EDITOR’S NOTE

While we were making this magazine, the Marie Kondo phenomenon swept the world. Suddenly everyone, from our editorial team in Hong Kong to museum curators in New York and artists in London, were turning their houses inside out, rediscovering and re-evaluating belongings they had long forgotten. Is it worth keeping this sketchbook? Does this watercolour— in Kondo-speak—spark joy?

With these conversations unfolding in countless homes, it feels fortuitous that our cover star is Do Ho Suh, a Korean artist who has spent his career exploring how our emotions become wrapped up in the objects we surround ourselves with, and how our memories are embedded in the walls of our houses. “My work has always been about my homes,” Suh reveals in our cover story, on page 34, where he reflects on the public’s emotional responses to his haunting fabric sculptures of buildings— and reveals what he’s working on next.

Suh is one of the few big names in the art world to work with textiles, which have historically been dismissed as art and instead relegated to the level of “craft”—though this may be about to change. This month, an arts space inspired by the medium, the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, is opening in Tsuen Wan. Christina Ko gives an exclusive first look inside the institution on page 42. We also sit down with Cosmin Costinas, director of non-profit arts space Para Site, who is an avid textile collector. “There is something quite problematic in this very clear distinction between art and craft,” Costinas argues in our feature about his collection, on page 48.

Inside these pages there is also an in-depth, sector-by-sector guide to Art Basel (p.8), which remains Asia’s most important art fair, a round-up of exhibitions you can’t miss at the city’s galleries (p.26) and an interview with pioneering feminist artist Barbara Kruger (p.58), among much else.

Whether you’re a lifelong art lover or just dipping your toe in the water, I hope these stories inform, interest and inspire you— and perhaps even spark a little joy. Oliver Giles Editor