very much influenced by 15th- and 16th-century European paintings. It has always been my dream to spend a significant amount of time in Europe in order to visit Italy, with all its wealth of Renaissance art, frescoes, and chapels. It turns out that while I was living in LA, there were a few galleries at the end of 2020 that were proposing shows in Europe for me. I was struggling to decide whether I should have my first show in Berlin or Paris, but then the one in Berlin actually fell through, so I came to Paris instead. In a way, I felt that Paris picked me. To be honest, I did not have a lot of dreams of Paris, but here I am.


AAN: You completed your first curriculum in Beijing and an additional one in New York. Why did you decide on a second degree in the US? HB: It is not even a second one, but a third! I am always embarrassed that I was in school for so many years. In my opinion, the most important goal at art school is to learn from your peers and through practice. It is quite rare to meet a professor that can enlighten you. Basically, you have to find the path yourself. I did an undergraduate course for four years, then I was in graduate school at Beijing’s Central


NEWS IN BRIEF


four strategic plan goals: to expand, preserve and celebrate its collections; to identify, attract and serve new and diverse audiences through both its physical and digital spaces; to foster an object-inspired understanding of the arts, communities, cultures and societies of Asia; and to build a museum culture that is creative, collaborative, transparent and resourceful. Te MOUs cover all aspects of museum practice, including staff exchanges and professional development, museum management and practice, exhibitions and object loans, and research projects in such areas as art history, conservation, cultural heritage preservation and provenance.


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ASIAN ART | WINTER 2023 |


KOREA RETURNS STATUE TO JAPAN A long-standing legal dispute has finally been resolved with the Supreme Court of Korea ruling that a 14th-century Buddhist statue had to be returned to Japan. Te statue was stolen from Kannonji, a temple on Japan’s Tsushima island in Nagasaki prefecture in 2012. Allegedly, the thieves were caught trying to sell the statue after returning home and the statue then came under the protection of South Korea’s authorities. Te court decided that the South Korean temple had lost ownership of the Buddha statue due to the length of time it had been in the possession of the Japanese temple. It also noted that Kannonji satisfies requirements to be recognised as the statue’s


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owner under Japan’s Civil Code. Tis latest court ruling comes after a previous order by a higher court in South Korea in February 2017 stated that the statue should be handed over to the South Korean temple. Te ruling had led to the worsening of ties between the two countries.


JAIPUR LITERARY FESTIVAL, RAJASTHAN Tis year’s festival takes place from 1 to 5 February in the at the Hotel Clarks Amer in Jaipur featuring the usual assembly of celebrated speakers, both from India and abroad. For more information, visit the festival’s website, jaipurliteraryfestival.org.


GALLE LITERARY FESTIVAL, SRI LANKA Close neighbour to the Jaipur festival, Galle is back after a gap of a number of years. Some 35 authors, local and international head the event which runs from 25 to 28 January, 2024. More information on galleliteraryfestival.com.


COMPLETE SET OF HOKUSAI PRINTS TO BE AUCTIONED Christie’s are selling a complete set of Hokusai’s Tirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji, the first to be offered in 20 years and will be offered during Asia Week New York in March 2024. Tis series of 46 woodblock prints by Katsushika Hokusai was created from 1830-1833 and includes the


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iconic prints Te Great Wave and Red Fuji.


ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, LONDON To celebrate the bicentenary of the institution, the two volumes of James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han, first published in 1829-32, is being republished. Te volumes remain to this day the first port of call for anyone interested in the history and culture of Rajasthan and the early colonial encounter in India. Written by the first East India Company official to the region, the text was also seminal for the early figures in India’s independence movement who reworked Tod’s imagined ancient Rajput national identities into a call for India’s national liberation from British colonial rule. Reprinted in a numbered limited


edition of 750 copies, this re-issue of the original text, which includes over 80 original copperplate engravings, woodblock prints and lithographs, returns the text to its original state, while the accompanying companion volume critically reframes this monumental, but often misunderstood, work. Te new volume shows how Tod’s Annals is not merely the product of the singular voice of a Western ‘orientalist’ imagination, instead revealing a richly complex work in which Rajasthani voices provide a ‘multi-authored’ heterogeneity to the text which is often discordant and unpredictable. Re-articulating the variety of voices that simultaneously


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inhabit Tod’s Annals, the revised volume argues for a more conjunctural, contingent, and open-ended reading of colonial history. Published on 28 November 2023, it is priced at £850 and distributed by Yale University Press for the Royal Asiatic Society.


NEW PLATFORM FOR SOUTH ASIAN ART Kala is a new art platform that has been established to showcase South Asian modern and contemporary art, from in-country and diasporic perspectives. It aims to foster the growth by integrating art projects and exhibition across Sri Lanka with a diverse calendar of talks, online panel discussion, and workshops. It will operate as hybrid entity organising non-profit programmes to commercially driven events, including artist residences, talks, and collaborative collectives and shows. Te physical launch exhibition will


be held in the Lionel Wendt Centre in Colombo, built in memory of the photographer. Wendt was pivotal figure in the art scene of the 1930-40s, who pioneered a movement that gave rise to what is considered today as modern and contemporary art – both visual and performing – in Sri Lanka. Tis inaugural exhibition will run


from 29 January to 25 February, 2024and will look through the archive of Lionel Wendt’s oeuvre to identify streams of exploration and aesthetic sensibilities that predominated his practice.


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